I shall expect you here in a few days’ time, dear daughter, as you have announced. You shall come back here and again find peace and quiet in the house where you had lost them; above all, come and rejoice with your affectionate mother at having so successfully kept the promise you made her never to do anything unworthy of either her or yourself!
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The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont From the Château de —–, 31 October 17—
If I haven’t replied to your letter of the 19th, Vicomte, it’s not for lack of time but quite simply because it made me cross and I thought it contained a good deal of rubbish. So I thought the best thing was to let it fall into oblivion; but since you’ve brought it up again and seem attached to the ideas it puts forward, indeed take my silence as consent, I shall have to speak my mind plainly.
On occasion, I may well have laid claim to being able to replace a whole harem on my own but I’ve never felt the slightest inclination to form part of one. As you will henceforth have no further excuse for being ignorant of this fact, you will easily grasp how ludicrous your suggestion must have appeared to me. I, the Marquise de Merteuil, am supposed to drop someone I fancy—and someone new, too!—to concern myself with you! And to concern myself in what way? Awaiting my turn, like a humble slave, for the sublime favours of Your Royal Highness. When, for instance, you are kind enough for a moment to dispense with the strange charm which only the adorable, the divine Madame de Tourvel seems capable of providing you with or when you’re alarmed at the thought of compromising in the eyes of the endearing Cécile the impression you are very glad to leave her with of yourself as a man superior to all the rest, you’ll deign to come down to my level and try to find pleasure there, less exciting, of course, but of little consequence anyway; and your precious favours, albeit distributed somewhat parsimoniously, will be more than adequate to make me happy.
You certainly have a plentiful supply of self-conceit; but it would seem that modesty is less plentiful with me because however hard I look at myself, I fail to see that I’m such an utter wreck as that … The fault may lie in me; but I warn you I’ve got lots of others.
In particular I have the fault of thinking that the schoolboy, the soppy Danceny who is concerned only with me, who’s sacrificing his first great love, without claiming any credit for this and even before it’s reached its consummation, loving me in fact in the way men do at that age, might, for all his twenty years, be a more efficient instrument for my happiness and pleasure than yourself. I shall even take the liberty of adding that, should I fancy providing him with a deputy, it wouldn’t be you, at least not at this moment.
And what are my reasons, you will ask? Well, in the first place, there might well not be any reason: the whim which could have led you to be preferred might equally well exclude you. All the same, since I’m a polite young woman, I’m prepared to let you know my motives: it seems to me likely that while you’d be giving up so much for me, I myself, instead of feeling the proper gratitude you would certainly expect, would be quite capable of considering that you owed me still more! So you can well understand that since our ways of thinking are such miles apart, we can’t possibly find any point of contact; and I fear it will take me a long time, a very long time indeed, to feel differently. I promise to let you know when I have mended my ways. Until then, believe me, press on with other arrangements and keep your kisses to yourself, you have so many better targets for them!
Goodbye, as in the old days, you say? But in the old days you used to think rather more highly of me; you hadn’t yet relegated me completely to supporting roles; and above all you were prepared to wait until I said yes before being sure I’d agree.* So please allow me, instead of saying to you also ‘goodbye as in the old days’, to say ‘goodbye as of now’.
Your servant, sir.
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Madame de Tourvel to Madame de Rosemonde Paris, 1 November 17—
I did not receive your delayed reply till yesterday. If my life were still mine to call my own, it would have killed me on the spot: but my whole existence belongs to someone else and that other person is Monsieur de Valmont. You see that I am hiding nothing from you. Even if you are bound to think of me as no longer worthy of your friendship, I’m still less afraid of losing it than keeping it fraudulently. All that I am able to tell you is that having been faced by Monsieur de Valmont with the dilemma of choosing between his death or his happiness, I opted for the latter. I take no pride in this, nor am I accusing myself: I am merely stating facts.*
You will thus have no difficulty in understanding the effect your letter must have had on me with the stern truths it contains. But do not imagine it was able to arouse in me any regrets or that it can ever affect my feelings or my conduct. Not that I do not find myself suffering abominably at times, but when my heart is most cruelly distressed, when I become afraid that I can no longer bear my anguish, I tell myself: Valmont is happy and that thought drives everything else out of my mind or rather it makes everything a pleasure.
So I have dedicated myself to Valmont; I have ruined myself for him, he has become the centre of all my thoughts, feelings, and actions. As long as my life is necessary for his happiness, I shall treasure it and consider myself a lucky woman. If some day he has other views, he will never hear a word of protest or blame from me. I have already faced up to this possibility and made my decision.
You can now see how I am bound to be unaffected by the fear which you seem to have that Valmont may ruin me since, before trying to do that, he will inevitably have stopped loving me and in that case how can futile reproaches have any importance for me if I shan’t be hearing them? Since I shall have been living purely for him, he will be my sole judge, my memory will be in his hands and I shall be sufficiently justified if he is forced to recognize that I loved him.
Now I have given you, dear Madame de Rosemonde, an insight into my heart; I’d sooner suffer the misfortune of losing your esteem by being frank than prove unworthy of it by debasing myself with lies. Your kindness to me has been so precious that I felt that I owed you this complete confidence; if I say more now, you might suspect me of thinking I can presume on that kindness whereas on the contrary I am accepting my fault by renouncing any further claim on it.
I am, Madame, with deep respect, your humble and obedient, etc.
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The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil Paris, 3 November 17—
Do tell me, fair lady, what induced that sour, teasing tone which was so obvious in your last letter? What is this crime I’ve committed, apparently unawares, which has made you so cross? You accuse me of appearing to take your consent for granted; but I thought that what might be taken for presumption in someone else could never be viewed, between us, as anything but trust; and since when has trust been an enemy of friendship? By combining hope and desire I was merely giving way to that natural impulse which makes us want to be as near as we can to the happiness we’re seeking; you are mistaking my eagerness for pride. I know that in such cases it is usual to show a certain respectful doubt; but you know too that this is purely a matter of form, nothing but protocol; and it seems to me that I had the right to think that this sort of extreme wariness was no longer necessary between us.
It even seems to me that when it is based on a long-standing relationship, a free and honest approach is far more preferable than the bland flattery which so often removes the zest from love. And perhaps my liking for that way of dealing merely springs from my liking for the sort of happiness which it reminds me of and for that very reason I should be even more sorry to see you taking a different view.
Yet this is the only fault I can discover in myself, since I can’t think that you can seriously have imagined that any woman exists in our world whom I might prefer to you and even less that I can have had such a poor opinion of you as you pretend to think. You have looked hard at yourself, you say, and you did not find yourself such a wreck. I can well believe that and this merely pro
ves how truthful your mirror is. But wouldn’t it have been easier and fairer for you to have come to the conclusion that I had certainly not thought of you in such terms?
I’m still vainly trying to work out the reason for such an odd idea. However, it does seem to me that it is in some way or other related to the fact that I took the liberty of praising another woman. At any rate, I infer as much from your apparent fondness for picking on such adjectives as adorable, divine, and endearing which I used when speaking variously of Madame de Tourvel or the little Volanges girl. But don’t you realize that those words, chosen more often than not at random rather than for any purpose, don’t necessarily reflect our good opinion of someone so much as our own situation at the time we express it? And if, at the moment when I was so keenly affected by one or other of those two women, my desire for you was in no way reduced and in fact I was showing a marked preference for you over those other two, since after all I couldn’t renew our earlier relationship except at their expense, I can’t see how that can be seen as a reason to blame me.
Nor is it any harder for me to justify my use of strange charm which seems to have rather shocked you too, since, in the first place, being strange doesn’t imply that it’s stronger. Ah, what could be more delicious than the pleasures you alone can give, pleasures that are always new, always more intense! All I meant was that it was a kind of pleasure I had never experienced before. I had no intention of assessing it; and I had added a comment that I shall now repeat: whatever it is, I shall resist and overcome it. And I shall do that all the more vigorously if I can see that the slight effort involved will count as a tribute to you …
As for our little Cécile, I think there’s absolutely no point in arguing about her with you. You’ll remember that it was at your request that I took her on and I’m only waiting for the word from you to drop her. I may have remarked on her ingenuousness and freshness; I may even, for a moment, have thought her endearing because we’re always more or less pleased with our own handiwork, but she’s certainly too insubstantial in every way to hold anyone’s attention for long.
So now, lovely lady, I appeal to your sense of fair play and to your earlier favours for me, as well as to the long and perfect friendship, the complete and utter trust which has brought us ever closer to each other: have I really deserved that carping tone you’ve recently been adopting towards me? But how easily you can make amends whenever you like! Just say the word and you will see whether all the charming and endearing qualities available here will detain me, not just one day but even one minute: I shall fly to fling myself at your feet and into your arms and prove to you a thousand and one times in a thousand and one ways that you are and always will be the true queen of my heart.
Goodbye, fair lady. I eagerly await your reply.
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Madame de Rosemonde to Madame de Tourvel From the Château de —–, 4 November 17—
And why, dear friend, do you not want to be my daughter any longer? Why do you seem to be announcing that all correspondence between us is to come to an end? Are you trying to punish me for not having guessed at something which was beyond all probability? Or do you suspect me of having deliberately caused you distress? No, I know your heart too well to think that it would believe me capable of that. So the distress your letter caused me relates far less to me than to you!
O dear young friend, it hurts me to have to say it, but you are far too worthy of being loved ever to be happy in love! Is there any truly sensitive and fastidious woman who hasn’t been let down in the very feeling that gave promise of such happiness! Do men appreciate the women they possess?
Not that there aren’t a number who are honourable in their conduct and constant in their affections; but amongst those, how few are in tune with our hearts! Never think, dear girl, that their love is like ours. They certainly experience the same intoxication of the senses, indeed they are often more carried away by it; but they know nothing of that restless eagerness, that tender solicitude, which produces in us that continuous loving concern uniquely centred on our beloved. A man enjoys the pleasure he feels, a woman the pleasure she bestows. This difference, so essential and so unnoticed, has however a very marked effect on their respective general behaviour. The pleasure of one partner is to satisfy his desires, that of the other is primarily to arouse them. For the man, pleasing is merely a means to succeed whereas for her it is success itself. And feminine flirtatiousness, for which she is so often blamed, is nothing but an abuse of this way of feeling and for that very reason proves it is true. And so this exclusive fondness for someone, which is a particular characteristic of love, remains, for a man, purely a preference which is, at the most, useful for him to assess the extent of his pleasure and which some other affection might weaken but not destroy, whereas for women it’s a deep emotion which not only abolishes all desire for anyone else but, being more powerful than nature and outside its control, causes them to feel nothing but repugnance and disgust even in situations which ought apparently to provide them with extreme pleasure.
It is easy to quote numbers of exceptions to these general principles but you mustn’t think that they invalidate their truth! They have the support of public opinion which has drawn a distinction—for men only—between being unfaithful and being inconstant; it’s one they are delighted to take advantage of, instead of considering it disgraceful, as they ought; but it’s one that has never been accepted except by depraved women who are themselves a disgrace to their sex and who’ll clutch at any straw to avoid having to face the unpleasant reality of their own ignominy.
I thought, dear friend, that it might help you to hear my reflections and compare them with those illusions of perfect bliss in love that we never cease to dream about; false hopes which we still try to cling to even when we’re forced to abandon them; and whose loss aggravates and increases the strains and stresses, already only too real, inherent in any intensely passionate love! This attempt to calm or reduce your sufferings is the only one I want or am able to make at the moment. When ills are incurable, advice can only hope to try to alleviate them. All I ask you to remember is that feeling pity for someone who’s ill doesn’t mean blaming them. Who are we to cast the first stone? Let us leave the right to judge to Him who alone can read in all our hearts; and I venture to think that in our Father’s eyes, a single weakness can be redeemed by a host of virtues.
But I do beseech you, dear, dear girl, above all to resist those violent resolutions which indicate not so much that you are strong but that you are utterly dejected. Aren’t you forgetting, that if, in your own words, your existence belongs to someone else, none the less you may not deprive your friends of that part of your life which they already had and which they will never agree to give up.
Goodbye, my dear, dear daughter. Think sometimes of your loving mother and never doubt that you will always be first and foremost in her thoughts and her affection.
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The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont From the Château de—–, 6 November 17—
Bravo, Vicomte! You get much better marks this time than last. But now let’s settle down to a friendly chat and I hope to convince you that the arrangement you seem to want would be madness for both of us.
Haven’t you yet realized that pleasure, which is indeed certainly the one and only reason for the two sexes to come together, is nevertheless not enough to establish a relationship between them? And that though this pleasure is preceded by desire which draws people together, it is however followed by aversion which pushes them apart? It’s a law of nature which only love can change. Can we feel love whenever we want? Yet love is always needed, which would be a dreadfully tiresome thing if it hadn’t fortunately been realized that it’s enough for just one of the partners to feel it, thereby halving the problem, and without even incurring any great loss; in fact, one party is happy to love, the other to please, which is actually a bit less exciting but which can be combined with the pleasure of deceiving and that evens things out
, so everyone’s happy.
But tell me, Vicomte, which of us two will undertake to deceive the other? You know the story of the two card-sharpers who spotted each other when they were playing together: we’re not going to get anything from each other, they said, let’s split the proceeds; and they stopped playing. Believe me, let’s follow this wise example and not waste our time together when we can spend it so profitably elsewhere.
To prove to you that my decision is prompted as much by your interests as my own and that I’m not acting out of malice or caprice, I shan’t withhold the reward we agreed on: anyway, I feel that for a single evening we’ll hit it off together fabulously; I even have no doubt that we can embroider on it sufficiently well to make us sorry when it comes to an end. But don’t forget that this regret is necessary for happiness; and that however pleasant the illusion, let’s not imagine that it can last.
You will see that I too am fulfilling my obligations—and before you’ve yet settled up with me; after all, I was to be given the heavenly prude’s first letter, yet either because you’re reluctant to part with it or else because you’ve forgotten the terms of our bargain (which maybe you find less interesting than you want me to believe), I’ve received nothing, nothing whatsoever. Nevertheless, unless I’m very much mistaken, your tender-hearted and pious conquest must be a great letter-writer. What else could she do when she’s alone? She’s certainly not sensible enough to look around for amusement. So I have a small bone to pick with you, if I have a mind to: but I’ll hold my peace on the subject, to make amends for the slightly acrimonious tone I allowed to creep into my last letter.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses Page 38