because for the last week I have been in my fair one’s confidence; she
does not tell me her secrets, but I surprise them. Two letters from her
to Madame de Rosemonde have sufficiently instructed me, and I shall
only read the others out of curiosity. I require absolutely nothing
else to ensure success than to approach her, and I have found the
means. I shall instantly employ them.
You are curious, I believe?... But no, to punish you for not believing
in my inventions, you shall not know them. Once for all, if you had
your deserts, I should withdraw my confidence from you, at least in
this adventure; indeed, were it not for the sweet price you have set
on my success, I should speak of it no further to you. You see that
I am vexed. However, in the hope that you will correct yourself, I
am willing to stop with this slight punishment; and, once more grown
indulgent, will forget my rash projects for a moment, to discuss your
own with you.
There you are then, in the country, which is as tedious as sentiment
and as sad as constancy! And that poor Belleroche! You are not
contented with making him drink the waters of oblivion, you must also
put him to the torture! How does he like it? Does he bear up well
beneath the nausea of love? I would give much to see him become only
the more enamoured; I am curious to see what more efficacious remedy
you would succeed in finding. I pity you, truly, that you have been
compelled to have recourse to that. Once only in my life have I made
love from calculation. I had certainly an excellent reason, since it
was to the Comtesse de ***; and twenty times I was tempted to say,
whilst in her arms, “Madame, I renounce the place I am soliciting;
permit me to retire from that which I occupy.” Wherefore, of all the
women I have had, she is the only one of whom it gives me real pleasure
to speak ill.
As for your own motive, I find it, to tell the truth, of a rare
absurdity; and you were right in believing I should never guess the
successor. What! It is for Danceny you are taking all this trouble!
Oh, my dear friend, leave him to adore _his virtuous Cécile_, and do
not compromise yourself at these childish games. Leave boys to form
themselves in their _nurses’_ hands, or to play with school-girls _at
little innocent games_. How can you burden yourself with a novice, who
will know neither how to take you nor how to leave you, and with whom
all will have to be done by you! I tell you, seriously, I disapprove of
this choice; and however secret it may remain, it will humiliate you at
least in my eyes and in your own conscience.
You have taken, you say, a great fancy to him: nay, nay, you surely
make a mistake; and I even believe I have found the source of your
error. This fine disgust with Belleroche came to you at a time of
famine; and, as Paris offered you no choice, your ideas, which are
always too volatile, turned towards the first object they encountered.
But reflect: on your return you will be able to choose between a
thousand; and if, in fine, you dread the inaction in which you risk
falling if you delay, I offer myself to you to amuse your leisure.
By the time of your arrival, my great affairs will be terminated in
some fashion or other; and assuredly neither the little Volanges nor
the Présidente herself will occupy me so much then as to prevent me
from being with you as much as you desire. Perhaps, even, between now
and then, I shall have already restored the little girl into the
hands of her discreet lover. Without admitting, whatever you may say,
that it is not a pleasure which _attaches_, as it is my intention that
she should retain all her life a superior notion of me to that of all
other men, I have adopted a tone with her, which I could not keep up
long without injuring my health; and, from henceforth, I am only drawn
to her by the care which one owes to family affairs....
[Illustration: Mle. Gérard del. Pauquet sculp.]
You do not understand me?... The fact is that I am awaiting a second
period to confirm my hope, and to assure me that I have thoroughly
succeeded in my projects. Yes, my lovely friend, I have already a first
promise that the husband of my pupil will not run the risk of dying
without posterity; and that the head of the house of Gercourt will
be in future only a cadet of that of Valmont. But let me finish, at
my fantasy, this adventure which I only undertook at your entreaty.
Remember that, if you render Danceny inconstant, you destroy all the
raciness of the story. Consider, finally, that offering, as I do, to
serve you, I have, it seems to me, some right to be preferred.
I count so much on this, that I am not afraid to cross your views, by
endeavouring myself to augment the discreet lover’s tender passion for
the first and worthy object of his choice. Yesterday, having found your
pupil employed in writing to him, after I had first disturbed her at
this sweet occupation for the sake of another, sweeter still, I asked
to see her letter; and as I found it cold and constrained, I made
her feel that it was not thus that she should console her lover, and
persuaded her to write another at my dictation; in which, imitating,
as well as I could, her little prattle, I tried to foster the young
man’s love by a more certain hope. The little person was quite
enchanted, she said, to find herself expressing herself so well; and,
for the future, I am to be charged with the correspondence. What have
I not done for this Danceny? I shall have been at once his friend, his
confidant, his rival and his mistress! Again, at this moment, I am
rendering him the service of saving him from your dangerous chains.
Yes, dangerous without a doubt: for to possess you and lose you is to
buy a moment of happiness with an eternity of regret. Adieu, my lovely
friend; have the courage to dispatch Belleroche as soon as you can.
Leave Danceny alone, and prepare yourself to receive once more, and to
renew to me, the delicious pleasures of our first _liaison_.
P.S. I congratulate you upon the approaching decision of the great
law-suit. I shall be delighted if this happy event occurs during my
reign.
At the Château de ..., 19th October, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH
THE CHEVALIER DANCENY TO CÉCILE VOLANGES
MADAME DE MERTEUIL left this morning for the country; thus, my charming
Cécile, I am now deprived of the sole pleasure which remained to me
during your absence, that of talking of you to your friend and mine.
For some time past, she has allowed me to give her that title; and
I have profited by it with all the more eagerness because it seemed
to bring me nearer to you. Lord! how amiable this woman is! And with
what a flattering charm she knows how to endow friendship! It seems as
though that sweet sentiment is embellished and fortified in her by all
that she denies to love. If you knew how she loves you, how it pleases
her to hear me speak of you!... ’Tis that, no doubt, which draws me so
much towards her. What happiness it were, to be able to live entirely
for you both, to pass uninterruptedly from the delights of love to
the sweets of friendship, to consecrate all my existence to it, to be
in some measure the point of union of your mutual attachment, and to
feel always that, in occupying myself with the happiness of the one,
I was working equally for that of the other. Love, love dearly, my
charming friend, this adorable woman. Give greater value still to the
attachment I have for her by participating in it. Since I have tasted
the charm of friendship, I am desirous that you should experience it
in your turn. From pleasures which I do not share with you I seem only
to obtain a half enjoyment. Yes, my Cécile, I would fain surround your
heart with all the softest sentiments, so that its every vibration
might give you a sensation of happiness; and I should still feel that I
could never repay you more than a part of the felicity which I should
derive from you.
Why must it be that these charming projects are only a chimera of
my imagination, and that reality offers me, on the contrary, only
indefinite and dolorous privations? The hope which you had held out to
me of seeing you in the country I see well that I must renounce. I have
no other consolation than that of persuading myself that you do really
find it impossible. And you refrain from telling me this, from grieving
over it with me! Twice already have my complaints on this subject been
left without a reply. Ah! Cécile, Cécile, I do believe that you love me
with all the faculties of your soul; but your soul is not ardent like
my own. Why does it not lie with me to overthrow the obstacles? Why
is it not my interests that have to be considered instead of yours? I
should know how to prove to you that nothing is impossible to love.
You tell me nothing, either, of the duration of this cruel absence:
here, at least, I should perhaps see you. Your charming eyes would
reanimate my drooping soul; their touching expression would reassure
my heart, which has sometimes need of it. Forgive me, my Cécile; this
fear is not a suspicion. I believe in your love, in your constancy. Ah,
I should be too unhappy, if I were to doubt it. But so many obstacles!
And always renewed! I am sad, my friend, very sad. It seems as though
the departure of Madame de Merteuil had renewed in me the sentiment of
all my woes.
Adieu, my Cécile; adieu, my beloved. Remember that your lover is
grieving, and that you alone can restore him to happiness.
Paris, 17th October, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEENTH
CÉCILE VOLANGES TO THE CHEVALIER DANCENY
(Dictated by Valmont)
Do you think then, my dear friend, that I had any need of scolding
to make me sad, when I know that you grieve? And do you doubt that I
suffer as much as you, at all your sorrows? I even share those which I
cause you knowingly; and I have one more than you when I see that you
do not do me justice. Oh! that is not right! Indeed, I see what vexes
you; it is that, the last two times you asked to come here, I did not
answer you: but was the answer such an easy one to give? Do you suppose
I do not know that what you want is very wicked? And yet, if I have
already so much difficulty in refusing you at a distance, pray, what
would it be if you were here? And then, because I had wished to console
you for a moment, I should be sorry all my life.
See, I have nothing to conceal from you; here are my reasons, judge for
yourself. I should, perhaps, have done what you wish, had it not been
for what I have told you, the news that this M. de Gercourt, who is
the cause of all my grief, will not arrive yet awhile; and as Mamma,
for some time past, has shown me much more kindness; as I, on my side,
caress her as much as I can, who knows what I may not be able to
obtain from her? And if we could be happy without my having anything to
reproach myself with, would not that be much better? If I am to believe
what I have been often told, men no longer love their wives so much,
if they have loved them overmuch before they were wives. That fear
restrains me even more than the rest. My friend, are you not sure of my
heart, and will there not be always time?
Listen; I promise you that, though I cannot avoid the misfortune of
marrying M. de Gercourt, whom I hate so much already before I know him,
nothing shall any longer prevent me from being yours as much as I am
able, and even before everything. As I do not care to be loved except
by you, and you must see quite well that, if I do wrong, it is not my
fault, the rest will be just the same to me; provided that you promise
to love me always as much as you do now. But until then, my friend, let
me continue as I am; and ask me no more for a thing which I have good
reasons for declining to do, and which it yet vexes me to refuse you.
I should be very glad, too, if M. de Valmont were not so urgent for
you; it only serves to make me grieve still more. Oh, you have a very
good friend in him, I assure you! He does everything that you would do
yourself. But adieu, my dear love; it was very late when I began to
write to you, and I have spent part of the night over it. I am going to
bed now, and to make up for the lost time. I embrace you, but do not
scold me any more.
At the Château de ..., 18th October, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEENTH
THE CHEVALIER DANCENY TO THE MARQUISE DE MERTEUIL
IF I am to believe my almanack, my adorable friend, it is but two days
that you have been absent; but, if I am to believe my heart, it is two
centuries. Now, I have it from yourself, it is always one’s heart that
one should believe; it is therefore quite time then that you should
return, and all your affairs must be more than finished. How can you
expect me to be interested in your law-suit, when, be it lost or won,
I must equally pay the costs by the tedium of your absence? Oh, how
querulous I feel! And how sad it is to have so fair a subject for
ill-humour, but no right to show it!
Is it not, however, a real infidelity, a black betrayal, to leave your
friend far away from you, after having accustomed him to be unable to
dispense with your presence? In vain will you consult your advocates,
they will find you no justification for this ill-behaviour; and then
those gentry do but talk of reasons, and reasons are not sufficient
answer to sentiments.
For myself, you have told me so often that it was reason which sent
you on this journey, that I have entirely done with it. I will no
longer listen to it, not even when it tells me to forget you. That
is, however, a most reasonable reason: in fact, it would not be so
difficult as you suppose. It would be sufficient merely to lose the
habit of always thinking of you; and nothing here, I assure you, would
recall you to me.
Our loveliest women, those who are said to be the most amiable, are yet
so far below you that they could but give a very feeble idea of you.
I think even that, with practised eyes, the more one thought at first
they resembled you, the more difference one would remark afterwards: in
vain their efforts, in vain their display of all they know, they always
fail in being you; and therein, positively, lies the charm. Unhappily,
when the days are so long, and one is unoccupied, one dreams, one
builds castles in the air, one creates one’s chimera; little by
little the imagination is exalted; one would fain beautify one’s
work, one gathers together all that may please, finally one arrives
at perfection; and, as soon as one is there, the portrait recalls the
model; and one is astonished to find that one has but dreamed of you.
At this very moment, I am again the dupe of an almost similar error.
You will believe, perhaps, that it was in order to occupy myself with
you that I started to write to you? Not at all: it was to distract
myself from you. I had a hundred things to say of which you were not
the object, things which, as you know, interest me very keenly; and it
is from these, nevertheless, that I have been distracted. And since
when, pray, does the charm of friendship divert us from that of love?
Ah, if I were to look closely into the matter, perhaps I should have
a slight reproach to make myself! But hush! Let us forget this little
error, for fear of reverting to it, and let my friend herself ignore
it.
Why, then, are you not here to reply to me, to lead me back if I go
astray, to talk to me of my Cécile, to enhance, if that be possible,
the happiness I derive from her love by the sweet thought that, in
loving her, I love your friend? Yes, I confess it, the love which she
inspires in me has become even more precious since you have been kind
enough to receive my confidence. I love so much to open my heart to
you, to pour my sentiments unreservedly into yours! It seems to me that
I cherish them the more, when you deign to receive them; and again I
look at you and say to myself: It is in her that all my happiness is
bound up.
I have nothing new to tell you with regard to my situation. The last
letter I received from _her_ increases and assures my hope, but delays
it still. However, her motives are so tender and so pure that I can
neither blame her for them nor complain. Perhaps you do not understand
too well what I am telling you; but why are you not here? Although one
may say all to one’s friend, one dare not write it. The secrets of
love, especially, are so delicate that one may not let them go thus
upon their _parole_. If one allows them out sometimes, one must none
the less never let them out of sight; one must, as it were, see them
reach their new refuge. Ah, come back then, my adorable friend; you
see how very necessary is your return. Forget, in short, the _thousand
reasons_ which detain you where you are, or teach me to live where you
are not.
I have the honour to be, etc.
Paris, 19th October, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND NINETEENTH
MADAME DE ROSEMONDE TO THE PRÉSIDENTE DE TOURVEL
ALTHOUGH I am still suffering greatly, my dearest fair, I am
endeavouring to write to you myself, in order to be able to speak to
you of what interests you. My nephew still keeps up his misanthropy. He
sends every day most regularly to ask after my health; but he has not
come once to enquire for himself, although I have begged him to do so.
Thus I see no more of him than if he were in Paris. I met him to-day,
however, in a place where I little expected him. It was in my chapel,
whither I had gone for the first time since my painful indisposition.
I learned to-day that for the last four days he has gone regularly to
hear mass. God grant that this last!
When I entered, he came up to me, and congratulated me most
affectionately on the improved state of my health. As mass was
beginning, I cut short the conversation, which I expected to resume
afterwards; but he had disappeared before I could rejoin him. I will
not hide from you that I found him somewhat changed. But, my dearest
fair, do not make me repent of my confidence in your reason, by a too
lively anxiety; and, above all, rest assured that I would rather choose
to pain than deceive you.
If my nephew continues to keep aloof from me, I will adopt the course,
as soon as I am better, of visiting him in his chamber; and I will
try to penetrate the cause of this singular mania, which, I can well
believe, has something to do with you. I will write and tell you
anything I may find out. Now I take leave of you, as I can no more move
my fingers: besides, if Adelaide knew that I had written, she would
scold me all the evening. Adieu, my dearest fair.
At the Château de ..., 20th October, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH
THE VICOMTE DE VALMONT TO THE PÈRE ANSELME
(a Bernardine of the monastery of the Rue Saint-Honoré)
I HAVE not the honour of being known to you, Monsieur: but I know of
the entire confidence which Madame la Présidente de Tourvel reposes
in you, and I know, moreover, how much this confidence is deserved. I
believe, then, that I may address myself to you without indiscretion,
in order to obtain a very essential service, truly worthy of your holy
office, and one in which the interests of Madame de Tourvel and myself
are one.
I have in my hands important papers which concern her, which cannot
be entrusted to anybody, and which I would not, and must not, give
up except into her hands. I have no means of informing her of this,
because reasons which, perhaps, you will have heard from her, but which
I do not consider myself authorized to state, have led her to take the
course of refusing all correspondence with me: a course that, to-day,
I confess willingly, I cannot blame, since she could not foresee
events which I myself was very far from expecting, and which were
only rendered possible by that superhuman force which we are forced
to recognize. I beg you, therefore, Monsieur, to be so good as to
inform her of my new resolutions, and to ask her to grant me a private
interview, in which I can, at least in part, repair my errors and, as a
last sacrifice, destroy in her presence the sole existing traces of an
error or fault which has rendered me guilty in her eyes.
It will not be until after this preliminary expiation that I shall dare
to lay at your feet the humiliating confession of my long disorders,
and to entreat your mediation for an even more important and,
unhappily, more difficult reconciliation. May I hope, Monsieur, that
you will not refuse me this precious and necessary aid, and that you
will deign to sustain my weakness and guide my feet into the new way
which I desire most ardently to follow, but which, I blush to confess,
I do not yet know?
I await your reply with the impatience of the repentance which desires
to make reparation, and I beg you to believe me, with equal gratitude
and veneration,
Your most humble, etc.
P.S. I authorize you, Monsieur, should you deem it proper, to
communicate this letter in its entirety to Madame de Tourvel, whom I
shall make it my duty to respect all my life long, and in whom I shall
never cease to honour one whom Heaven has used to bring back my soul to
virtue, by the touching spectacle of her own.
At the Château de ..., 22nd October, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST
THE MARQUISE DE MERTEUIL TO THE CHEVALIER DANCENY
I HAVE received your letter, my too youthful friend; but, before I
thank you, I must scold you, and I warn you that, if you do not correct
yourself, you shall have no more answers from me. Quit then, if you
will believe me, that tone of flattery, which is no more than jargon,
when it is not the expression of love. Pray, is that the language of
friendship? No, my friend, every sentiment has its befitting speech,
and to make use of any other is to disguise the thought which one
expresses. I am well aware that our frivolous women understand nothing
that is said to them, if it be not translated, in some way, into this
customary jargon; but I confess that I thought I deserved that you
should distinguish between them and me. I am truly grieved, and perhaps
more than I ought to be, that you have judged me so ill.
You will only find then in my letter the qualities which yours lacks:
frankness and simplicity. I will certainly tell you, for instance, that
it would give me great pleasure to see you, and that I am vexed to have
only tiresome people round me instead of people who please me; but this
very phrase you translate thus: _Teach me to live where you are not_;
so that, I suppose, when you are with your mistress, you will not be
able to live unless I make a third. The pity of it! And these women
_who always fail in being me_: perhaps you find that your Cécile also
fails in that! That, however, is the result of a language which, owing
to the abuse made of it nowadays, is even lower than the jargon of
compliments, and has become no more than a mere formula, in which one
no more believes than in a most humble servant.
My friend, when you write to me, let it be to tell me your fashion of
thinking and feeling, and not to send me phrases which I can find,
without your aid, more or less well turned in any novel of the day. I
hope you will not be angry at what I am telling you, even if you should
detect a little ill-humour; for I do not deny I feel some: but, to
avoid even the shadow of the fault for which I reproach you, I will not
tell you that this ill-humour is, perhaps, somewhat augmented by the
distance at which I am from you. It seems to me that, all considered,
you are worth more than a law-suit and two advocates, perhaps, even
more than the _attentive_ Belleroche.
You see that, instead of despairing at my absence, you ought to
congratulate yourself upon it, for I have never paid you so pretty a
compliment. I believe your example is catching, and I, too, am inclined
to flatter you: but nay, I prefer to keep to my frankness; it is that
alone, then, which assures you of my tender friendship, and of the
interest which it inspires in me. It is very sweet to have a young
friend whose heart is occupied elsewhere. That is not the system of all
women, but it is mine. It seems to me that one abandons one’s self with
more pleasure to a sentiment from which one can have nothing to fear:
thus I have passed with you, early enough, perhaps, into the rôle of
confidant. But you choose your mistresses so young that you have made
me perceive for the first time that I begin to grow old! You have acted
well in preparing for yourself a long career of constancy, and I wish
with all my heart that it may be reciprocated.