_Madame de_ Rosemonde, _to the Presidente de_ Tourvel.
“Why, my lovely dear, will you no longer be my daughter?
Why do you seem to announce that our correspondence is
to cease?[1] Is it to punish me for not guessing at
what was improbable; or do you suspect me of creating
you affliction designedly? I know your heart too well,
to imagine you would entertain such an opinion of
mine.—The distress your letter plunges me in is much
less on my own account than yours. Oh! my young friend,
with grief I tell you, you are too worthy of being
beloved ever to be happy in love. Where is there a truly
delicate and sensible woman, who has not met unhappiness
where she expected bliss? Do men know how to rate the
women they possess?
“Not but many of them are virtuous in their addresses,
and constant in their affections—but even among those,
how few that know how to put themselves in unison
with our hearts. I do not imagine, my dear child,
their affection is like ours. They experience the
same transport often with more violence, but they are
strangers to that uneasy officiousness, that delicate
solicitude, that produces in us those continual tender
cares, whose sole aim is the beloved object. Man enjoys
the happiness he feels, woman that she gives.
“This difference, so essential, and so seldom observed,
influences, in a very sensible manner, the totality of
their respective conduct. The pleasure of the one is
to gratify desires; but that of the other is to create
them. To know to please is in man the means of success;
and in woman it is success itself.
“And do not imagine the exceptions, be they more or
less numerous, that may be quoted, can be successfully
opposed to those general truths, which the voice of the
public has guarantied, with the only distinction as to
men of infidelity from inconstancy; a distinction of
which they avail themselves, and of which they should be
ashamed; which never has been adopted by any of our sex
but those of abandoned characters, who are a scandal to
us, and to whom all methods are acceptable which they
think may deliver them from the painful sensation of
their own meanness.
“I thought, my lovely dear, those reflections might be
of use to you, in order to oppose the chimerical ideas
of perfect happiness, with which love never fails to
amuse our imagination. Deceitful hope! to which we are
still attached, even when we find ourselves under the
necessity of abandoning it—whose loss multiplies and
irritates our already too real sorrows, inseparable
from an ardent passion. This task of alleviating your
trouble, or diminishing their number, is the only one I
will or can now fulfil. In disorders which are without
remedy, no other advice can be given, than as to the
regimen to be observed. The only thing I wish you to
remember is, that to pity is not to blame a patient.
Alas! who are we, that we dare blame one another? Let us
leave the right of judging to the Searcher of hearts;
and I will even venture to believe, that in his paternal
sight, a crowd of virtues may compensate a single
weakness.
“But I conjure you, above all things, my dear friend, to
guard against violent resolutions, which are less the
effects of fortitude than despondency: do not forget,
that although you have made another possessor of your
existence (to use your own expression) you had it not
in your power to deprive your friends of the share they
were before possessed of, and which they will always
claim.
“Adieu, my dear child! Think sometimes on your tender
mother; and be assured you always will be, above every
thing, the dearest object of her thoughts.
“_Castle of ——._”
If the openness of the little Volanges, or her ignorance, should seem
ridiculous to those of her own age, the unhappy consequences that
resulted from it, will be an useful lesson to mothers to be cautious
in what hands they intrust the education of their children. But can
a young girl, who has once imbibed this bad education, avoid the
consequences I mention, without any other guide but her timidity and
absolute ignorance of vice? Is it in a corrupt world, in which she is
just entering, that she will receive the fatal knowledge? Does not
the author of the Correspondence himself say, “To enter it, we should
be well armed; it is a road full of precipices: to avoid falling
into which, we must be very circumspect.” This is all well—But if,
unfortunately, I am blind, or without a guide, who is to restore me
sight, or lead me? I conclude, then, that a young person, who would
be pleased, at first, with the brilliant character of the Marchioness
de Merteuil, would soon change her opinion, and not be tempted to
imitate her, when she would see the dreadful and examplary punishment
inflicted on this guilty woman. She will shudder at the thought of the
miseries to which one single fault condemned Cecilia Volanges. Valmont
perishing in the bloom of life, by a violent death, loaded with the
contempt and disgrace of all men of worth, disowned even by the wicked,
will deter all those, whose vanity and a desire to shine might induce
them to copy such a character, from attempting to imitate him.
(By the ABBÉ KENTZINGER.)
[1] See Letter cxxviii.