Viscount Valmont _to the_ Marchioness de Merteuil.
Indeed you are very kind not to abandon me to my melancholy fate: the
life I lead here is really fatiguing, from excess of repose and insipid
uniformity. Reading your letter with the particulars of your delightful
excursion, I was tempted twenty times to pretend business, fly to your
feet, and beg of you to commit, in my favour, an infidelity to your
Chevalier, who really does not deserve his bliss. Do you know you have
roused my jealousy? Why tell me of an eternal rupture? I recant an oath
taken in a fit of frenzy. We should not have been entitled to so solemn
a privilege, had we seriously intended to keep it. Ah, may I be one day
revenged in your embraces, for the vexation the Chevalier’s happiness
gives me! I am all indignation I own, to think that a man who has
scarce common sense, without taking the least trouble, and only simply
following the instinct of his heart, should find a happiness I can’t
attain. Oh, I will disturb him: promise me I shall disturb him! But
have you not humiliated yourself? You take the trouble to deceive him,
and he is happier than you. You think you have him in your toils, but
you are in his. He sleeps quietly, whilst you wake for his pleasures.
What could his slaves do more?
Hark ye, my lovely friend, while you divide yourself among many, I
am not in the least jealous; I then look down on your lovers as on
Alexander’s successors; incapable of preserving among them that empire
where I reigned sole monarch; but that you should give yourself up
entirely to one of them, that another should exist as happy as me,
I will not suffer; don’t expect I’ll bear it! Either take me again,
or take another; and do not, by any exclusive caprice, betray the
inviolable friendship we have sworn to each other.
Is it not curious, that I should have reason to complain of love? You
see I give into your ideas, and confess my errors. If not to be able
to exist without the possession of what we desire, if to sacrifice
time, pleasure, and life for it, then am I really in love; and I have
made no progress. I should not even have a word to say to you on the
subject, but for an accident that racks my imagination, and leaves me
in suspense between hope and fear.
You know my huntsman; a treasure of intrigue, and a true valet as ever
dramatic pen drew. You may conceive he had it in his instructions to be
in love with the waiting-maid, and make the servants drunk.
The rascal is happier than his master; he has already succeeded; and
has just discovered that Madame de Tourvel has appointed one of her
people to observe me, and even to follow me in my morning excursions,
as much as possible, without being perceived.
What does this woman mean? Thus, then, the most virtuous of them will
venture to do things, that one of us would not dare think on! Well, I
swear—but before I think of being revenged for this female artifice, I
will endeavour to convert it to my advantage. Hitherto those suspected
excursions had no view; I must give them one. This deserves my utmost
attention, and I quit you to reflect on it. Adieu, my charming friend!
_Always from the Castle of_ ——,
_Aug._ 15, 17—.