_The_ Presidente de Tourvel _to_ Viscount Valmont.
You certainly, Sir, would not receive a letter from me, if my foolish
conduct, last night, did not put me under the necessity of coming to
an explanation. I wept I own; and the words you cite may have escaped
me; tears, words, and every thing you have carefully noted; it is then
necessary to explain all:
Being accustomed to inspire only becoming sentiments, and habituated
only to conversations that I might attend to without a blush, and
consequently to possess a degree of confidence, which, I flatter
myself, I have a right to, I am a stranger to dissimulation, and know
not how to suppress the sensations which I experience. The astonishment
and confusion your behaviour threw me into, an unaccountable dread,
from a situation not at all suited to me, and perhaps the shocking
thought of seeing myself confounded with the women you despise, and
treated with the same levity; all these reasons united, provoked my
tears, and may have made me, and I think with reason, say, I was
miserable.
This expression, which you think so pointed, would be still certainly
too weak, if my tears and words had another motive; if instead of
disapproving sentiments that ought to offend me, I had the slightest
apprehension of participating them.
No, Sir, I have no such apprehensions; if I had, I should fly a
hundred leagues from you; I would fly to some desert, there to bewail
the misfortune of having known you. Notwithstanding my certainty of not
having, or ever having, an affection for you, perhaps I should have
acted more properly, in following the advice of my friends, in never
permitting you to approach me.
I thought, and that is my only error, that you would have had some
respect for a woman of character, whose wish was to find you deserve
a similar appellation, and to do you justice, and who pleaded in your
vindication, whilst you were insulting her by your criminal designs:
no, Sir, you do not know me, or you would not thus presume, upon your
own injustice, and because you have dared to speak a language I should
not have listened to, you would not have thought, yourself, to write
me a letter I ought not to read; and you desire I should _guide
your steps, and prescribe your conversation!_ Well, Sir, silence and
oblivion is the only advice that is suitable for me to give, and you
to follow; then, only, will you have a title to pardon: you might even
obtain some title to my gratitude—but no, I shall make no request to
a man who has lost all respect for me; I will not repose confidence in
one who has already abused it. You oblige me to fear, nay, perhaps, to
hate you, which was not my wish; I hoped to see in you the nephew of my
most respectable friend; I opposed the voice of friendship to that of
the public that accused you: you have destroyed all; and I foresee you
will not be disposed to regain any thing.
I shall content myself with informing you, Sir, your sentiments offend
me; that your declaration of them is an insult, and far from ever
thinking to partake of them, you’ll oblige me never to see you more,
if you don’t observe, on this subject, a silence, which I think I have
a right not only to expect, but to require. I enclose you the letter
you wrote me, and I hope you will, in the same manner, return me this:
I should be extremely mortified that any traces should remain, of an
event which ought never to have existed.
I have the honour,
_Aug._ 21, 17—.