Viscount de Valmont _to the_ Presidente de Tourvel.
How is it I deserved the reproaches you make me, and the indignation
you express against me? The most violent, and yet the most respectful
attachment, the most absolute submission to your will, is, in a few
words, the history of my conduct and sentiments towards you. Sinking
under the weight of an unhappy passion, the only consolation left was
to see you; you ordered me to depart, and I obeyed without murmuring.
For this sacrifice you permitted me to write to you, and now I am to be
deprived of this only satisfaction. But shall I then have it torn from
me without a struggle? No, certainly; it is too dear: it is the only
one that remains, and I hold it from you.
You say my letters are too frequent. I beg you will reflect, that for
these ten days that I have been exiled from you, a single moment has
not passed that was not taken up in thinking of you, and yet I have
wrote you but two letters. _I entertain you with nothing but my mad
passion._ Ah! what can I say but what I think? All I could do, was to
soften the expression; and I hope you will believe me when I assure
you, I have only let you see what I could not hide. At length you
threaten to answer me no more. And thus the man who prefers you to
every thing, and whose respect is still greater than his love, you are
not content to treat with the utmost severity, but add to it contempt.
But why all those threats and this wrath? What occasion for them, when
you are certain to be obeyed, even in your unjust orders? Is it then
possible for me to contradict your wishes; and have I not already
proved it? But will you abuse your power over me? After having made
me miserable, after all your injustice, will it be an easy matter for
you to enjoy that tranquillity that you say is so necessary to you?
Will you never tell yourself—he made me arbitress of his fate, and I
made him miserable; he implored my aid, and I did not even give him a
compassionate glance—Do you know how far despair may drive me? No.
To sooth my cares, you should know the extent of my passion, and you do
not know my heart.
But to what am I made a sacrifice? To chimerical fears. Who inspired
them? The man who adores you; a man over whom you will ever have an
absolute sway. What do you dread, what can you dread, from a sentiment
that you will always have the power to direct at your pleasure? Your
imagination creates monsters, and the fears they raise you attribute to
love. With a little confidence those fears will vanish.
A learned writer has said, that in order to dispel one’s fears, it
would be almost always sufficient to search the cause[1]. It is to
love, above all others, that this truth is applicable. Love and your
apprehensions will subside. In the room of terrifying objects, you
will find a tender submissive lover, and a delicious sentiment; your
days will be marked with bliss; and the only regret you will have,
will be to have lost so much time in indifference. Myself even, since
I have abandoned my errors, exist no longer but for love. I regret the
time spent in pleasure; and I feel it is from you alone my happiness
must proceed. But let me entreat you, that the pleasure I have in
writing to you may not be interrupted by the dread of offending. I will
not disobey you; but lay myself at your feet, and there reclaim the
happiness you want to deprive me of; the only one that is left me. I
call on you; hear my prayers, and behold my tears. Ah, Madam! will you
refuse me?
_Sept._ 7, 17—.
[1] It is imagined Rousseau in his Emily; but the citation is not
exact, and the application that Valmont makes is false; and, perhaps,
Madame de Tourvel had not read Emily.