_The_ Presidente de Tourvel _to the_ Viscount de Valmont.
Certainly, Sir, after what passed yesterday, you do not expect I should
see you again, and you as certainly do not desire it. The intention
of this note, then, is not so much to require you never to come near
me more, as to call on you for my letters, which ought not to have
existed. If they could at any time have been interesting, as proofs
of the infatuation you had occasioned, they must be, now that is
dissipated, indifferent to you, as they were only proofs of a sentiment
you have destroyed.
I own, I was very wrong in placing a confidence in you, of which so
many before me have been victims; I accuse no one but myself: but I
never thought I deserved to be exposed by you to contempt and insult.
I imagined, that making a sacrifice of every thing, and giving up for
you my pretensions to the esteem of others, as also my own, I might
have expected not to be treated by you with more severity than by the
public, whose opinion always makes an immense difference between the
weak and the depraved. Those are the only wrongs I shall mention. I
shall be silent on those of love, as your heart would not understand
mine. Farewell, Sir!
_Paris, Nov._ 15, 17—.