Letter 38: The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont

Your enormous package has this moment arrived, my dear Vicomte. If it is correctly dated I should have received it twenty-four hours ago. In any case, were I to spend time reading it I should have none to say reply to it, so I prefer merely to acknowledge it: we shall talk of other things. Not that I have anything to tell you on my own account. Paris in autumn contains scarcely a single male being that is recognizably human, so the for the last month I have been killingly circumspect. Anyone else but my Chevalier would long ago have been thoroughly bored by so much proof of my fidelity. With nothing else to occupy me, I have amused myself with the little Volanges, and it is about her that I want to talk to you.

Do know that you have missed more than you think in not taking charge of the child? She's truly delicious! She has neither character nor principles: imagine how easy and agreeable her company will one day be. I don't think she will ever be conspicuous for her sentiments: but everything about her speaks of the most lively sensations. She has neither wit nor guile, but a certain natural duplicity--if I may use such a phrase--at which even I am sometimes astonished, and which will succeed so much the better because her face is the very image of candor and ingeniousness. She is by nature very demonstrative and, and this amuses me very much sometimes: she loses her little head with incredible ease and is so much to more diverting because she knows nothing, absolutely nothing, of all the she wants so much to know about. Her fits of impatience are altogether comic: she laughs, she gets angry, she cries, and then she begs me to teacher with a sincerity which is truly enchanting. In fact I am most jealous of the man for whom such pleasures are in store.

I don't know whether I told you that for the last four or five days I have had the honor of being her confidant. As you can imagine, I was severe at first: but as soon as I saw that she believed me convinced by her doubtful arguments, I pretended to take them for good ones. She is firmly persuaded that she owes this success to her eloquence: the precaution was necessary to avoid compromising myself. I allowed her to write, and to say 'I love you'. The same day, without her suspecting, I arranged a tête-à-tête for her with Danceny. But would you believe that he is still so dull as not to have obtained so much as a kiss? And yet the boy writes such very pretty verses! Lord, how stupid clever people can be-this one to the point of the embarrassing me. After all I cannot lead him by the nose!

It is now that you could be extremely useful to me. You are intimate enough with Danceny to obtain his confidence, and once we had that we could proceed at a great pace. Finish off your Presidente, then; after all I cannot have Gercourt escape. For the rest, I told the little creature about him yesterday and described him so well that had she now been as wife for ten years she could not hate him more. I also, however, expatiated a great deal on the subject of marital fidelity: nothing could have equaled my firmness on this point. Thus I have on one hand established a reputation for virtue which too much complaisance might have destroyed: on the other I have increased the feelings of hatred with which I intend her husband shall be gratified. Lastly I hope that, for my having persuaded her that she may surrender to love only during the short time that remains before marriage, she will decide so much the more quickly not to waste any of that time.

Good-bye, Vicomte; I am going to begin my toilette, during which I shall read your compilation.

27 August 17--

Earlier this semester, I signed up for a French Literature course. A week before the start date, the course was cancelled. Not enough people signed up. I took an Italian Literature course instead. I also checked out the books we would have read in class from the library and started reading them on my own.

Since Jake had coincidentally rented the movie, I started with Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It took me two weeks to finish the novel and we're watching the movie as I type this up.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly. The cleverness and playfulness of the writing was refreshing. The idea of saying things without saying them and the truly wicked characters made it fun. The fact that the writer was a general under the army of Napoleon makes the novel even more interesting to me.

Though it lagged in parts, my only resentment is the ending. I don't want to give away too much, but I really thought the ending was a quickie and an all-too-clean knot.

I initially wanted to excerpt letter number 81 but it’s way too long. So I hope you enjoy this one.