Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (the reading list .TXT) 📕

you so, do not believe me. From that moment I would seek to deceive you; I might still have desires, but I certainly would love you no longer.

Not but your amiable frankness, your charming confidence, and your pleasing friendship, are immensely valuable to me;⁠—but love, sincere love, such as you have inspired me with, reuniting all those sentiments, by giving them more energy, cannot, as they do, be satisfied with that tranquillity, that ease of mind, which will allow of comparisons, and even sometimes of preferences. No, Madam, I will not be your friend, I will love you with the most ardent and tender affection, and yet the most respectful. You may deprive it of hope, but you cannot annihilate it.

What right have you to pretend to dispose of a heart, whose homage you refuse? By what refinement of cruelty do you envy me the happiness of my love? It belongs to me; and is independent of you; and I know how to preserve it. If it is the source, it is also the remedy of my misfortunes. Once more no, persist in your cruel resolutions; but leave me love. You enjoy the pleasure of my misery; be it so, endeavour to tire out my perseverance, I shall at least know how to oblige you to decide my fate; and you may, perhaps, one day do me justice. Not that I ever hope to make you sensible of my pain, but you shall be convinced, though not persuaded; and you shall say I have judged him too severely.

But you are unjust to yourself: to see you without loving you, to love you without being constant, are both equally impossible; and, notwithstanding the modesty that adorns you, it must be easier for you to lament, than be astonished at the sentiments you gave birth to. But as for me, whose only merit is to have discovered their value, I will not lose it; and far from agreeing to your insidious offers, I again renew, at your feet, the oaths I have made to love you eternally.

Sept. 10, 17⁠—.

Letter 69 Cecilia Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny

(Wrote with a pencil, and recopied by Danceny.)

You desire to know how I spend my time? I love you, and am always crying. My mother speaks to me no longer; she has taken away my paper, pens, and ink; I now make use of a pencil, which I fortunately had in my pocket, and I write this on the back of your letter. I must certainly approve of whatever you have done; I love you too well, not to use every means to hear from you, and give you some account of myself. I did not use to love Mr. de Valmont; I did not think him to be so much your friend; I will endeavour to accustom myself to him, and I will love him on your account. I cannot tell who betrayed us; it must be either my waiting-maid or my confessor. I am very unhappy: tomorrow we set out for the country, and I do not know for how long a time. Good God, not to see you any more! I have no more room, adieu! Endeavour to read this. Those letters, wrote with a pencil, will, perhaps, rub out; but the sentiments engraved on my heart never will.

Sept. 10, 17⁠—.

Letter 70 Viscount de Valmont to the Marchioness de Merteuil

My dear friend, I have a most important piece of news for you: last night I supped, as you know, at the Marechale de ⸻, where you were spoke of; I said not all the good that I think, but all that I did not think of you. Everyone seemed to be of my opinion, and the conversation languished, as it always happens when people talk well of their neighbours; when at length Prevan spoke, “God forbid,” said he, rising up, “that I should have the least doubt of the virtue of Madame de Merteuil; but I dare say, that she owes it more to levity than principle. It is, perhaps, easier to please her, than follow her; and as one seldom fails in running after a woman, to meet others in one’s way, those may be as much, if not more, valuable than she; some are dissipated by a new taste, others stop through lassitude; and she is, perhaps, one of the women who has had the least opportunity of making a resistance, of any of Paris; for my part,” said he, (encouraged by the smiles of some of the women), “I will not credit Madame de Merteuil’s virtue, until I have killed six horses in her service.”

This scurvy jest succeeded, as all those do that are replete with scandal; and whilst the laugh went round, Prevan seated himself, and the conversation became general; but the two Countesses de B⁠⸺, near whom the incredulous Prevan seated himself, began a particular conversation which I overheard.

The challenge that was given to bring you to compliance was accepted; and the promise of telling all was exchanged; of all those which passed in this conversation, that will be the most religiously observed: but now you have timely notice; and you know the old proverb.

I have only to tell you, moreover, that this Prevan, who you do not know, is amazingly amiable, and still more subtle. If you have sometimes heard me say the contrary, it is only because I don’t like him, and that I delight in contradicting his successes; for I am not ignorant how my opinion weighs with some thirty of our women à la mode.

And really I have, for a long time, prevented him by this means, of making a figure in what is called the grand theatre. He worked prodigies without advancing his reputation. But the éclat of his triple adventure, by fixing everyone’s eyes on him, has given him a certain air of confidence that he, until then,