Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s note

Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. A list of the changes made can be found at the end of the book. Formatting and special characters are indicated as follows:

_italic_

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES VOL. I

_No._ 200 _of 360 Copies_

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES

OR

_LETTERS COLLECTED IN A PRIVATE SOCIETY AND PUBLISHED FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF OTHERS_

BY CHODERLOS DE LACLOS

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST DOWSON

VOL. I

LONDON PRIVATELY PRINTED 1898

NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

(A.D. 1898)

CHODERLOS DE LACLOS was the Gallic Richardson of the XVIIIth Century; and he might more justly than Stendhal be called the father of French realism. With inimitable wit and the finest analysis of character he depicted the corrupt society of his day. His aim was excellent, but in his endeavour to point his moral he painted the vice which he wished to flagellate in colours so glowing that he appears more an advocate than an opponent of immorality. In his attempt to pourtray the wiles of the seducer for a warning to the unwary, the author of the “Liaisons Dangereuses” produced the most complete manual of the art of seduction; so that during the austere reign of Charles X. this masterpiece was suppressed as throwing too lurid a reflection on the manners and morals of the old régime. “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” is now for the first time literally and completely translated into English by MR. ERNEST DOWSON, whose rendering of “La Terre,” in the Lutetian Society’s issue of Zola, gained such a warm meed of praise.

To render this edition of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” worthy of its fame as one of the chefs-d’œuvre of Literature, it is illustrated with fine photogravure reproductions of the whole of the 15 charming designs by Monnet, Fragonard fils, and Gérard, which appeared in the much coveted French edition of 1796, and which are full of that inexpressible grace and beauty inseparable from the work of these Masters of French Art of the XVIIIth Century.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1784)

WE think it our duty to warn the public that, in spite of the title of this work and of what the Editor says of it in his Preface, we do not guarantee the authenticity of this narrative, and have even strong reasons for believing that it is but a romance. It seems to us, moreover, that the author, who yet seems to have sought after verisimilitude, has himself destroyed that, and maladroitly, owing to the period which he has chosen in which to place these adventures. Certainly, several of the personages whom he brings on his stage have morals so sorry that it were impossible to believe that they lived in our century, in this century of philosophy, where the light shed on all sides has rendered, as everyone knows, all men so honourable, all women so modest and reserved.

Our opinion is, therefore, that if the adventures related in this work possess a foundation of truth, they could not have occurred save in other places and in other times, and we must censure our author, who, seduced apparently by his hope of being more diverting by treating rather of his own age and country, has dared to clothe in our customs and our costumes a state of morals so remote from us.

To preserve the too credulous Reader, at least so far as it lies with us, from all surprise in this matter, we will support our opinion with an argument which we proffer to him in all confidence, because it seems to us victorious and unanswerable; it is that, undoubtedly, like causes should not fail to produce like effects, and that, nevertheless, we do not hear to-day of young ladies with incomes of sixty thousand livres turning nuns, nor of young and pretty dame-presidents dying of grief.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THIS work, or rather this compilation, which the public will, perhaps, still find too voluminous, contains, however, but a very small portion of the letters which composed the correspondence whence it is extracted. Charged with the care of setting it in order by the persons into whose hands it had come, and whom I knew to have the intention of publishing it, I asked, for reward of my pains, no more than the permission to prune it of all that appeared to me useless; and I have, in fact, endeavoured to preserve only the letters which seemed to me necessary, whether for the right understanding of events or the development of the characters. If there be added to this light labour that of arranging in order the letters I have let remain, an order in which I have almost invariably followed that of the dates, and finally some brief and rare notes, which, for the most part, have no other object than that of indicating the source of certain quotations, or of explaining certain abridgments which I have permitted myself, the share which I have had in this work will have been told. My mission was of no wider range.

I had proposed alterations more considerable, and almost all in respect of diction or style, against which will be found many offences. I should have wished to be authorized to cut down certain too lengthy letters, of which several treat separately, and almost without transition, of matters quite extraneous to one another. This task, which has not been permitted me, would doubtless not have sufficed to give merit to the work, but it would, at least, have freed it from a portion of its defects.

It has been objected to me that it was the letters themselves which it was desirable to make public, not merely a work made after those letters; that it would be as great an offence against verisimilitude as against truth, if all the eight or ten persons who participated in this correspondence had written with an equal purity. And to my representations that, far from that, there was not one of them, on the contrary, who had not committed grave faults, which would not fail to excite criticism, I was answered that any reasonable reader would be certainly prepared to meet with faults in a compilation of letters written by private individuals, since in all those hitherto published by sundry esteemed authors, and even by certain academicians, none has proved quite free of this reproach. These reasons have not persuaded me, and I found them, as I find them still, easier to give than to accept; but I was not my own master, and I gave way. Only, I reserved to myself the right of protest, and of declaring that I was not of that opinion: it is this protest I make here.

What I must say at the outset is that, if my advice has been, as I admit, to publish these letters, I am nevertheless far from hoping for their success: and let not this sincerity on my part be taken for the feigned modesty of an author; for I declare with equal frankness that, if this compilation had not seemed to me worthy of being offered to the public, I would not have meddled with it. Let us try and reconcile these apparent contradictions.

The deserts of a work are composed of its utility or of its charm, and even of both these, when it is susceptible of them: but success, which is not always a proof of merit, often depends more on the choice of a subject than on its execution, on the sum of the objects which it presents rather than on the manner in which they are treated. Now this compilation containing, as its title announces, the letters of a whole society, it is dominated by a diversity of interest which weakens that of the reader. Nay more, almost all the sentiments therein expressed being feigned or dissimulated, they but excite an interest of curiosity which is ever inferior to that of sentiment, which less inclines the mind for indulgence, and which permits a perception of the errors contained in the details that is all the more keen in that these are continually opposed to the only desire which one would have satisfied.

These blemishes are, perhaps, redeemed, in part, by a quality which is implied in the very nature of the work: it is the variety of the styles, a merit which an author attains with difficulty, but which here occurs of itself, and at least prevents the tedium of uniformity. Many persons will also be able to count for something a considerable number of observations, either new or little known, which are scattered through these letters. That is all, I fear, that one can hope for in the matter of charm, judging them even with the utmost favour.

The utility of the work, which, perhaps, will be even more contested, yet seems to me easier to establish. It seems to me, at any rate, that it is to render a service to morals, to unveil the methods employed by those whose own are bad in corrupting those whose conduct is good; and I believe that these letters will effectually attain this end. There will also be found the proof and example of two important verities which one might believe unknown, for that they are so rarely practised: the one, that every woman who consents to admit a man of loose morals to her society ends by becoming his victim; the other, that a mother is, to say the least, imprudent who allows any other than herself to possess the confidence of her daughter. Young people of either sex might also learn from these pages that the friendship which persons of evil character appear to grant them so readily is never aught else but a dangerous snare, as fatal to their happiness as to their virtue. Abuse, however, always so near a neighbour to what is good, seems to me here too greatly to be feared; and far from commending this work for the perusal of youth, it seems to me most important to deter it from all such reading. The time when it may cease to be perilous and become useful seems to me to have been defined, for her sex, by a good mother, who has not only wit but good sense: “I should deem,” she said to me, after having read the manuscript of this correspondence, “that I was doing a service to my daughter, if I gave her this book on the day of her marriage.” If all mothers of families think thus, I shall congratulate myself on having published it.

But if, again, we put this favourable supposition on one side, I continue to think that this collection can please very few. Men and women who are depraved will have an interest in decrying a work calculated to injure them; and, as they are not lacking in skill, perhaps they will have sufficient to bring to their side the austere, who will be alarmed at the picture of bad morals which we have not feared to exhibit.

The would-be free-thinkers will not be interested in a God-fearing woman whom for that very reason they will regard as a ninny; while pious people will be angry at seeing virtue defeated and will complain that religion is not made to seem more powerful.

On the other hand, persons of delicate taste will be disgusted by the too simple and too faulty style of many of these letters; while the mass of readers, led away with the idea that everything they see in print is the fruit of labour, will think that they are beholding in certain others the elaborate method of an author concealing himself behind the person whom he causes to speak.

Lastly, it will perhaps be pretty generally said that everything is good in its own place; and that, although, as a rule, the too polished style of the authors detracts from the charm of the letters of society, the carelessness of the present ones becomes a real fault and makes them insufferable when sent to the printer’s.

I sincerely admit that all these reproaches may be well founded: I think also that I should be able to reply to them without exceeding the length permissible to a preface. But it must be plain that, to make it necessary to reply to all, the book itself should be unable to reply to any; and that, had I been of this opinion I would have suppressed at once the preface and the book.

LIST OF PLATES

Vol. I.

PAGE

FRONTISPIECE to face the title

“PARDON ME MY WRONGS: THE STRENGTH OF MY LOVE SHALL
EXPIATE THEM” 30

“I WILL CONFESS MY WEAKNESS: MY EYES WERE MOISTENED
BY TEARS” 56

“I ALLOWED HER TO CHANGE NEITHER HER POSITION NOR
COSTUME” 127

“I FOUND IT AMUSING TO SEND A LETTER WRITTEN IN
THE BED” 138

“I, A MERE WOMAN, BIT BY BIT, EXCITED HER TO THE POINT” 158

“AT MY FIRST KICK THE DOOR YIELDED” 210

“HE BETOOK HIMSELF TO HIS SWORD” 284

Vol. II.

FRONTISPIECE to face the title

“ARMED WITH MY DARK LANTERN.... I PAID MY FIRST
VISIT TO YOUR PUPIL” 313

“THE LOVELY FORM LEANED UPON MY ARM” 329

“YESTERDAY, HAVING FOUND YOUR PUPIL.... WRITING TO HIM” 401

“YOU SHALL LISTEN TO ME, IT IS MY WISH” 435

“I COMMAND YOU TO TREAT MONSIEUR WITH ALL CONSIDERATION” 543

“I FEEL THAT MY ILLS WILL SOON BE ENDED” 549

CONTENTS OF VOLUME THE FIRST

PAGE

Note to the Present Edition v

Publisher’s Note to the First Edition vii

Preface ix

List of Plates xv

LETTER

I. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay, at the Ursulines
of .... 1

II. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont,
at the Château de .... 4

III. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 7

IV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil,
at Paris 9

V. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 12

VI. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 15

VII. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 19

VIII. The Présidente de Tourvel to Madame de Volanges 21

IX. Madame de Volanges to the Présidente de Tourvel 23

X. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 26

XI. The Présidente de Tourvel to Madame de Volanges 32

XII. Cécile Volanges to the Marquise de Merteuil 35

XIII. The Marquise de Merteuil to Cécile Volanges 36

XIV. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 37

XV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 39

XVI. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 42

XVII. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 45

XVIII. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 47

XIX. Cécile Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny 50

XX. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 51

XXI. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 54

XXII. The Présidente de Tourvel to Madame de Volanges 58

XXIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 61

XXIV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 67

XXV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 70

XXVI. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 72

XXVII. Cécile Volanges to the Marquise de Merteuil 75

XXVIII. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 78

XXIX. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 80

XXX. Cécile Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny 82

XXXI. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 84

XXXII. Madame de Volanges to the Présidente de Tourvel 86

XXXIII. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 90

XXXIV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 93

XXXV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 98

XXXVI. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 101

XXXVII. The Présidente de Tourvel to Madame de Volanges 105

XXXVIII. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 107

XXXIX. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 110

XL. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 113

XLI. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 116

XLII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 118

XL. _Continued_ The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise
de Merteuil 120

XLIII. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 123

XLIV. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 125

XLV. The Présidente de Tourvel to Madame de Volanges 133

XLVI. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 135

XLVII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 137

XLVIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 140

XLIX. Cécile Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny 143

L. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 145

LI. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 148

LII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 153

LIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 156

LIV. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 157

LV. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 160

LVI. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 163

LVII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 166

LVIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 169

LIX. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 172

LX. The Chevalier Danceny to the Vicomte de Valmont 174

LXI. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Camay 175

LXII. Madame de Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny 177

LXIII. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 179

LXIV. The Chevalier Danceny to Madame de Volanges 187

LXV. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 191

LXVI. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 194

LXVII. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 197

LXVIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 199

LXIX. Cécile Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny 202

LXX. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 203

LXXI. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 207

LXXII. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 213

LXXIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to Cécile Volanges 215

LXXIV. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 217

LXXV. Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay 220

LXXVI. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 222

LXXVII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 230

LXXVIII. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 233

LXXIX. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 237

LXXX. The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges 246

LXXXI. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 249

LXXXII. Cécile Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny 263

LXXXIII. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Présidente de Tourvel 266

LXXXIV. The Vicomte de Valmont to Cécile Volanges 270

LXXXV. The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 274

LXXXVI. The Maréchale de *** to the Marquise de Merteuil 287

LXXXVII. The Marquise de Merteuil to Madame de Volanges 288

LXXXVIII. Cécile Volanges to the Vicomte de Valmont 292

LXXXIX. The Vicomte de Valmont to the Chevalier Danceny 294

XC. The Présidente de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont 296

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES