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Les liaisons dangereuses, volume 2 (of 2) / or, Letters collected in a private society and published for the instruction of others cover

Les liaisons dangereuses, volume 2 (of 2) / or, Letters collected in a private society and published for the instruction of others

Chapter 50: LETTER THE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIXTH THE PRÉSIDENTE DE TOURVEL TO THE VICOMTE DE VALMONT
By Choderlos de Laclos
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About This Book

A sustained correspondence among members of aristocratic society chronicles calculated schemes of seduction, rivalry, and revenge. Two former intimates manipulate others to assert power, exploiting youthful innocence and social expectations while a devoted suitor and a devout woman suffer from deceit. The epistolary structure exposes competing perspectives and private rationalizations, revealing hypocrisy, shifting alliances, and the corrosive effects of vanity and desire. As letters multiply, reputations are weaponized, emotional wreckage accumulates, and moral consequences lead to tragic outcomes, offering a portrait of interpersonal power struggles and the performative nature of social life.

LETTER THE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIXTH
THE PRÉSIDENTE DE TOURVEL TO THE VICOMTE DE VALMONT

Doubtless, Monsieur, after what passed yesterday, you will not expect me to receive you again; nor, doubtless, are you at all desirous that I should! This note, therefore, is written less with the intention of begging you to come no more, than to request you to return the letters, which should never have existed, and which, if they may have interested you for a moment, as proofs of the infatuation you had occasioned, can only be indifferent to you now that this is dissipated, and that they only express a sentiment which you have destroyed.

I admit and confess that I am to blame for having shewn in you a confidence of which so many before me have been victims; in that I accuse myself alone: but I believed, at least, that I had not deserved to be handed over by you to insult and contempt. I believed that, in sacrificing all for you, and losing for you alone my rights to my own and others’ esteem, I could, nevertheless, expect to be judged by you not more severely than by the public, whose opinion still discriminates, by an immense interval, between the frail woman and the woman who is depraved.

These wrongs, which would be wrongs in the case of anybody, are the only ones I shall mention. I shall be silent on those of love; your heart would not understand mine. Adieu, Monsieur.

Paris, 15th November, 17**.