Category: Novels
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:
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 bo...
2. Part 2So much for our wisdom--admit it! Adieu. It is nearly six o’clock, and my waiting-maid tells me that I must dress. Adieu, my dear Sophie, I love you, just as well as if I were s...
3. Part 3I am really grieved that I cannot offer you by word of mouth the homage of this sincere wish, nor make the acquaintance of Mademoiselle de Volanges so soon as I should wish. Aft...
4. Part 4Luckily, Mamma is better to-day, and Madame de Merteuil is coming with somebody else and the Chevalier Danceny; but she always comes very late, Madame de Merteuil; and when one...
5. Part 5However, I reach the village; I see the commotion; I step forward; I question somebody; the facts are related. I have the collector called to me; and, yielding to my generous co...
6. Part 6I believed, and it is my sole error, I believed that you would respect a virtuous woman, who asked nothing better than to find you so and to do you justice; who already was defe...
7. Part 7Believe me, Vicomte: you are asked to write no more; take advantage of that to retrieve your mistake, and wait for an opportunity to speak. Do you know, this woman has more stre...
8. Part 8It is at this moment that you would be very useful to me. You are sufficiently intimate with Danceny to obtain his confidence, and, if he once gave it you, we should advance at...
9. Part 9“I can the less answer for her,” he added, “because I have reason to believe she has a lover, and that I only owe her to the idleness of country life. So that, were it not for m...
10. Part 10Is it thus then, Monsieur, that you carry out the conditions upon which I consented sometimes to receive your letters? And have I _no reason for complaint_ when you speak to me...
11. Part 11Why attach yourself to my life? Why this obstinate resolve to follow me? Your letters, which should be few, succeed each other with rapidity. They should be sensible, and you sp...
12. Part 12I next went to the daughter. You would not believe how grief improves her! If she does but take to coquetry, I warrant that she will be often weeping; but this time she wept in...
13. Part 13To put it rightly, it is to yourself that you are unjust. To know you without loving you, to love you without being constant, are two things which are equally impossible; and, i...
14. Part 14[_N.B. In this letter, Cécile Volanges relates with the utmost detail all that concerns her in the events which the Reader already knows from the conclusion of the fifty-ninth a...
15. Part 15I INTENDED to go hunting this morning: but the weather was detestable. All that I have to read is a new romance which would bore even a school-girl. It will be two hours, at the...
16. Part 16Oh! keep your advice and your fears for those delirious women who call themselves _sentimental_; whose exalted imagination would make one believe that nature has placed their se...
17. Part 17What, then, have these truths, so easy to grasp, so sweet to practise, that can alarm? What fear, either, can a man of sensibility cause you, to whom love permits no other happi...
18. Part 18By midnight, the rubbers being over, I proposed a short medley.[30] I had the double design of favouring Prévan’s escape, and at the same time of causing it to be noticed; that...
19. Part 19[25] Mademoiselle de Volanges having shortly afterwards changed her confidant, as will appear in the subsequent letters, this collection will include no more of those which she...