Confluent smallpox

Confluent smallpox strikes the Marquise de Merteuil at the moment her public standing and fortune are already collapsing. The illness leaves her alive but profoundly disfigured, with the loss of an eye, and intensifies the reversals that lead to her flight from Paris. Its significance lies not only in its physical effects but in how others interpret and circulate them: bodily damage becomes part of the public judgment passed on her, while the account insists that her victims find no comfort in seeing her punished.

Diagnosis and Circumstances

In a letter dated December 18, Madame de Volanges reports that the Marquise de Merteuil developed a very high fever on the night after her humiliating appearance in company. The illness was first thought to be a consequence of the violent emotional strain of that encounter. By the following evening, however, smallpox had declared itself in a confluent and especially severe form. The report reaches Madame de Volanges through another person, giving the diagnosis the character of circulating news rather than a bedside account.

The timing links the outbreak to the Marquise’s public disgrace without establishing that humiliation caused the disease. Her earlier exposure had been especially damaging: M. de Prévan entered the same salon, was warmly applauded by those present, and was carried by the surrounding crowd, as it were, directly before her. The Marquise was subjected to the company’s hostile attention until her carriage was announced, and the jeering grew louder as she left. The smallpox follows this scene in the correspondence, turning a social crisis into a bodily one.

Disfigurement and Public Judgment

The Marquise survives the disease, but its consequences are lasting. Madame de Volanges later reports that she is horribly disfigured and has lost an eye; although Madame de Volanges has not seen her herself, the account she has received describes her as hideous. Survival therefore brings no restoration to her former public position. The illness leaves her visibly altered at the very moment when hostile opinion is already fixed upon her.

That bodily change is immediately drawn into moral interpretation. Madame de Volanges reports a cruel remark by a marquis, who treated the illness as though it had made the Marquise’s inward character legible on her face; she adds that people around him found the comparison apt. The remark belongs to the social response, not to any objective explanation of the disease. Its force comes from the way gossip converts disfigurement into a verdict, making the Marquise’s altered appearance seem to confirm the reputation created by scandal.

Legal and Financial Aftermath

The illness unfolds alongside the Marquise’s pending lawsuit. Before the verdict, Madame de Volanges hears that the scandal may damage her chances in a case where, according to report, she needed considerable favor. The later letter supplies the outcome: the Marquise loses unanimously, and the minors receive costs, damages, and restitution of the proceeds. The remainder of her fortune is consumed, and more than consumed, by the expenses. The correspondence does not establish that smallpox itself determined the judgment; it records the disease and legal defeat as converging blows.

When she learns of the verdict, the Marquise is still ill. She makes arrangements and leaves alone, at night, traveling by post; her servants say that none agreed to follow her, and she is believed to have taken the road to Holland. She carries away her diamonds, silver, jewelry, and whatever else she can, while leaving debts of nearly 50,000 livres. Madame de Volanges calls this a genuine bankruptcy. The illness is thus part of a larger collapse: the Marquise survives the fever, but neither her public standing nor her finances recover. Madame de Volanges sees the wicked punished, yet explicitly finds no consolation for the victims whose suffering remains.