Dijon

Dijon enters the correspondence not as a setting visited by the characters but as a convincing place-name in Vicomte de Valmont’s forgery. By marking his letter as though it came from there, he exploits the Présidente de Tourvel’s expectation of receiving news from Dijon and uses the routine delivery of mail to put a rejected letter into her hands. The place thus becomes part of his machinery of persuasion: a real city made to authenticate a false pretext.

A Place Made into a Pretext

Vicomte de Valmont chooses Dijon while preparing a letter that the Présidente de Tourvel has been refusing to accept. He disguises the handwriting on the address and imitates the Dijon postmark on the envelope. The choice is calculated: he notes that she has spoken throughout the day of wanting letters from Dijon, and reasons that, since he is claiming the same rights as her husband, he may as well write from the same place. The postmark does not report a journey or establish that Valmont has been in Dijon; it is a manufactured sign of origin, designed to make his letter look like the message she hopes to receive.

The Postal Routine and the Forgery

The deception depends on the household’s established mail service. Letters are placed in a covered box about three-quarters of a league from the house; the postmaster and Madame de Rosemonde each hold a key. The box is taken to the post in the evening, and letters that have arrived are collected the next morning. Household members, servants, and visitors all take turns performing the errand. Although it is not his servant’s turn, Valmont’s valet agrees to go, on the pretext that he has business in that direction. Valmont can therefore insert the forged Dijon letter among the genuine arrivals without openly delivering it himself.

The arrangement also lets Valmont observe the result. The household customarily gathers for breakfast and waits for the mail before separating. When Madame de Rosemonde opens the box, she identifies the letter as being from Dijon and hands it to the Présidente de Tourvel. The recipient notices at once that the handwriting is not her husband’s, but breaks the seal quickly and is visibly shaken by what she reads. Valmont watches her reaction and presses her about it. She says the letter contains offensive matter, refuses to identify its unsigned author, tears it up, and leaves. Her response frustrates his attempt to draw her into an open discussion, but Valmont concludes that curiosity will lead her to read the letter in full.

From Forged Postmark to Written Appeal

The letter itself is preserved in the correspondence as stamped from Dijon. In it, Valmont recasts the trick as a minor expedient forced on him by the Présidente de Tourvel’s repeated refusal of his letters: he presents himself as seeking only to explain his sincerity and asks her to forgive the means he has used. His claim of good faith is part of the appeal, not proof that the letter came from Dijon. The genuine message from that place is a cover for a letter composed and routed by Valmont.

The stratagem follows an earlier communication from the Présidente de Tourvel, in which she gives Valmont permission to write while still pressing him to leave. That permission does not amount to acceptance of the counterfeit letter’s pretext: Valmont’s account makes clear that he forges the postmark to get past her refusal to receive his writing. Dijon lends the letter the appearance of ordinary marital correspondence, while the household’s shared postal routine supplies its route and its audience.

Narrative Significance

Dijon’s importance in these episodes lies in the gap between place and representation. The city is never shown as a scene of action; it functions as a credible label that Valmont can copy onto an envelope. The false postmark converts an everyday hope into an opening for deception, and the breakfast gathering makes the arrival of a private letter a witnessed event even as its supposed origin remains false. In the epistolary plot, control over where a letter appears to come from is one more way to control whether it will be read at all.