Merteuil sets a trap to thwart Prévan

The Marquise de Merteuil and Prévan are adversaries in a contest shaped as much by public reputation as by private conduct. After Prévan questions whether Merteuil’s celebrated restraint reflects principle or mere circumstance, she turns his challenge into an opportunity: she lets him believe he is pursuing her while arranging the circumstances in which his apparent success can be recast as an attack. The episode reveals how both characters treat courtship as a public performance, but also how Merteuil uses control of witnesses and appearances to seize the advantage.

The Challenge and Its Stakes

The contest begins at a dinner hosted by The Maréchale of ***. The Vicomte de Valmont reports that Merteuil was discussed there, and that he praised her less than he privately thought. When the conversation became dull, Prévan challenged the company’s confidence in her virtue. He suggested that her reputation might owe more to her inaccessibility than to any firm principles, and joked that he would believe in her constancy only after exhausting six horses in pursuit of her. The company laughed; the two countesses seated near Prévan then continued the conversation with him privately. Valmont, who happened to be close enough to overhear, tells Merteuil that the challenge to make her yield has been accepted and that the promise to tell all will be kept.

Prévan is not merely an amusing suitor in Valmont’s account. He describes him as charming and adept, and admits that he had long hindered Prévan’s progress in fashionable society because he disliked him and knew his own opinion carried weight with many prominent women. Prévan’s recent triple adventure, however, had attracted attention and given him the confidence he previously lacked. Valmont now regards him as a formidable rival and hopes Merteuil will make him ridiculous. His warning makes their relationship an alliance of convenience: Valmont supplies information and asks for intervention, while Merteuil decides how to turn the threat to her own advantage.

Warning and Counterplan

Merteuil answers that she has often encountered Prévan without paying him much attention. Valmont’s letter, she says, has made her look at him differently. At the Paris Opera she notices his appearance and admits that she has become interested in him. She makes her first move by announcing loudly, at the exit, that she will dine on Friday at The Maréchale’s. Since she believes this is one of the few houses where she can meet him, the invitation is designed for him to overhear. She anticipates that he will come and makes clear that she has no intention of prolonging the pursuit once she has decided to act.

Valmont does not take this confidence at face value. He asks whether Merteuil is mocking him or writing in a dangerous delirium, then explains why he thinks Prévan’s method can be effective. Prévan, he says, makes love a subject of conversation in company and draws women into answering him; they may then appear to confirm their own defeat in front of others. Valmont recounts a story he witnessed at second hand: a countess confidently described her surrender to Prévan in a group that included him, and even asked Prévan whether she had recounted the affair accurately. The story illustrates the danger Valmont sees in letting Prévan control the public account. Even the appearance of an attachment, he warns, may be enough for society to believe Prévan’s version.

Merteuil refuses to retreat. She states that she means to have Prévan, while preventing him from boasting of having conquered her. Her answer turns Valmont’s warning into a reason to proceed carefully rather than to withdraw. The relation is therefore not a simple contest of attraction: each reads the other’s tactics, and Merteuil’s goal is to determine in advance what the encounter will mean to its witnesses.

The Encounter as a Performance

In her later letter to Valmont, Merteuil presents the episode as a carefully staged sequence. Prévan attends the dinner she had announced at the Opera. When The Maréchale remarks that she is pleased to see him at her gatherings twice in succession, he says he has rearranged many plans to be there. Merteuil tests whether she is truly the object of his attention by refusing to play cards. Prévan also finds reasons not to play, which she treats as her first success. She then takes the bishop of *** as her conversation partner, both to give Prévan an opening to approach and to have a respectable witness who could attest to her behavior and words if needed.

When Prévan begins to direct the conversation, Merteuil rejects the tones he tries in turn. She does not accept his sentimental approach, checks his levity with her seriousness, and allows the conversation to continue under the safer appearance of delicate friendship. She says that she anticipated his conduct and made her resistance part of the performance: hesitation and objections give him opportunities to make his case, while her silence can make him think that persistence is bringing him closer to success. Her account describes a deliberately ambiguous exchange, designed to encourage Prévan without allowing him to claim that he had openly secured her favor.

Merteuil also arranges the setting of their later meetings. She receives Prévan in a room where her maid can observe from an adjoining space, and later ensures that her servants are available according to instructions she has given Victoire. Before the decisive evening, she establishes ordinary social contact in a way that can be explained innocently: she accepts an invitation to Prévan’s box for a new play, receives a visit, and then places him among the less intimate acquaintances invited to a formal supper. In her telling, each step gives him grounds to believe the relationship is advancing while preserving her ability to deny that he has been admitted to her confidence.

The Reversal and Its Meaning

On the evening she describes as the moment when she risked losing both virtue and reputation, Merteuil receives Prévan among a large company and treats him with conspicuous politeness, emphasizing their limited intimacy. After midnight she proposes a short card game. She says she wants both to facilitate Prévan’s departure and to make that departure noticeable, since his reputation as a gambler could help others remember where he had been. She considers going to him while the game continues, but changes her mind, reasoning that yielding too soon would deprive her of control over the appearance she needs to maintain. When the guests leave, she dismisses her women quickly.

Merteuil’s account then describes a private encounter in which Prévan believes he has succeeded, followed by her sudden summons of the household. She calls him to account in front of the arriving servants and orders him to leave and not return. Victoire brings in the people she has kept ready; Prévan, confused by the scene, reaches for his sword, and Merteuil’s valet restrains him. Merteuil says that she orders the servants to let him depart, while ensuring that his exit is noisy and public. The household’s indignation at the apparent insult to their mistress helps carry her version of events beyond the room. She thanks them, sends for her doctor, and presents her alarm as another means of giving the news currency.

Merteuil subsequently tells Valmont that she has finished the adventure and invites him to judge which of them can boast. She presents Prévan as having been removed from the field, at least temporarily, and herself as the friend who has helped Valmont by clearing a rival from his path. The account is hers, addressed to an accomplice who had both warned her and asked her to act; its detailed explanation of the setup also displays her command of narrative and reputation. The episode’s decisive reversal lies in that command: Prévan’s challenge depends on being able to turn apparent intimacy into a public claim, while Merteuil prepares witnesses and a competing interpretation before the encounter begins.