Valmont Forges a Letter from Dijon to Get His Love Letter to Tourvel

Valmont’s forged Dijon letter turns the estate’s routine mail into a way around Tourvel’s explicit resistance. After she has refused his letters and found ways to avoid meeting him, he disguises a love letter as ordinary correspondence, placing it in a morning mail delivery that she cannot readily reject without drawing attention. The episode, narrated in a letter to the Marquise de Merteuil, presents a tactical success with an uncertain result: Tourvel receives the message, but her response is anger and rejection, while Valmont can only suppose that she will read it through.

Background and Failed Attempts

Since what Valmont calls the affair of the nineteenth, Tourvel has kept her distance and refused to accept his letters. He complains to the Marquise de Merteuil that she has become adept at avoiding encounters, and describes the exchange of letters as a small war requiring a new ruse for each attempt. His first methods exploit direct contact. When Tourvel asks him to return her letter, he substitutes his own; she does not detect the exchange at the time. But she refuses a later letter offered openly, an act he recognizes would itself mean granting him something.

Valmont next uses the circumstances of the household to make refusal difficult. During Tourvel’s toilette, with Madame de Rosemonde and a maid present, he sends his letter by a servant under the pretense that it is a paper Tourvel had requested. He expects that rejecting it might require a public explanation and risk scandal. Tourvel takes it, but later sends it back unopened, folded rather than unsealed. Valmont reads this return as a calculated answer to his maneuver: she has used the possibility of scandal against him rather than allowing the letter to create a private meeting. He is furious, then sets about finding another route.

The Postal Ruse

The estate’s mail system gives him that route. Letters are placed during the day in a covered box, described as resembling a collection chest. The postmaster and Madame de Rosemonde each hold a key; in the evening the letters are taken to the post office, and servants go there in the morning to collect what has arrived. The errand is shared among household workers, so Valmont’s own servant can volunteer to go when it is not his turn, claiming other business in that direction. The procedure makes the forged letter appear to belong to the ordinary flow of mail rather than to a private delivery from Valmont.

He disguises the handwriting on the address and imitates the Dijon postmark on the envelope. The choice of Dijon is deliberate on two counts: Valmont jokes that, since he claims the same rights as Tourvel’s husband, he may write from the same place; more practically, he has heard Tourvel speak throughout the day of wanting letters from Dijon. The false origin therefore borrows the appearance of expected correspondence. By placing his own message among the letters collected that morning, he arranges not only for its delivery but also for himself to witness its arrival.

Receipt and Rejection

At breakfast, the household gathers and waits for the mail before dispersing. Madame de Rosemonde opens the box and gives Tourvel the letter marked as coming from Dijon. Tourvel immediately notes that the handwriting is not her husband’s and breaks the seal. Valmont watches her expression change as she looks at the contents. When Madame de Rosemonde asks what is wrong, Tourvel says the letter contains offensive things and that she is astonished anyone dared write them to her. She says it is unsigned, declares her contempt for both the letter and its author, and demands that no one speak to her about it again.

She then tears the letter, puts the pieces in her pocket, rises, and leaves. These gestures make her refusal visible to the people present: the letter is not accepted as legitimate correspondence, and its message is not welcomed. Yet the fragments remain with her rather than being discarded in front of Valmont. He treats this detail as evidence that the delivery has achieved its purpose, asserting that she has his letter and leaving it to her curiosity to ensure that she reads it in full. The scene establishes what he witnesses, but not the conclusion he wants; her anger is observable, while her eventual reading of the whole letter is his confident assumption.

Narrative Function and Limits

The episode is presented through Valmont’s account to the Marquise de Merteuil, dated 25 August. Its letter form makes the mechanics of the deception unusually explicit: Valmont reports the household routine, his servant’s detour, the altered handwriting, the false postmark, and the breakfast gathering as parts of a single plan. He does not merely recount that Tourvel received a letter; he displays how he converted ordinary procedures and social expectations into instruments of access.

His description also reveals the limits of his own perspective. He treats Tourvel’s reluctance as an obstacle to outmaneuver and interprets her handling of the torn letter in the light most favorable to himself. The contrast between her stated contempt and his confidence that curiosity will make her read creates the scene’s central tension: delivery is not consent, and possession of a message does not establish that its recipient accepts its purpose. The forged Dijon origin gets the letter past a barrier she had deliberately maintained, but the account provides no confirmation that the ruse changes her judgment or brings her closer to Valmont.