Valmont Uses Aid to the Poor to Win Tourvel's Favor

Vicomte de Valmont’s relief of a tax-indebted family is both material assistance and a calculated performance for the Présidente de Tourvel. He pays the debt that would have led to the family’s furniture being seized, gives them further money, and makes sure the act is witnessed by someone following him. His account to the Marquise de Merteuil exposes the strategy beneath the apparent generosity; Tourvel’s later letter to Madame de Volanges shows the same episode taking on a very different meaning in the eyes of its intended audience.

Causes and Design

The episode begins with Valmont under observation. Aware that Tourvel’s household is having his movements watched, he decides to turn that surveillance to public advantage. He asks his confidant to find a nearby person in need of help. The information comes back with a specific opportunity: the next morning, the belongings of an entire family are to be seized because they cannot pay their taxes. Valmont verifies that the household contains no woman or girl whose age or appearance might make his intervention seem suspect. The detail makes clear that he is not simply waiting for an occasion to be generous; he is shaping an occasion that can be seen as credible.

At supper, he announces that he will go hunting the following day. The Présidente de Tourvel objects, citing the heat, the risk that he will make himself ill, and the likelihood that the expedition will exhaust him without producing anything. Valmont reads her eyes as expressing a wish that he accept these excuses, though she does not openly state that wish. He resists both her arguments and her criticism of hunters. His concern is that she may cancel the surveillance that would let his action reach her indirectly. His confidant reassures him that the plan remains possible, and Valmont goes to bed satisfied.

The Village Scene

Valmont leaves at daybreak. About fifty paces from the château, he sees the man assigned to follow him. He walks across the fields toward the village, deliberately making the observer run along the roads and cover more ground. When Valmont eventually sits beneath a tree to rest, the follower settles behind a nearby bush, less than twenty paces away. Valmont considers firing at him with his small shot, then restrains himself because the man is necessary to the plan. The spy is not an accidental witness: Valmont preserves his presence precisely because he wants the scene reported.

At the village, Valmont finds a commotion and learns what is happening. He summons the tax collector and pays fifty-six livres, the sum needed to prevent five people from being reduced to destitution. The family and onlookers respond with blessings. The old head of the household, whose face had been marked by despair, weeps with gratitude. Then a younger villager approaches with a woman and two children and urges them to fall at Valmont’s feet. Surrounded by the kneeling family, Valmont says that his eyes fill with tears and that he feels an involuntary but pleasurable emotion. He is surprised by the pleasure of doing good and wonders whether people praised as virtuous possess no greater merit than others.

He has brought ten louis and gives them to the family as well. Valmont distinguishes this extra money from the first payment: paying the tax debt has produced the scene’s essential relief, while the additional gift brings further thanks but is not necessary to avert the family’s immediate hardship. This distinction registers both the concrete effect of the assistance and the way he watches its emotional consequences. He compares himself, amid the family’s blessings, to a theatrical hero at the climax of a play. The follower is among the crowd; once the scene has served its purpose, Valmont disengages from the family and returns to the château.

Two Accounts of the Same Act

In his letter to the Marquise de Merteuil, Valmont measures the charity against what it may obtain from Tourvel. He expects the episode to become a future credential with her and reasons that, having in a sense paid for her in advance, he will have the right to dispose of her as he pleases without reproaching himself. He has also asked the family to pray for the success of his designs. His account therefore refuses to let charitable action stand as a simple moral conversion: he openly folds it into his effort to win a woman whose regard he wants to command.

Tourvel receives the story through a different chain of witnesses. One of her servants happens to travel in the same direction as Valmont, sees him pay the family’s debt and give them a considerable sum, and reports what the villagers say: a servant, apparently Valmont’s, had made inquiries the day before about who needed assistance. To Tourvel, that prior inquiry changes the act from a response to chance into evidence of deliberate benevolence. She also reports that when she raised the matter with Valmont, he initially defended himself and then appeared to attach little importance to what he had done. The modesty she observes reinforces, rather than weakens, her favorable impression.

Consequences and Significance

Tourvel writes to Madame de Volanges to ask whether Valmont can truly be an irredeemable libertine if he behaves in this way. She considers the possibility that someone long associated with vice may still do good, and hopes that his conduct means his past errors are not eternal. She even entertains the thought that his corruption may result from dangerous associations rather than an enduring hostility to virtue. The episode thus gives her a reason to revise the judgment she had formed from his reputation, while Valmont’s private letter shows how deliberately he has furnished that reason.

The scene does not reduce neatly to either sincere generosity or cold deception. Valmont plans the circumstances, accounts for the observer, and imagines the aid as leverage over Tourvel; at the same time, he describes an emotional response that surprises him. The family’s immediate need is genuinely relieved, but the help also becomes evidence in a courtship whose intended witness does not know it has been staged for her. In the novel’s epistolary structure, the contrast between Valmont’s candid account and Tourvel’s trusting interpretation makes the central effect visible: the same act can be materially beneficial, emotionally affecting, and strategically manipulative at once.