Valmont and Merteuil: former lovers who conspire together

The relationship between the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil is at once a former love affair, a working alliance, and a contest between two strategists. Their letters make intimacy an instrument: each can recruit the other, solicit judgment, or redirect a scheme, yet neither yields control of personal ambitions. Their collaboration is most visible in their plans involving Cécile Volanges, while their changing assessments of one another reveal the limits of an alliance built on manipulation.

Former Lovers and Correspondents

The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil approach one another with the ease of former intimates and the candor of rivals who know each other’s methods. Merteuil can praise Valmont’s success and then turn sharply to criticism; Valmont, in turn, writes as though her judgment matters even when he resists her conclusions. Their letters are not simply reports of separate intrigues. They are a continuing exchange in which each narrates events for an exceptionally knowledgeable reader, seeks recognition, and weighs the other’s skill.

That exchange also gives their relationship its distinctive balance of closeness and distance. Valmont observes that when they were together they seemed to share a way of seeing, but after nearly three months apart they agree on little. He leaves open who is wrong and says he will explain his conduct. The remark registers both their former accord and its weakening: physical separation has not ended their correspondence, but it has made disagreement harder to smooth over.

A Joint Scheme Against Cécile Volanges

Merteuil first draws Valmont into her plan to make Cécile Volanges the instrument of revenge against the Comte de Gercourt. She resents Gercourt and mocks his expectations of a bride educated in a convent, particularly his confidence in a young woman’s reserve. Cécile, only fifteen and sheltered, appears to Merteuil a means of making him ridiculous. She recommends the girl to Valmont and expects him to obey her direction.

Valmont later recalls that Merteuil had offered Cécile to him before Chevalier Danceny could claim her, and presents his intervention as a right he had previously declined to exercise. He describes Cécile as his new charge and reports that he has displaced Danceny. His account makes their joint project unmistakable, but also shows how he takes possession of its execution: he says that he relied on male authority rather than the subtler methods Merteuil used, and that he subdued Cécile by force. The alliance thus does not protect its intended victim; it divides the work of exploitation between the conspirators.

Merteuil responds by sending Valmont a letter to pass to Cécile, expecting it to draw her back into the scheme. She asks him to help make Cécile a source of despair for both her mother and Gercourt. At the same time, she judges the girl unsuitable for the more sophisticated role she had once imagined for her, describing her innocence as a weakness that will make her easy to use but difficult to train. The arrangement is revealing: Merteuil sets the objective and supplies the means, while Valmont acts upon Cécile and reports the result. Each uses the other’s access, but their language about the girl reduces her to an asset in their contest with Gercourt and Madame de Volanges.

Different Measures of Success

Their exchanges about the Présidente de Tourvel expose a deeper disagreement about what a conquest is for. Valmont insists that the slow movement of Tourvel’s resistance is itself a pleasure. He describes her as caught on a dangerous path, repeatedly trying to retreat and then relying on him for support; he wants to watch the struggle between love and virtue rather than hurry it toward an outcome. His account gives the pursuit the shape of a dramatic spectacle and casts himself as both its cause and its guide.

Merteuil reads the same episode as a failure of execution. She mocks Valmont for not taking advantage when Tourvel appeared ready to yield, and treats his restraint as a blunder that has left him with nothing. Yet she does not simply abandon him: she separates the episode she does not wish to join from the Cécile affair, which she takes on as her responsibility, and supplies a practical remedy. Their difference is not merely temperamental. Valmont lingers over resistance and the emotions it produces; Merteuil measures a situation by whether its desired result has been secured. Her sharp critique also shows that their intimacy does not entail deference: she speaks as a judge of his abilities, while he continues to make his conduct the subject of their correspondence.

Valmont’s own account of his attachment to Tourvel briefly unsettles the role he performs for Merteuil. He admits that, while intending to discuss another subject, he keeps returning to Tourvel even as he insults her. He then redirects the letter to Cécile and to their shared intrigue. The turn exposes a tension within the partnership: Valmont wants to present himself as a deliberate libertine, but his correspondence reveals a pursuit that occupies him beyond the limits of the scheme Merteuil proposed.

Separate Designs and Strained Cooperation

Merteuil’s letters to Valmont also serve as reports of plans she is pursuing without him. Preparing to leave for the country, she describes her intention to end her affair with Belleroche and to attend to a major lawsuit. She then identifies Danceny as the next man she means to draw closer, portraying him as more worthy of her interest than Cécile. Although she presents herself as Danceny’s confidante, she suspects that he is attracted to her and says that she is beginning to return that interest.

This new design creates a direct point of friction with the Cécile plot. Merteuil asks Valmont to prevent Danceny from seeing Cécile during her absence, because she fears that an encounter could revive his attachment. Her request makes Valmont an agent in a relationship she now wants to redirect toward herself. The maneuver resembles their earlier cooperation, but its purpose is more personal: Merteuil seeks to separate the young lovers while positioning herself as Danceny’s successor. Valmont’s reply, written after their months apart, signals that he and Merteuil no longer share the same views, though the available exchange does not settle how he responds to this particular demand.

The relationship therefore resists a simple division between partners and enemies. Merteuil can confide her legal and romantic calculations to Valmont, recruit him to frustrate Danceny’s attachment, and still pursue her own interests independently. Valmont can assist her schemes while insisting on his own pace and making his private fascination the center of his reports. Their alliance thrives on shared knowledge and mutual usefulness, but those same letters disclose its instability: each expects to direct events, and each is prepared to make the other’s designs serve a private end.