Part One: The Lovers of Vevey (Letters 1–65)

Preface

Great cities must have theatres, and corrupt peoples novels. I have seen the morals of my time, and I have published these letters. Would that I had lived in an age when I ought to have thrown them into the fire!

Although I bear here only the title of editor, I have worked on this book myself, and I do not hide it. Have I made the whole thing up, and is the whole correspondence a fiction? Men of the world, what does it matter to you? It is certainly a fiction for you.

This book is not made to circulate in the world, and suits very few readers. The style will put off people of taste; the matter will alarm severe people; all the feelings will be out of nature for those who do not believe in virtue. It must displease the devout, the libertines, the philosophers; it must shock gallant women, and scandalise honest ones. Whom, then, will it please? Perhaps only me; but certainly it will please no one moderately.

Any girl of good morals who reads novels is already lost. A chaste girl has never read novels; and I have put a decided enough title at the head of this one, so that whoever opens it knows what to expect. She who, in spite of this title, dares to read a single page of it is a lost girl; but let her not impute her ruin to this book; the harm was done beforehand. Since she has begun, let her finish reading: she has nothing more to risk.

Letter 1. To Julie

I must flee you, mademoiselle; I feel it only too well: I should have waited much less, or rather, I should never have seen you. But what am I to do today? How am I to begin? You promised me friendship; consider my perplexity, and advise me.

You know that I entered your house only at the invitation of your mother. Knowing that I had cultivated some agreeable talents, she thought they would not be useless, in a place without masters, for the education of a daughter whom she adores. I was proud, for my part, to adorn with some flowers so fine a nature. But I did not foresee that, in seeing you every day, in the sweet familiarity of study, the danger would be for me. Your father is abroad; your mother leaves us alone together; I see you constantly, I hear you, I read with you. Learn, then, what you have done: I love you, and I am a commoner, without fortune or name, and you are the daughter of a baron. My silence would be a lie, and my words a crime. I have only one thing left to do: to go. Say a word, and I am gone. I will not write to you again, unless you order me to.

Letter 4. From Julie

Must I then at last confess the fatal secret too ill disguised! How many times have I sworn that it would never leave my heart but with my life! Your life in danger tears it from me; it escapes, and my honour is lost. Alas, I have kept my word too well: is there a death more cruel than to outlive one's honour?

From the first day I saw you, I felt the poison that corrupts my senses and my reason; I felt it from the first moment, and your eyes, your feelings, your words, your criminal pen, make it more deadly every day. Everything has turned against me; your apparent respect, your silence, your ingenious letters. You have the advantage you sought; I love you. But if you are what I believed you, if you are worthy of my love, you will respect me more than ever; and you will be the guardian of my honour, which I place in your hands. I depend on you alone: whether I am to be lost or saved, the choice is yours.

From Julie

My friend, I feel that I am every day more attached to you; I cannot leave you for a moment; I need to see you every hour. You love me, I know; but I fear for our love the very things we enjoy. We are young, we are alone, our hearts understand each other; what will become of us? Let us at least have a witness: my cousin Claire, who loves us both, will be the confidante of our love, and its guardian.

Claire d'Orbe, Julie's cousin and inseparable friend, already promised to M. d'Orbe, becomes the confidante of the lovers. On a walk in the grove at Clarens, in Claire's presence, she proposes a game: the tutor must kiss each of them.

Letter 14. To Julie

What have you done, ah, what have you done, my Julie? You meant to reward me, and you have destroyed me. I am drunk, or rather mad. My senses are deranged, all my faculties confused by that fatal kiss. You wished to ease my pains — cruel woman, you have made them sharper. I have drawn poison from your lips; it ferments, it burns my blood, it kills me, and your pity is my death.

O immortal memory of that moment of illusion, of delirium and enchantment, never, never will you be effaced from my soul! As long as the charms of Julie are engraved in it, as long as this agitated heart furnishes me with feelings and sighs, you will be the torment and the happiness of my life. Alas, I enjoyed a seeming tranquillity; submissive to your supreme will, I murmured no longer at a fate in which I was permitted to see you. Since that kiss, I can no longer live as I did.

Julie, alarmed, sends him away for a time. He travels in the mountains of the Valais.

Letter 23. To Julie, from the Valais

I wanted to dream, and I was always distracted by some unexpected sight. Sometimes immense rocks hung in ruins above my head; sometimes high and roaring waterfalls drenched me with their thick mist; sometimes a perpetual torrent opened beside me an abyss whose depth my eyes dared not sound. In one place, I could see at once the produce of the south and of the north, the meadows and the snows.

It is a general impression that all men feel, though not all observe it, that on high mountains, where the air is pure and subtle, one breathes more freely, one feels lighter in body, more serene in mind; the pleasures are less ardent, the passions more moderate. Meditations there take on an indescribably grand and sublime character, in proportion to the objects that strike us, an indescribable tranquil voluptuousness that has nothing sharp or sensual. It seems that in rising above the habitation of men, one leaves behind all low and earthly feelings, and that, as one approaches the ethereal regions, the soul acquires something of their unalterable purity.

The people of the Valais received me with a hospitality that astonished me: they would take no money, and my host kept filling my glass, so that I had to drink twice as much as I wished. But all these marvels, and these good people, could not make me forget you. I was calm on the mountains; down again, I found myself always in Vevey, at your feet.

He returns. Julie's father, the Baron d'Étange, comes home from his travels and declares that his daughter will never marry a commoner; he has promised her to his friend M. de Wolmar, who once saved his life. The lovers despair.

Letter 29. Julie to Claire

Yes, my cousin, I am lost; it is done. You were right; the barrier that I had raised between us has fallen; your poor Julie is no longer worthy of you.

My father has given me to his friend; my mother is weak; my lover was in despair; and I, too weak to resist his tears and my own heart, I gave him what a girl should give only to her husband. I do not seek to excuse myself; I have betrayed my duty, my parents and myself. But think, my cousin: was it pleasure that seduced me? It was pity, it was love, it was the hope — insane, I know — that what I had done would force my father to give me to him. And now — what can I do but weep? Come, my Claire, come and comfort your friend; you are all that is left to her.

Letter 54. To Julie

I have arrived. I am in your room, in your closet, waiting for you. Everything here speaks of you; everything I touch belongs to you. Here is your dress, your gloves, the ribbon you wore yesterday; here your work, still unfinished; here the little desk where you write to me. Julie! my charming Julie! I see you, I feel you everywhere, I breathe you with the air you breathed. You penetrate my whole substance. How my head burns! I hear a step — no, it is the wind. Come, come quickly; every minute you are away is a century. Hide your trouble from your mother when you leave her; I tremble that it may betray you.

The night of their meeting is not described; the next morning he writes only a few lines: "Ah, let us die, my sweet friend! let us die, the well-beloved of my heart! What shall we do henceforth with an insipid youth, all of whose delights we have exhausted?"

The lovers meet in secret, and their love becomes a settled bond. Lord Edward Bomston, a young English nobleman passing through Vevey, a man of great soul and rough manners, becomes the friend of Julie's lover. One evening, in his cups, he speaks lightly of Julie; her lover challenges him to a duel. Julie, learning of it, writes to her lover.

From Julie

You call that honour? Let me tell you what honour is. It is not the opinion of others, which may be bought by a sword-thrust; it is the esteem of oneself, which is never acquired by a crime. Think: if you kill Lord Edward, you will be a murderer; if he kills you, you will die for a word. And what will become of me — compromised, named, dishonoured by the very quarrel that is meant to avenge me? Does it never occur to you that the whole world will ask why you defend my honour, and will guess? Show me that you love me more than your vanity. Give it up.

Her lover gives way. Lord Edward, moved, publicly apologises to Julie, and, learning of their love, goes to the Baron to ask him to let Julie marry his friend, offering to settle his own fortune on him. The Baron flies into a rage at the idea of his daughter married to a commoner, and, in his anger, strikes Julie, who falls and is hurt.

Julie to Claire

My father struck me — no, do not pity me, he was more unhappy than I was. When he saw me fall, and my face bloody, he went pale; he lifted me in his arms; and that night, when he thought I was asleep, he came to my bed, and took me on his knees, and wept over me without a word, and I felt his tears on my cheek. My cousin, I would have given my life to spare him that pain. I have resolved: I will not marry without his consent, and I will not marry against my heart. Let them do what they will with me; I will obey and I will die.

Julie, ill after the blow, loses — it is suggested — the child she carried. Lord Edward and Claire persuade her lover that he must leave Vevey, to spare her. He goes with Lord Edward to Paris, writing his farewell.

Claire to Julie

He is gone. I saw him into Lord Edward's carriage myself, at the first light. He did not want to go without seeing you; I told him that he would kill you. He cried like a child; and then he was silent, and let himself be put into the carriage like a dead man. Lord Edward promised me to watch over him as over his own son. Julie, my Julie, you must live now — for your mother, for me, for him. What is left to us but courage?