“How did Les Liaisons dangereuses come about?” ventured Tilly as soon as he saw him yield. And finally Laclos told him: a provincial daydream, the result of the long, tedious period spent on garrison duty at Grenoble. There was a fellow soldier, now a famous scientist, who had many stories about women: he was a born womanizer. Among these, a woman from Grenoble who vaguely resembles the character of the Marquise de Merteuil. They used to talk, and Laclos sometimes gave him advice on what moves he should make. He had also collected many other stories over the years, his poison chest: all he had to do was transpose them into the right setting, Paris. That’s how it happened, more or less. Laclos broke off—and came to an abrupt end: “I improved the style as best as I could, and after a final few months’ work I let my book loose on the public.⁵² Since then I’ve heard almost nothing about how it’s doing, though they tell me it’s still alive.”

At that time, in the same way that Valmont had “worked” Cécile Volanges, Laclos was still “working” the Duc d’Orléans, in whom many people saw a terrifying Valmont of politics. From London, the Duke sent letters on strategy that he diligently copied from the drafts of his counselor Laclos. What crystalline intoxication it is to be the man who moves the man who is thought to move the conspiracy of the Revolution! From the military solitude of the Île de Ré, where Les Liaisons had been created, he had reached the delirium of the spider who thinks it can cover the world with its web! A few months later, Laclos claimed he was secretly moving not only the Duc d’Orléans but also the Jacobin Club. And it was partly true. Then the spider’s web was swept away by the torrent of events. In a box at La Scala, the artillery general Laclos looked about him, disconsolate: nothing for him was “more tedious than an Italian opera buffa, except perhaps an opera seria.”⁵³ There, in the box of the military general staff, he was introduced to a red-cheeked dragoon, still a boy, timid and curious. Laclos’s gaze finally “softened” when he learned that this Second Lieutenant Henri Beyle was also from Grenoble.⁵⁴ From one province to another, he reflected, thinking of Milan, a city for him devoid of any charm, made of roads and houses. And perhaps it was the moment to go back to writing. One plan he kept close to his heart, for his old age: to write a work dedicated to “popularizing this idea: that the sole happiness lies in the family.” It would have been no small thing: “It will be difficult to arrange events in the right way, and the almost insurmountable difficulty will be that of stirring interest without resorting to anything novelistic.”⁵⁵