Having my attention
called away, I asked M. Soury to look through the book for me, as
I was anxious to have his impression of it. He replied to me in the
following terms:
"I have been a long time in telling you what I think of the _Comte
de Valmont._ The fact is that it was only by an heroic effort that I
managed to finish it. Not but what this work is honestly conceived and
fairly well written. But the effect of reading through these thousands
of pages is so profoundly wearisome that one is scarcely in a position
to do justice to the work of Abbe Gerard. One cannot help being vexed
with him for being so unnecessarily tedious.
"As so often happens, the best part of this book are the notes, that
is to say, a mass of extracts and selections taken from the famous
writers of the last two centuries, notably from Rousseau. All the
'proofs' and apologetic arguments ruin the work unfortunately, the
eloquence and dialectics of Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, and
even Voltaire, differing very much from those of Abbe Gerard. It is
the same with the libertines' reasons refuted by the father of the
Comte de Valmont. It must be a very dangerous thing to bring forward
mischievous doctrines with so much force. They have a savour which
renders the best things insipid, and it is with these good doctrines
that the six or seven volumes of the _Comte de Valmont_ are filled.
Abbe Gerard did not wish his work to be called a novel, and as a
matter of fact there is neither drama nor action in the interminable
letters of the Marquis, the Count and Emilie.
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