amusing to exercise the intellectual scope of the schemers, not least because lower-class targets would at some level expect to be the sexual targets of their social superiors. Indeed, despite the social mobility implicit in the encounter between Merteuil, Valmont, and Tourvel, servants exist on a lower plane altogether than either the bourgeois or aristocratic actors. That would explain Valmont's matter-of-fact approach to instructing his valet to maintain a sexual relationship with Tourvel's maid (221) and to humiliate the maid by not permitting her to dress herself when he "surprises" her and his valet in bed, then exacts her cooperation in stealing Tourvel's letters (Laclos 87-8).
But the real scheme is the elaborate seduction of Tourvel and the depraved deflowering of Cecile; both of them have something to lose socially if they fall to Valmont's charms. Cecile does not realize what she has to lose, and Tourvel's consciousness of what she could lose by allowing herself to be seduced is manifest in her creeping depression once Valmont begins to pur
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