This letter discovered to her a piece of gallantry
the Duke de Nemours had been long engaged in; she saw the lady who
wrote it was a person of wit and merit, and deserved to be loved; she
found she had more courage than herself, and envied her the power she
had had of concealing her sentiments from the Duke de Nemours; by the
close of the letter, she saw this lady thought herself beloved, and
presently suspected that the discretion the Duke had showed in his
addresses to her, and which she had been so much taken with, was only
an effect of his passion for this other mistress, whom he was afraid of
disobliging; in short, she thought of everything that could add to her
grief and despair.
What reflections did she not make on herself, and
on the advices her mother had given her I how did she repent, that she
had not persisted in her resolution of retiring, though against the
will of Monsieur de Cleves, or that she had not pursued her intentions
of acknowledging to him the inclination she had for the Duke of
Nemours!
She was convinced, she would have done better to discover it
to a husband, whose goodness she was sensible of, and whose interest it
would have been to conceal it, than to let it appear to a man who was
unworthy of it, who deceived her, who perhaps made a sacrifice of her,
and who had no view in being loved by her but to gratify his pride and
vanity; in a word, she found, that all the calamities that could befall
her, and all the extremities she could be reduced to, were less than
that single one of having discovered to the Duke de Nemours that she
loved him, and of knowing that he loved another: all her comfort was to
think, that after the knowledge of this she had nothing more to fear
from herself, and that she should be entirely eased of the inclination
she had for the Duke.
She never thought of the orders the Queen-Dauphin had given her, to
come to her when she went to rest: she went to bed herself, and
pretended to be ill; so that when Monsieur de Cleves came home from the
King, they told him she was asleep. But she was far from that
tranquillity which inclines to sleep; all the night she did nothing but
torment herself, and read over and over the letter in her hand.
Madam de Cleves was not the only person whom this letter disturbed.
The Viscount de Chartres, who had lost it and not the Duke de Nemours,
was in the utmost inquietude about it. He had been that evening with
the Duke of Guise, who had given a great entertainment to the Duke of
Ferrara his brother-in-law, and to all the young people of the Court:
it happened that the discourse turned upon ingenious letters; and the
Viscount de Chartres said he had one about him the finest that ever was
writ: they urged him to show it, and on his excusing himself, the Duke
de Nemours insisted he had no such letter, and that what he said was
only out of vanity; the Viscount made him answer, that he urged his
discretion to the utmost, that nevertheless he would not show the
letter; but he would read some parts of it, which would make it appear
few men received the like.