"How," replied the Queen-Dauphin, "would not the Duke de Nemours have

his mistress go to a ball? I thought that husbands might wish their

wives would not go there; but as for lovers, I never imagined they were

of that opinion." "The Duke de Nemours finds," answered the Prince of

Conde, "that nothing is so insupportable to lovers as balls, whether

they are beloved again, or whether they are not. He says, if they are

beloved they have the chagrin to be loved the less on this account for

several days; that there is no woman, whom her anxiety for dress does

not divert from thinking on her lover; that they are entirely taken up

with that one circumstance, that this care to adorn themselves is for

the whole world, as well as for the man they favour; that when they are

at a ball, they are desirous to please all who look at them; and that

when they triumph in their beauty, they experience a joy to which their

lovers very little contribute. He argues further, that if one is not

beloved, it is a yet greater torment to see one's mistress at an

assembly; that the more she is admired by the public, the more unhappy

one is not to be beloved, and that the lover is in continual fear lest

her beauty should raise a more successful passion than his own; lastly

he finds, there is no torment equal to that of seeing one's mistress at

a ball, unless it be to know that she is there, and not to be there

one's self." Madam de Cleves pretended not to hear what the Prince of Conde said,

though she listened very attentively; she easily saw what part she had

in the Duke of Nemours's opinion, and particularly as to what he said

of the uneasiness of not being at a ball where his mistress was,

because he was not to be at that of the Mareschal de St. Andre, the

King having sent him to meet the Duke of Ferrara.

The Queen-Dauphin, and the Prince of Conde, not going into the Duke's

opinion, were very merry upon the subject. "There is but one occasion,

Madam," said the Prince to her, "in which the Duke will consent his

mistress should go to a ball, and that is when he himself gives it. He

says, that when he gave your Majesty one last year, his mistress was so

kind as to come to it, though seemingly only to attend you; that it is

always a favour done to a lover, to partake of an entertainment which

he gives; that it is an agreeable circumstance for him to have his

mistress see him preside in a place where the whole Court is, and see

him acquit himself well in doing the honours of it." "The Duke de

Nemours was in the right," said the Queen-Dauphin, smiling, "to approve

of his mistress's being at his own ball; there was then so great a

number of ladies, whom he honoured with the distinction of that name,

that if they had not come, the assembly would have been very thin."




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