"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."