The Duke was so taken up with his passion, and so surprised at the

conversation he had heard, that he fell into an indiscretion very

common, which is, to speak one's own particular sentiments in general

terms, and to relate one's proper adventures under borrowed names. As

they were travelling he began to talk of love, and exaggerated the

pleasure of being in love with a person that deserved it; he spoke of

the fantastical effects of this passion, and at last not being able to

contain within himself the admiration he was in at the action of Madam

de Cleves, he related it to the Viscount without naming the person, or

owning he had any share in it; but he told it with so much warmth and

surprise, that the Viscount easily suspected the story concerned

himself. The Viscount urged him very much to confess it, and told him

he had known a great while that he was violently in love, and that it

was unjust in him to show a distrust of a man who had committed to him

a secret on which his life depended. The Duke de Nemours was too much

in love to own it, and had always concealed it from the Viscount,

though he valued him the most of any man at Court; he answered that one

of his friends had told him this adventure, and made him promise not to

speak of it; and he also conjured the Viscount to keep the secret: the

Viscount assured him he would say nothing of it but notwithstanding

Monsieur de Nemours repented that he had told him so much.

In the meantime Monsieur de Cleves was gone to the King, with a heart

full of sorrow and affliction. Never had husband so violent a passion

for his wife, or so great an esteem; what she had told him did not take

away his esteem of her, but made it of a different nature from that he

had had before; what chiefly employed his thoughts, was a desire to

guess who it was that had found out the secret to win her heart; the

Duke de Nemours was the first person he thought of on this occasion, as

being the handsomest man at Court; and the Chevalier de Guise, and the

Mareschal de St. Andre occurred next, as two persons who had made it

their endeavour to get her love, and who were still very assiduous in

courting her, so that he was fully persuaded it must be one of the

three.

He arrived at the Louvre, and the King carried him into his

closet to inform him he had made choice of him to conduct Madame into

Spain, and that he believed nobody could acquit himself better of that

charge, nor that any lady would do France greater honour than Madam de

Cleves. Monsieur de Cleves received the honour the King had done him

by this choice with the respect he ought, and he considered it also as

what would take his wife from Court, without leaving room to suspect

any change in her conduct; but the embarrassment he was under required

a speedier remedy than that journey, which was to be deferred a great

while, could afford; he immediately wrote to Madam de Cleves to

acquaint her with what the King had told him, and gave her to

understand he absolutely expected she should return to Paris. She

returned according to his orders, and when they met, they found one

another overwhelmed with melancholy.




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