lone the amorous couch. I wonder,
however, if the reader might not think that this little tale written
more than three hundred years ago contains the elements of many of the
romantic novels and soap operas which have followed it.

At one level it is a cautionary tale about the consequences of marital
infidelity; at another it is a story of a woman betrayed, treated as a
pretty bauble for the gratification of men, and cast aside when she has
served her purpose, or a butterfly trapped in a net woven by uncaring
fate. Her end is rather too contrived for modern taste, but, even
today, characters who are about to be written out of the plot in soap
operas are sometimes smitten by mysterious and fatal disorders of the
brain.

The unfortunate Comte de Chabannes is the archetypical "decent chap,"
the faithful but rejected swain who sacrifices himself for the welfare
of his beloved without expectation of reward. In the hands of another
writer, with some modification, he could have provided a happy ending
in the "Mills and Boon" tradition.

This translation is not a schoolroom exercise, for although I have not
altered the story, I have altered the exact way in which it is told in
the original, with the aim of making it more acceptable to the modern
reader. All translation must involve paraphrase, for what sounds well
in one language may sound ridiculous if translated literally into
another, and it is for the translator to decide how far this process
may be carried. Whether I have succeeded in my task, only the reader
can say.

The Princess de Montpensier

By

Madame de Lafayette

Translated by Oliver C. Colt

Mezieres

It was while the civil war of religion was tearing France apart that
the only daughter of the Marquis of Mezieres, a very considerable
heiress, both because of her wealth and the illustrious house of Anjou
from which she was descended, was promised in marriage to the Duc de
Maine, the younger brother of the Duc de Guise.

The marriage was delayed because of the youth of this heiress, but the
elder of the brothers, the Duc de Guise, who saw much of her, and who
saw also the burgeoning of what was to become a great beauty, fell in
love with her and was loved in return. They concealed their feelings
with great care; the Duc de Guise, who had not yet become as ambitious
as he was to become later, wanted desperately to marry her, but fear of
angering his uncle, the Cardinal de Lorraine, wh