rise, 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.

Monsieur d