change of air, into a convent, but without declaring a settled
resolution of quitting the Court.

Upon the first news of it, Monsieur de Nemours felt the weight of this
retreat, and saw the importance of it; he presently thought he had
nothing more to hope, but omitted not anything that might oblige her to
return; he prevailed with the Queen to write; he made the Viscount not
only write, but go to her, but all to no purpose; the Viscount saw her,
but she did not tell him she had fixed her resolution; and yet he
judged, she would never return to Court; at last Monsieur de Nemours
himself went to her, under pretence of using the waters; she was
extremely grieved and surprised to hear he was come, and sent him word
by a person of merit about her, that she desired him not to take it ill
if she did not expose herself to the danger of seeing him, and of
destroying by his presence those sentiments she was obliged to
preserve; that she desired he should know, that having found it both
against her duty and peace of mind to yield to the inclination she had
to be his, all things else were become so indifferent to her, that she
had renounced them for ever; that she thought only of another life, and
had no sentiment remaining as to this, but the desire of seeing him in
the same dispositions she was in.

Monsieur de Nemours was like to have expired in the presence of the
lady who told him this; he begged her a thousand times to return to
Madam de Cleves, and to get leave for him to see her; but she told him
the Princess had not only forbidden her to come back with any message
from him, but even to report the conversation that should pass between
them. At length Monsieur de Nemours was obliged to go back, oppressed
with the heaviest grief a man is capable of, who has lost all hopes of
ever seeing again a person, whom he loved not only with the most
violent, but most natural and sincere passion that ever was; yet still
he was not utterly discouraged, but used all imaginable methods to make
her alter her resolution; at last, after several years, time and
absence abated his grief, and extinguished his passion. Madam de Cleves
lived in a manner that left no probability of her ever returning to
Court; she spent one part of the year in that religious house, and the
other at her own, but still continued the austerity of retirement, and
constantly employed herself in exercises more holy than the severest
convents can pretend to; and her li