who had a violent passion, who had just given marks of it to a man whom she judged unworthy of it, and to another whom she used ill for his sake! Never was affliction so cutting as hers; she imputed the piercingness of it to what had happened that day; and believed that if the duke de Nemours had not had ground to believe she loved him, she should not have cared whether he loved another or not: but she deceived herself; and this evil which she found so insupportable was jealousy, with all the horrors it can be accompanied with. This letter discovered to her a piece of gallantry the duke de Nemours had been long engaged in. She saw the lady who writ it was a person of wit and merit, and deserved to be loved. She found she had more courage than herself, and envied her the power she had had of concealing her sentiments from the duke de Nemours. By the close of the letter, she saw this lady thought herself beloved, and presently suspected, that the discretion the duke had showed in his addresses to her, and which she had been so much taken with, was only an effect of his passion for this other mistress, whom he was afraid of disobliging. In short, she thought of everything that could add to her grief and despair. What reflections did she not make on herself, and on the advices her mother had given her! How did she repent, that she had not persisted in her resolution of retiring, though against the will of monsieur de Cleves; or that she had not pursued her intentions of acknowledging to him the inclination she had for the duke of Nemours! She was convinced, she would have done better to discover it to a husband, whose goodness she was sensible of, and whose interest it would have been to conceal it, than to let it appear to a man who was unworthy of it, who deceived her, who perhaps made a sacrifice of her, and who had no view in being loved by her but to gratify his pride and vanity: in a word, she found, that all the calamities that could befal her, and all the extremities she could be reduced to, were less than that single one of having discovered to the duke
