made the first advances; she has a violent passion for you; you have more discretion than to tell it me, and I than to ask you to tell it; it is certain she is jealous of you, and has truth on her side.—And does it belong to you, interrupted the viscount, to load me with reprimands, and ought not your own experience to make you indulgent to my faults? However I grant I am to blame; but think, I conjure you, how to draw me out of this difficulty; I think you must go to the queen-dauphin as soon as she is awake, and ask her for the letter, as if you had lost it.—I have told you already, replied the duke de Nemours, that what you propose is somewhat extraordinary, and that there are difficulties in it which may affect my own particular interest; but besides, if this letter has been seen to drop out of your pocket, I should think it would be hard to persuade people that it dropped out of mine.—I thought I had told you, replied the viscount, that the queen-dauphin had been informed that you dropped it.—How, said the duke de Nemours hastily, apprehending the ill consequence this mistake might be of to him with madam de Cleves, has the queen-dauphin been told I dropped the letter?—Yes, replied the viscount, she has been told so; and what occasioned the mistake was, that there were several gentlemen of the two queens in a room belonging to the tennis-court, where our clothes were put up, when your servants and mine went together to fetch them; then it was the letter fell out of the pocket; those gentlemen took it up, and read it aloud; some believed it belonged to you, and others to me; Chatelart, who took it, and to whom I have just sent for it, says, he gave it to the queen-dauphin as a letter of yours; and those who have spoken of it to the queen, have unfortunately told her it was mine; so that you may easily do what I desire of you, and free me from this perplexity.
The duke de Nemours had always had a great friendship for the viscount de Chartres, and the relation he
