Though it was a mortifying circumstance for Monsieur de Cleves not to
conduct Madam Elizabeth, yet he could not complain of it, by reason of
the greatness of the person preferred before him; he regretted the loss
of this employment not so much on account of the honour he should have
received from it, as because it would have given him an opportunity of
removing his wife from Court without the appearance of design in it.
A few days after the King's death, it was resolved the new King should
go to Rheims to be crowned. As soon as this journey was talked of,
Madam de Cleves, who had stayed at home all this while under pretence
of illness, entreated her husband to dispense with her following the
Court, and to give her leave to go to take the air at Colomiers for her
health: he answered, that whether her health was the reason or not of
her desire, however he consented to it: nor was it very difficult for
him to consent to a thing he had resolved upon before: as good an
opinion as he had of his wife's virtue, he thought it imprudent to
expose her any longer to the sight of a man she was in love with.
The Duke de Nemours was soon informed that Madam de Cleves was not to
go along with the Court; he could not find in his heart to set out
without seeing her, and therefore the night before his journey he went
to her house as late as decency would allow him, in order to find her
alone. Fortune favoured his intention; and Madam de Nevers and Madam
de Martigues, whom he met in the Court as they were coming out,
informed him they had left her alone. He went up in a concern and
ferment of mind to be paralleled only by that which Madam de Cleves was
under, when she was told the Duke de Nemours was come to see her; the
fear lest he should speak to her of his passion, and lest she should
answer him too favourably, the uneasiness this visit might give her
husband, the difficulty of giving him an account of it, or of
concealing it from him, all these things presented themselves to her
imagination at once, and threw her into so great an embarrassment, that
she resolved to avoid the thing of the world which perhaps she wished
for the most.
She sent one of her women to the Duke de Nemours, who
was in her anti-chamber, to tell him that she had lately been very ill,
and that she was sorry she could not receive the honour which he
designed her. What an affliction was it to the Duke, not to see Madam
de Cleves, and therefore not to see her, because she had no mind he
should! He was to go away the next morning, and had nothing further to
hope from fortune. He had said nothing to her since that conversation
at the Queen-Dauphin's apartments, and he had reason to believe that
his imprudence in telling the Viscount his adventure had destroyed all
his expectations; in a word, he went away with everything that could
exasperate his grief.