exaggerated the pleasure of being in love with a person that deserved it; he spoke of the fantastical effects of this passion; and at last, not being able to contain within himself the admiration he was in at the action of madam de Cleves, he related it to the viscount without naming the person, or owning he had any share in it; but he told it with so much warmth and surprise, 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 shew 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 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 employ'd 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. André 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 be-
