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154 Monsieur de Nemours determined to follow the king; it was a journey he could not well excuse himself from, and so he resolved to go, without endeavouring to see madam de Cleves again from the window out of which he had sometimes seen her; he begged the viscount to speak to her: and what did he not desire him to say in his behalf? What an infinite number of reasons did he furnish him with, to persuade her to conquer her Scruples! In short, great part of the night was spent before he thought of going away.

As for madam de Cleves, she was in no condition to rest: it was a thing so new to her to have broke loose from the restraints she had laid on herself; to have endured the first declarations of love that ever were made to her; and to have confessed that she herself was in love with him that made them; all this was so new to her, that she seemed quite another person. She was surprized at what she had done; she repented of it; she was glad of it; all her thoughts were full of anxiety and passion: she examined again the reasons of her duty, which obstructed her happiness; she was grieved to find them so strong, and was sorry that she had made them out so clear to monsieur de Nemours. Though she had entertained thoughts of marrying him, as soon as she beheld him in the garden of the suburbs, yet her late conversation with him made a much greater impression on her mind; at some moments she could not comprehend how she could be unhappy by marrying him, and she was ready to say in her heart, that her scruples as to what was past, and her fears for the future, were equally groundless: at other times, reason and her duty prevailed in her thoughts, and violently hurried her into a resolution not to marry again, and never to see monsieur de Nemours; but this was a resolution hard to be established in a heart so softened as hers, and so lately abandoned to the charms of love. At last, to give herself a little ease, she concluded that it was not yet necessary to do herself the violence of coming to any resolution;