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158 she would never return to court. At last monsieur de Nemours himself went to her, under pretence of using the waters. She was extremely grieved and surprized to hear he was come, and sent him word by a person of merit about her, that she desired him not to take it ill, if she did not expose herself to the danger of seeing him, and of destroying, by his presence, those sentiments she was obliged to preserve; that she desired he should know, that having found it both against her duty and peace of mind to yield to the inclination she had to be his, all things else were become so indifferent to her, that she had renounced them for ever; that she thought only of another life, and had no sentiment remaining as to this, but the desire of seeing him in the same dispositions she was in.

Monsieur de Nemours was like to have expired in the presence of the lady who told him this; he begged her a thousand times to return to madam de Cleves, and to get leave for him to see her; but she told him the princess had not only forbidden her to come back with any message from him, but even to report the conversation that should pass between them. At length, monsieur de Nemours was obliged to go back, oppressed with the heaviest grief a man is capable of, who has lost all hopes of ever seeing again a person, whom he loved not only with the most violent, but most natural and sincere passion that ever was; yet still he was not utterly discouraged, but used all imaginable methods to make her alter her resolution; at last, after several years, time and absence abated his grief, and extinguished his passion. Madam de Cleves lived in a manner that left no probability of her ever returning to court; she spent one part of the year in that religious house, and the other at her own, but still continued the austerity of retirement, and constantly employed herself in exercises more holy than the severest convents can pretend to; and her life, though it was short, left examples of inimitable virtues.