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28 evening, upon his growing better, all the persons of quality that were in the anti-chamber were admitted; the queen-dauphin returned to her own apartment, where she found madam de Cleves and some other ladies, with whom she lived in familiarity.

It being already very late, and not being dressed, she did not wait upon the queen, but gave out that she was not to be seen, and ordered her jewels to be brought, in order to choose out some for the mareschal de St. André's Ball, and present the princess of Cleves with some, as she had promised her. While they were thus employed, the prince of Conde entered; his great quality gave him free access everywhere. Doubtless, said the queen-dauphin, you come from my husband's apartment, what are they doing there?

Madam, said he, they are maintaining a dispute against the duke of Nemours, and he defends the argument he undertook with so much warmth, that he must needs be very much interested in it; I believe he has some mistress that gives him uneasiness by going to balls, so well satisfied he is that it is a vexatious thing to a lover to see the person he loves in those places."

How, replied the Queen-Dauphin, would not the duke de Nemours have his mistress go to a ball? I thought that husbands might wish their wives would not go there; but as for lovers, I never imagined they were of that opinion. The duke de Nemours finds, answered the prince of Conde, that nothing is so insupportable to lovers as balls, whether they are beloved again, or whether they are not. He says, if they are beloved they have the chagrin to be loved the less on this account for several days; that there is no woman, whom her anxiety for dress does not divert from thinking on her lover; that they are entirely taken up with that one circumstance, that this care to adorn themselves is for the whole world, as well as for the man they favour; that when they are at a ball, they are desirous to please all who look at them; and that when they triumph in their beauty, they experience a