found that instead of taking repose he was extremely restless;
she came to him, and fell on her knees by his bedside, her face
all covered with tears; and though Monsieur de Cleves had taken a
resolution not to show her the violent displeasure he had
conceived against her, yet the care she took of him, and the
sorrow she expressed, which sometimes he thought sincere, and at
other times the effect of her dissimulation and perfidiousness,
distracted him so violently with opposite sentiments full of woe,
that he could not forbear giving them vent.

"You shed plenty of tears, Madam," said he, "for a death which
you are the cause of, and which cannot give you the trouble you
pretend to be in; I am no longer in a condition to reproach
you," added he with a voice weakened by sickness and grief; "I
die through the dreadful grief and discontent you have given me;
ought so extraordinary an action, as that of your speaking to me
at Colomiers, to have had so little consequences? Why did you
inform me of your passion for the Duke de Nemours, if your virtue
was no longer able to oppose it? I loved you to that extremity,
I would have been glad to have been deceived, I confess it to my
shame; I have regretted that pleasing false security out of which
you drew me; why did not you leave me in that blind tranquillity
which so many husbands enjoy? I should perhaps have been
ignorant all my life, that you was in love with Monsieur de
Nemours; I shall die," added he, "but know that you make death
pleasing to me, and that, after you have taken from me the esteem
and affection I had for you, life would be odious to me. What
should I live for? to spend my days with a person whom I have
loved so much, and by whom I have been so cruelly deceived; or to
live apart from her and break out openly into violences so