opposite to my temper, and the love I had for you? That love,
Madam, was far greater than it appeared to you; I concealed the
greatest part of it from you, for fear of being importunate, or
of losing somewhat in your esteem by a behaviour not becoming a
husband: in a word, I deserved your affection more than once, and
I die without regret, since I have not been able to obtain it,
and since I can no longer desire it. Adieu, Madam; you will one
day regret a man who loved you with a sincere and virtuous
passion; you will feel the anxiety which reasonable persons meet
with in intrigue and gallantry, and you will know the difference
between such a love as I had for you, and the love of people who
only profess admiration for you to gratify their vanity in
seducing you; but my death will leave you at liberty, and you may
make the Duke de Nemours happy without guilt: what signifies
anything that can happen when I am no more, and why should I have
the weakness to trouble myself about it?

Madam de Cleves was so far from imagining that her husband
suspected her virtue, that she heard all this discourse without
comprehending the meaning of it, and without having any other
notion about it, except that he reproached her for her
inclination for the Duke de Nemours; at last, starting all of a
sudden out of her blindness, "I guilty!" cried she, "I am a
stranger to the very thought of guilt; the severest virtue could
not have inspired any other conduct than that which I have
followed, and I never acted anything but what I could have wished
you to have been witness to." "Could you have wished,"
replied Monsieur de Cleves, looking on her with disdain, "I had
been a witness of those nights you passed with Monsieur de
Nemours? Ah! Madam; is it you I speak of, when I speak of a lady