At these words, pronounced in a melancholy and celestial voice, I felt as
though my heart were broken, and burst into tears.

"I pity you, Athenais," she resumed. "Is, then, what I have been told
lightly, and almost in haste, only too certain for you? How is it you
did not expect it? How could you believe him constant and immutable,
after what happened to me?

"To-day, I make no secret to you of it, and I say it with the peaceful
indifference which God has generously granted me, after such dolorous
tribulations. I make no secret of it to you, Athenais; a thousand times
you plunged the sword and dagger into my heart, when, profiting by my
confidence in you, by my sense of entire security, you permitted your own
inclination to substitute itself for mine, and a young man seething with
desires to be attracted by your charms. These unlimited sufferings
exhausted, I must believe, all the sensibility of my soul. And when this
corrosive flame had completely devoured my grief, a new existence grew up
in me; I no longer saw in the father of my children other than a young
prince, accustomed to see his dominating will fulfilled in everything.
Knowing how little in this matter he is master of himself, he who knows
so well how to be master of himself in everything to do with his numerous
inferiors, I deplored the facility he enjoys from his attractions, from
his wealth, from his power to dazzle the hearts which he desires to move
and subdue.

"Recognise these truths, my dear Marquise," she added, "and gain, for it
is time, a just idea of your position. After the unhappiness I felt at
being loved no longer, I should have quitted the Court that very instant,
if I had been permitted to bring up and tend my poor children. They were