from seeing those he saluted, he
turned into another walk.

If he had known whom he avoided, with what eagerness would he have
returned? But he walked down the alley, and Madam de Cleves saw him go
out at a back door, where his coach waited for him. What an effect did
this transient view produce in the heart of Madam de Cleves? What a
flame rekindled out of the embers of her love, and with what violence
did it burn? She went and sat down in the same place from which
Monsieur de Nemours was newly risen, and seemed perfectly overwhelmed;
his image immediately possessed her fancy, and she considered him as
the most amiable person in the world, as one who had long loved her
with a passion full of veneration and sincerity, slighting all for her,
paying respect even to her grief, to his own torture, labouring to see
her without a thought of being seen by her, quitting the Court (though
the Court's delight) to come and look on the walls where she was shut
up, and to pass his melancholy hours in places where he could not hope
to meet her; in a word, a man whose attachment to her alone merited
returns of love, and for whom she had so strong an inclination, that
she should have loved him, though she had not been beloved by him; and
besides, one whose quality was suitable to hers: all the obstacles that
could rise from duty and virtue were now removed, and all the trace
that remained on her mind of their former condition was the passion the
Duke de Nemours had for her, and that which she had for him.

All these ideas were new to her; her affliction for the death of her
husband had left her no room for thoughts of this kind, but the sight
of Monsieur de Nemours revived them, and they crowded again into her
mind; but when she had taken her fill of them, and remembered that this
very man, whom she considered as a proper match for her, was the same
she had loved in her husband's lifetime, and was the cause of his
death, and that on his death-bed he had expressed a fear of her
marrying him, her severe virtue was so shocked at the imagination, that
she thought it would be as criminal in her to marry Monsieur de Nemours
now, as it was to love him before: in short, she abandoned herself to
these reflections so pernicious to her happiness, and fortified herself
in them by the inconveniency which she foresaw would attend such a
marriage. After two hours' stay in this place she returned home,
convinced that it was indispensably her duty