from La Princesse de Cleves

"Je crus que si quelque chose pouvait rallumer les sentiment que vous aviez eus pour moi, c'etait de vous faire voir que les miens etaient changes; mais de vous le faire voir en feignant de vous le cacher, et comme si je n'eusse pas eu la force de vous l'avouer."

(I thought that if anything could rekindle your feelings for me, it was to let you see that mine too had changed, but to let you see this by feigning to wish to conceal it from you, as if I lacked the courage to acknowledge it to you.)


I came across this passage while reading Andre Aciman's "Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere". This passage was extracted from a French novel published anonymously in 1678. Madame de La Fayette was said to have authored "La Princesse de Cleves", one of the very first historical novels in literature.