This profound story of a forbidden love that is enflamed and then resisted until it dies an unnatural death takes place in the court of Henry II of France during the last years of his reign (c. 1558). The young heroine of the title enters a society in which the adulterous love affairs of the powerful and beautiful constitute the only important action. Determined to protect the princess from this world even as she introduces her to it, her mother agrees to an early marriage with the Prince of Clèves whom the princess respects but cannot love passionately. She then falls deeply in love with the Duc de Nemours, the most sought after man at court, who returns her favors. Their love is never consummated, nor is it determined by accident or fate; it is both encouraged and resisted in the course of a series of scandalous scenes of intimacy and betrayal that were themselves received as a literary scandal by La Fayette’s own society, not merely because they were regarded as implausible, but because of their evident singularity of purpose. In one scene, Nemours, aware that the Princess is watching, steals a portrait of her belonging to her husband. Nemours watches the Princess’ reaction, noting that she does nothing to intervene. In a second, the Princess confesses to her husband that she is in love with another man, while Nemours, that man, looks on unobserved and listens to her confession. In a third, Nemours, spied on by a servant of her husband, follows the Princess to her country house, where he sees her contemplating a picture in which he is represented. All of these scenes provoke overwhelming and unresolvable turmoil in the Princess but offer the modern reader an experience of compelling narrative and emotional complexity. JP