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La Condesa de Tende
La Condesa de Tende" es un cuento corto de la escritora Marie-Madeleine Piochet de la Vergne, condesa de La Fayette, mas conocida con el nombre de Madame de La Fayette (16 de marzo de 1634, Paris - 25 de mayo de 1693). Esta obra fue publicada postumamente en 1718 como un homenaje a esta insigne escritora francesa. Este cuento romantico cuenta la historia de la senorita de Strozzi, hija del mariscal y pariente cercana de Catherine de Medicis, se desposo el primer ano de la regencia de esta reina con el conde de Tende, de la casa de Saboya, rico, bien constituido, el cortesano que vivia con mayor esplendor, y mas propio a hacerse estimar que amar. No obstante, su esposa lo amo en un primer momento con pasion; era muy joven; el no la considero sino como a una nina, y muy pronto estuvo enamorado de otra. La condesa de Tende, viva y de temperamento italiano, se puso celosa; no tenia reposo ni se lo daba a su marido; el evito su presencia y dejo de vivir con ella como un hombre vive con su mujer. El final de esta hermosa obra es inesperado. El lector experimentara varios sentimientos al mismo tiempo!!!
34 pages, Paperback
First published July 3, 2014
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About the author
Madame de La Fayette
235 books137 followersMarie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette
Christened Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, she was born in Paris to a family of minor but wealthy nobility. At 16, de la Vergne became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage would lead her to join the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, had died a year before, and the same year her mother married Renaud de Sévigné, uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who would remain her lifelong intimate friend.
In 1655, de la Vergne married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. She accompanied him to country estates in Auvergne and Bourbonnais although she made frequent trips back to Paris, where she began to mix with court society and formed her own successful salon. Some of her acquaintances included Henrietta of England, future Duchess of Orleans, who asked La Fayette to write her biography; Antoine Arnauld; and the leading French writers Segrais and Huet. Earlier on, during the Fronde, La Fayette had also befriended the Cardinal de Retz.
Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, La Fayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. From 1665 onwards she formed a close relationship with François de La Rochefoucauld, author of Maximes, who introduced her to many literary luminaries of the time, including Racine and Boileau. 1669 saw the publication of the first volume of Zaïde, a Hispano-Moorish romance which was signed by Segrais but is almost certainly attributable to La Fayette. The second volume appeared in 1671. The title ran through reprints and translations mostly thanks to the preface Huet had offered.
Marie de LaFayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678)
La Fayette's most famous novel was La Princesse de Clèves, first published anonymously in March 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype of the early psychological novel.
The death of La Rochefoucauld in 1680 and her husband in 1683 led La Fayette to lead a less active social life in her later years. Three works were published posthumously: La Comtesse de Tende (1718), Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre (1720), and Memoires de la Cour de France (1731).
Christened Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, she was born in Paris to a family of minor but wealthy nobility. At 16, de la Vergne became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage would lead her to join the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, had died a year before, and the same year her mother married Renaud de Sévigné, uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who would remain her lifelong intimate friend.
In 1655, de la Vergne married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. She accompanied him to country estates in Auvergne and Bourbonnais although she made frequent trips back to Paris, where she began to mix with court society and formed her own successful salon. Some of her acquaintances included Henrietta of England, future Duchess of Orleans, who asked La Fayette to write her biography; Antoine Arnauld; and the leading French writers Segrais and Huet. Earlier on, during the Fronde, La Fayette had also befriended the Cardinal de Retz.
Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, La Fayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. From 1665 onwards she formed a close relationship with François de La Rochefoucauld, author of Maximes, who introduced her to many literary luminaries of the time, including Racine and Boileau. 1669 saw the publication of the first volume of Zaïde, a Hispano-Moorish romance which was signed by Segrais but is almost certainly attributable to La Fayette. The second volume appeared in 1671. The title ran through reprints and translations mostly thanks to the preface Huet had offered.
Marie de LaFayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678)
La Fayette's most famous novel was La Princesse de Clèves, first published anonymously in March 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype of the early psychological novel.
The death of La Rochefoucauld in 1680 and her husband in 1683 led La Fayette to lead a less active social life in her later years. Three works were published posthumously: La Comtesse de Tende (1718), Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre (1720), and Memoires de la Cour de France (1731).
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 21, 2025
She felt sure that shame was the most violent of all passions.
Love conquers all. Filling his casualties with uncontrollable desire, Amor’s power doesn’t unequivocally concide with romantic bliss. Unhappiness, loneliness, unrequited love, adultery, crimes of passion, the breaking up of marriages, the price one has to pay for a few volatile instances of rapture can be immeasurably high. Ce qu’il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson... (Louis Aragon)
Love is a perilous emotion. Whatever the strengths of the human mind, they are no match for its potency and unruliness, morally nor intellectually: reason, science, art, fame, power or religion – all fail miserably.
(Caravaggio, Amor Vincit Omnia)
The plot of this succinct story, published posthumously in 1724, is simple and dramatic. A married noble woman of great beauty, the countess of Tende, falls hopelessly in love with the Knight of Navarre, a handsome but not very fortunate man (evidently both are beautiful, who would believe in passionate love between ugly ducklings?). Fruitlessly attempting to fight her own feelings, she helps him into a well-heeded marriage with a prosperous and beauteous widow. However far for frivolous, the countess and the knight are not able to resist their feelings of mutual attraction and we swiftly see them heading for an unhappy ending of this ill-fated love.
Madame de la Fayette meticulously dissects the psychological effects of this overwhelming passion on her heroine who is desperately tormented by her illegitimate love and crushed by shame and repentance. Love is experienced as a dark passion begetting only disgrace and remorse, a passion inexorably growing into an a destructive force.
In this courtly world of elegance and refinement, individual sentiments and lives perish. De la Fayette’s moral drama chillingly illustrates the double moral standards for men and women regarding to adultery.
Romance and bliss wasn’t commonly found in wedlock for the aristocratic social milieu of the writer, but outside of it – at best love was an unintended, pleasant by-product of the arranged marriage. By problematizing the absence of love in aristocratic marriage, Madame de la Fayette can be seen as a precursor of the soon to come dominating bourgeois morals of the ideal of the love marriage.
As Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634 – 1693), also known as Madame de La Fayette is most famous for La Princesse de Cleves, considered as one of the earliest and finest psychological novels and therefore a milestone in the history of the novel, this novella can be regarded as a leg up to her celebrated masterpiece. Brief it is, this story also encourages this reader to ruminate and read further on the role and place of love and marriage in society throughout the ages.
Madame de la Fayette’s objective dealing with the double standards concerning adultery reminded me of some chilling anecdotes in the history of family law. The plight of adulterous women in the 17th century might have been less harsh than with the Romans (death sentence for the woman; impunity for the husband ) or under Germanic Law (in the presence of the family of both spouses the adulterous woman was shaved off her hair, stripped naked and finally chased out of the house. The adultery of the man got no consequences), I remember well my outrage hearing that in Belgium the discriminatory treatment of male and female adultery in penal law (both in punishment and in definition of the concept of adultery) - was only abolished in 1974 (before getting wholly decriminalized in 1987): “La femme convaincue d’adultère sera condamnée à un emprisonnement de trois mois à deux ans. Le mari convaincu d’avoir entretenu une concubine dans la maison conjugale sera condamné à un emprisonnement d’un mois à un an.”
The road to equal treatment was a long and bumpy one, dear ladies.
An English translation of The Countess of Tende can be found here (tranlated by Christy Sheffield Sanford). The French original can be found here.
For a musical accompaniment dating from the time when this novella was written, you could listen to Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Bourrée du Mariage Forcé(1664) (perhaps my favourite French baroque composition to dance to, together with his Marche pour la Cérémonie turque).
Love conquers all. Filling his casualties with uncontrollable desire, Amor’s power doesn’t unequivocally concide with romantic bliss. Unhappiness, loneliness, unrequited love, adultery, crimes of passion, the breaking up of marriages, the price one has to pay for a few volatile instances of rapture can be immeasurably high. Ce qu’il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson... (Louis Aragon)
Love is a perilous emotion. Whatever the strengths of the human mind, they are no match for its potency and unruliness, morally nor intellectually: reason, science, art, fame, power or religion – all fail miserably.
(Caravaggio, Amor Vincit Omnia)
The plot of this succinct story, published posthumously in 1724, is simple and dramatic. A married noble woman of great beauty, the countess of Tende, falls hopelessly in love with the Knight of Navarre, a handsome but not very fortunate man (evidently both are beautiful, who would believe in passionate love between ugly ducklings?). Fruitlessly attempting to fight her own feelings, she helps him into a well-heeded marriage with a prosperous and beauteous widow. However far for frivolous, the countess and the knight are not able to resist their feelings of mutual attraction and we swiftly see them heading for an unhappy ending of this ill-fated love.
Madame de la Fayette meticulously dissects the psychological effects of this overwhelming passion on her heroine who is desperately tormented by her illegitimate love and crushed by shame and repentance. Love is experienced as a dark passion begetting only disgrace and remorse, a passion inexorably growing into an a destructive force.
In this courtly world of elegance and refinement, individual sentiments and lives perish. De la Fayette’s moral drama chillingly illustrates the double moral standards for men and women regarding to adultery.
Romance and bliss wasn’t commonly found in wedlock for the aristocratic social milieu of the writer, but outside of it – at best love was an unintended, pleasant by-product of the arranged marriage. By problematizing the absence of love in aristocratic marriage, Madame de la Fayette can be seen as a precursor of the soon to come dominating bourgeois morals of the ideal of the love marriage.
As Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634 – 1693), also known as Madame de La Fayette is most famous for La Princesse de Cleves, considered as one of the earliest and finest psychological novels and therefore a milestone in the history of the novel, this novella can be regarded as a leg up to her celebrated masterpiece. Brief it is, this story also encourages this reader to ruminate and read further on the role and place of love and marriage in society throughout the ages.
Madame de la Fayette’s objective dealing with the double standards concerning adultery reminded me of some chilling anecdotes in the history of family law. The plight of adulterous women in the 17th century might have been less harsh than with the Romans (death sentence for the woman; impunity for the husband ) or under Germanic Law (in the presence of the family of both spouses the adulterous woman was shaved off her hair, stripped naked and finally chased out of the house. The adultery of the man got no consequences), I remember well my outrage hearing that in Belgium the discriminatory treatment of male and female adultery in penal law (both in punishment and in definition of the concept of adultery) - was only abolished in 1974 (before getting wholly decriminalized in 1987): “La femme convaincue d’adultère sera condamnée à un emprisonnement de trois mois à deux ans. Le mari convaincu d’avoir entretenu une concubine dans la maison conjugale sera condamné à un emprisonnement d’un mois à un an.”
The road to equal treatment was a long and bumpy one, dear ladies.
An English translation of The Countess of Tende can be found here (tranlated by Christy Sheffield Sanford). The French original can be found here.
For a musical accompaniment dating from the time when this novella was written, you could listen to Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Bourrée du Mariage Forcé(1664) (perhaps my favourite French baroque composition to dance to, together with his Marche pour la Cérémonie turque).
May 20, 2016
Zo goed als perfecte novelle over de laagste der menselijke zwakheden: jaloezie.
De gortdroge maar sierlijke stijl bedwelmt, de emoties zwepen op, het leesplezier floreert.
De gortdroge maar sierlijke stijl bedwelmt, de emoties zwepen op, het leesplezier floreert.
June 10, 2020
0,3 estrellas
January 25, 2023
The most scandalous fifteen pages I've read this year :o It began the short story collection I was reading and it wasn't compelling enough to make me want to read the rest of the collection... but it certainly had quite a lot of shock value! (Needless to say I did not read this in French lol). Also now I'm feeling guilty about not reading the rest of the anthology because I never DNF books but new year new me!
December 30, 2022
Citaat : De wens om te verhinderen dat mijn schande naar buiten komt is thans sterker dan mijn wraaklust, op een later moment zal ik bezien welke beslissing ik neem over uw onwaardig lot. Gedraag u alsof u altijd bent geweest zoals u had dienen te zijn.
Review : Mademoiselle De Strozzi trouwt zeer jong met de graaf van Tende, die haar van meet af aan bedriegt met andere vrouwen en nooit tijd voor haar heeft. Ze wordt verliefd op de chevalier van Navarra, van wie ze zwanger raakt; ze trekt zich radeloos terug op het platteland, biecht in een brief aan haar echtgenoot haar ontrouw op en sterft in het kraambed. Het bijzondere van deze (fictieve?) historische novelle schuilt in de enorme densiteit, de censuur van het vrouwelijke en de tragiek van het lot dat vrouwen duidelijker bewijzen aan overspel overhouden dan mannen. Ook kan men in dit werk duidelijk merken dat goddelijke dreigingen met hellevuur de mens niet kon weerhouden zijn gevoelens te beleven.
Madame De La Fayette [1634-1693] is vooral bekend als auteur van La Princesse de Clèves. In haar grotendeels anoniem verschenen oeuvre plaatst zij meestal een tragisch wereldbeeld waarin de vrouw onderdanig is aan de man en wel plaats is voor zijn wellust maar niet voor de hare. Een op en top Franse novelle maar wel geschreven vanuit een vrouwelijke wroeging en zondebesef. George Sand dacht er duidelijk anders over! De novelle werd knap vertaald en uitgegeven in de miniatuurreeks Perlouses.
Review : Mademoiselle De Strozzi trouwt zeer jong met de graaf van Tende, die haar van meet af aan bedriegt met andere vrouwen en nooit tijd voor haar heeft. Ze wordt verliefd op de chevalier van Navarra, van wie ze zwanger raakt; ze trekt zich radeloos terug op het platteland, biecht in een brief aan haar echtgenoot haar ontrouw op en sterft in het kraambed. Het bijzondere van deze (fictieve?) historische novelle schuilt in de enorme densiteit, de censuur van het vrouwelijke en de tragiek van het lot dat vrouwen duidelijker bewijzen aan overspel overhouden dan mannen. Ook kan men in dit werk duidelijk merken dat goddelijke dreigingen met hellevuur de mens niet kon weerhouden zijn gevoelens te beleven.
Madame De La Fayette [1634-1693] is vooral bekend als auteur van La Princesse de Clèves. In haar grotendeels anoniem verschenen oeuvre plaatst zij meestal een tragisch wereldbeeld waarin de vrouw onderdanig is aan de man en wel plaats is voor zijn wellust maar niet voor de hare. Een op en top Franse novelle maar wel geschreven vanuit een vrouwelijke wroeging en zondebesef. George Sand dacht er duidelijk anders over! De novelle werd knap vertaald en uitgegeven in de miniatuurreeks Perlouses.
August 8, 2022
Easily the oldest French text I've read so far though French has changed much less than English in the same space of time so I didn't find it much harder than the material I've already been reading*. La Comtesse de Tende is a very short story about adultery, passion and shame with a surprisingly dark comic streak underlying it that I didn't really expect. An interesting appetizer for when I eventually take up La Princesse de Cleves in the near future.
*That said, this was a hell of a way to discover that "grosse" can also mean pregnant - I was very confused for a little while.
*That said, this was a hell of a way to discover that "grosse" can also mean pregnant - I was very confused for a little while.
February 18, 2023
everybody loves drama. there’s something so scandalous, so forbidden, to want to talk about such subject matter as the one presented. you have a story about forbidden love, but not just any, it involves a woman consumed by love for a man she can’t have, enabling his marriage to another woman, and throw in a pregnancy? it’s the type of hopeless, forbidden despair we love, no matter the time of its release.
December 15, 2023
j’aurai aimé que son enfant survive et qu’iel devienne comme sa mère. son mari n’a pas voulu d’elle quand elle lui a tout donné, il n’a aucun droit de vouloir se venger de son ‘infidélité’ qui n’est que morale
March 5, 2023
It was fine. For uni module
May 2, 2023
there’s truly nothing like princesses cheating on their husband and dying
February 3, 2025
it’s giving bridgerton
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May 18, 2025Read the English translation by Terence Cave which was the part of the volume containing The Princesse de Clèves. The review can be found at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
October 6, 2025
People really dealt with the same things we do now except the stakes were so much higher. Infidelity? Falling for your best friend's crush-turned-husband? Falling pregnant? Death it will be.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews