Ninon de Lenclos

“ She was too philosophical to regret the loss of what she did not esteem of any value, and saw Chapelle slipping away from her with tranquillity of mind. It was only during moments of gayety when she abandoned herself to the play of an imagination always laughing and fertile, that she repeated the sacrilegious wish of the pious king of Aragon, who wished that he had been present at the moment of creation, when, among the suggestions he could have given Providence, he would have advised him to put the wrinkles of old age where the gods of Pagandom had located the feeble spot in Achilles. ”

“ Ninon's heart, however, had not lost any of its natural instincts, and she loved her mother sincerely, a trait in her which all Paris learned with astonishment when her mother was taken down with what proved to be a fatal illness.
Madame de l'Enclos, separated from both her husband and daughter, and devoting her life to pious exercises, acquired against them the violent prejudices natural in one who makes such a sacrifice upon the altar of sentiment. The worldly life of her daughter gave birth in her mind to an opinion which she deemed the natural consequence of it. ”

“ Such incidents are far from suggesting the professional prostitute of any age; they are rather the relationships which might exist between men friends. Ninon de Lenclos's character was in many respects far from perfect, but she combined many masculine virtues, and especially probity, with a temperament which, on the whole, was certainly feminine ”

“ At first blush, and to a narrow intellect, an individual woman of the character of Ninon de l'Enclos would seem hopelessly lost to all virtue, abandoned by every sense of shame, and irreclaimable to any feeling of social or private duty. But only at first blush, and to the most circumscribed of narrow minds, who, fortunately, do not control the policy of mankind, although occasional disorders here and there indicate that they are endeavouring to do so. ”

“ Let him be considered according to his relations with the other sex, and nobody will believe that he spent so much time with Leontium and with Themista for the sole purpose of philosophizing. But if he loved the enjoyment of voluptuousness, he conducted himself like a wise man. Indulgent to the movements of nature, opposed to its struggles, never mistaking chastity for a virtue, always considering luxury as a vice, he insisted upon sobriety as an economy of the appetite, and that the repasts in which one indulged should never injure him who partook. ”

“ Mind you, Helen was no love-sick girl to be swept off her feet by an impetuous wooer with spun-gold hair and a Romeo manner. When Paris stole her from Menelaus and married her, she was forty years old. But, like Ninon de Lenclos and Diane de Poictiers and other of the world's true super-women, age had no power to mar her. ”

“ Party politics raged around Ninon, her "Birds" being men of high rank and leaders with a large following. They were all her dearest friends, however, and no matter how strong personal passion was beyond her immediate presence, her circle was a neutral ground which no one thought of violating. It required her utmost influence and tenderness, however, to prevent outbreaks, but her unvarying sweetness of temper and disposition to all won their hearts into a truce for her sake. ”

“ Ninon de l'Enclos was of the order of the French "hetaerae," and, as by her beauty and her talents, she attained the first rank in the social class, her name has come down to posterity with those of Aspasia and Leontium, while the less distinguished favorites of less celebrated men have shared the common oblivion, which hides from the memory of men, every degree of mediocrity, whether of virtue or vice. ”

“ She will also know that I am not so frivolous as she imagined, and I believe her just enough to form hereafter another idea of Ninon than the one she has heretofore had of her, for I am not ignorant of the fact that she does not speak of me much to my advantage. But her injustice will never influence my friendship for you. I am philosophic enough to console myself for not securing the commendation of people who judge me without knowing me. ”

“ Imbibing such philosophy from her earliest infancy, the father taking good care to press them deep into her plastic mind, it is not astonishing that Ninon should discard the more distasteful fruits to be painfully harvested by following her mother's tuition, and accept the easily gathered luscious golden fruit offered her by her father. Like all children and many adults, the glitter and the tinsel of the present enjoyment were too powerful and seductive to be resisted, or to be postponed for a problematic pleasure. ”

“ This was more than Ninon could bear with equanimity—a lover with so much erudition, and his prosy essays, appealed more to her sense of humor than to her sentiments of love, and he was laughed out of her social circle. This angered the Academician and he thought to revenge himself by means of an epigram in which he charged Ninon with admiring figures of rhetoric more than a sensible academic discourse full of Greek and Latin quotations. It would have proved the ruin of the poor man had Ninon not come to his rescue, and explained to him the difference between learning and love. ”

“ The Abbe Chateauneuf had taught him the trick before he could speak plainly, and Ninon had been so pleased with the wee poet that she left him two thousand francs in her will for the purchase of books. As Ninon insisted on living to be ninety, Voltaire discounted the legacy and got it cashed on dedicating a sonnet to the divine Ninon. In this sonnet Voltaire suggests that a life of virtue conduces largely to longevity, as witness the incomparable Ninon de Lenclos, to which sentiment Ninon filed no exceptions. ”

“ Women had never, before the time of Ninon, exercised their rights of weakness to such an unlimited extent. There was neither honor nor honesty to be found among them. They were common to every man who attracted their fancy without regard to fidelity to any one in particular. The seed sown by the infamous Catherine de Medici, the utter depravity of the court of Charles IX, and the profligacy of Henry IV, bore an astonishing supply of bitter fruit. The love of pleasure had, so to speak, carried every woman off her feet, and there was no limit to their abuses. ”

“ Nothing can be said against them but their singularity. There are no amusements less dangerous than those which do not resemble those generally indulged in by the multitude."
Ninon was pleased with the amiable companion of her old friend. Her figure, her mental attainments, and her talents enchanted her, and Desyvetaux, who appeared in a ridiculous light when she first saw him in his masquerade, now seemed to her to be on the road to happiness. ”

“ Beloved and even idolized on all sides, as an object that could be worshiped without incurring the displeasure of Richelieu, who preferred his courtiers to amuse themselves with women and gallantries rather than meddle with state affairs, and being disposed both through inclination and training to accept the situation, Ninon felt the sentiments of the tender passion, but philosophically waited for a worthy object. ”

“ So cruelly disappointed in a man whom all Paris deemed incorruptibly honest, de Gourville suspected nothing else from Mademoiselle de l'Enclos. It was absurd to hope for probity in a woman of reprehensible habits when that virtue was absent in a man who lived a life of such austerity as the Grand Pénitencier, hence he determined to abstain from visiting her altogether, lest he might hate the woman he had so fondly loved. ”

“ Scarcely had Madame de l'Enclos closed her eyes upon the things of earth, than Ninon conceived the project of withdrawing from the world and entering a convent. The absence of her father left her absolute mistress of her conduct, and the few friends who reached her, despite her express refusal to see any one, could not persuade her to alter her determination. ”

“ When Ninon had reached the age of sixty-five years, there were those among the beauties of the royal court who thought she ought to retire from society and make way for them, but there appeared to be no diminution of her capacity for pleasure, no weakening of her powers of attraction. The legend of the Noctambule, or the little black man, who appeared to Ninon when she was at the age of twenty years, and promised her perpetual beauty and the conquest of all hearts, was revived, and there was enough probability in it to justify a strong belief in the story. ”

“ Mademoiselle de l'Enclos writes about the heart, love, and women. Strange subjects, but no woman ever lived who was better able to do justice to them. In her frame of mind, she could not see men without studying their dispositions, and she knew them thoroughly, her experience extending over a period of seventy-five years of intimate association with men of every stamp, from the Royal prince to the Marquis de Sévigné, the latter wearying her to such an extent that she designated him as "a man beyond definition ”

“ For a Saint-Simon and for a Ninon de Lenclos, who incriminate her conduct, there are many less suspicious witnesses who come forward in her favour. “We were all surprised,” says the Intendant Basville, “that any one could unite such virtues, such poverty, and such charms.” M. Lacroix [458] invokes that note transcribed by Conrart, said to have been found in [Pg 242] Fouquet’s casket, and to have been written to him by Madame de Maintenon: “I do not know you enough to love you, and if I knew you perhaps I should love you less. I have always avoided vice, and I naturally hate sin. ”

“ Readers alone thoroughly conversant with the history of the seventeenth century in France, and who have ascertained the amount of corruption, of wickedness, of moral disease, existing at that time in all classes of society, can feel how refreshing it is to meet with a few characters which it is possible to admire without reserve, and which we can hold up as patterns of everything that is praiseworthy, and noble, and good. Whilst we hear of such personages as Ninon de Lenclos, Marion de Lorme and Bussy-Rabutin, we find in the most opposite direction Jacqueline, Qilberte and Blaise Pascal ”

“ It’s a pity. Men don’t like too long women. You and I are just the right height. I think this modern girl by the yard is a mistake. None of the famous women such as Jeanne du Barry and Ninon de Lenclos were very tall. Patricia will make most men look ridiculous.”
“Perhaps Pat doesn’t want to be a Ninon de Lenclos,” suggested Claudia, with a twinkle.
“Nonsense, every woman wants to be a Ninon de Lenclos, if she could have the chance. ”

“ When it came to the art of pleasing and attracting women, we have the word of Cardinal de Retz for it, that he was not always successful. Perhaps it is only inferior minds who possess the art and the genius of seduction.
The intriguing Abbé, in order to bring Ninon under the influence of his master, and to charm her with the great honor done her by a man upon whom were fixed the eyes of all Europe, prepared a series of gorgeous fêtes, banquets and entertainments at the palace at Rueil. But Ninon was not in the least overwhelmed, and refused to hear the sighs of the great man. ”

“ Philosophy agrees well with spiritual charms. It is not enough to be wise, one must please, and I perceive that you will always please as long as you think as you do.
Few people resist age, but I believe I am not yet overcome by it. I could wish with you, that Madame Mazarin had looked upon life from her own viewpoint, without thinking of her beauty, which would always have been agreeable when common sense held the place of less brilliancy. Madame Sandwich will preserve her mental force after losing her youth, at least I think so. ”

“ It has been said that Ninon's father and mother were as opposite as the Poles in character and disposition, and Ninon was suspended like a pendulum to swing between two extremes, one of which had to prevail, for there was no midway stopping place. It may be that the disciple of heredity, the opponent of environment will perceive in the result a strong argument in favor of his view of humanity. ”

“ She added to great personal beauty, intellectual brilliancy of the highest degree, and dared to write, a learned treatise against the eloquent Theophrastus, thereby incurring the dislike of Cicero, the distinguished orator, and Pliny, the philosopher, the latter intimating that it might be well for her "to select a tree upon which to hang herself." Pliny and other philosophers heaped abuse upon her for daring, as a woman, to do such an unheard of thing as to write a treatise on philosophy, and particularly for having the assurance to contradict Theophrastus. ”

“ In fact Ninon had as tutors the most distinguished men of the age, who vied with one another in embellishing her young mind with all the graces, learning and accomplishments possible for the human mind to contain. Her native brightness and active mind absorbed everything with an almost supernatural rapidity and tact, and it was not long before she became their peer, and her qualities of mind reached out so far beyond theirs in its insatiable longing, that she, in her turn, became their tutor, adviser and consoler, as well as their tender friend. ”

“ The beautiful woman had lived the life of an earnest Epicurean in her own way, regardless of society's conventionalities, and had apparently demonstrated that her way was the best. She had certainly attained a long life, and what was more to the purpose she had preserved her beauty and the attractions of her person were as strong as when she was in her prime. ”