Ninon de l'Enclos and her century E-Book

Mary C. Rowsell

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

 Anne de L'Enclos was born in Paris in 1615. She was the daughter of Monsieur de L'Enclos, a gentleman of Touraine, and of his wife, a member of the family of the Abra de Raconis of the Orléanois.   It would not be easy to find characteristics more diverse than those distinguishing this pair. Their union was an alliance arranged for them—a  mariage de convenance . Diametrically opposite in temperament, Monsieur was handsome and distinguished-looking; while the face and figure of Madame were ordinary. She was constitutionally timid, and intellectually narrow, devoted to asceticism, and reserved in manner. She passed her time in seclusion, dividing it between charitable works, the reading of pious books, and attendance at Mass and the other services of the Church. Monsieur de L'Enclos, on the other hand, was a votary of every pleasure and delightful distraction the world could afford him. 

Leseprobe

Mary C. Rowsell

Ninon de l'Enclos and her century

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

NINON DE L’ENCLOS AND HER CENTURY

NINON DE L’ENCLOS AND HER CENTURY

BY

M. C. ROWSELL

NINON DE L’ENCLOS.

From an Original Picture given by herself to the Countess of Sandwich and by the present Earl of Sandwich to Mr Walpole 1757

NINON DE L’ENCLOS AND HER CENTURY

CHAPTER I

Birth—Parentage—“Arms and the Man”—A Vain Hope—Contraband Novels—A Change of Educational System—Ninon’s Endowments—The Wrinkle—A Letter to M. de L’Enclos and What Came of it—A Glorious Time—“Troublesome Huguenots”—The Château at Loches, and a New Acquaintance—“When Greek meets Greek”—The Prisoners—“Liberty”—The Shades of Night—Vagabonds? or Two Young Gentlemen of Consequence?—Tired Out—A Dilemma—Ninon Herself Again—Consolation.

Anne de L’Enclos was born in Paris in 1615. She was the daughter of Monsieur de L’Enclos, a gentleman of Touraine, and of his wife, a member of the family of the Abra de Raconis of the Orléanois.

It would not be easy to find characteristics more diverse than those distinguishing this pair. Their union was an alliance arranged for them—a mariage de convenance. Diametrically opposite in temperament, Monsieur was handsome and distinguished-looking; while the face and figure of Madame were ordinary. She was constitutionally timid, and intellectually narrow, devoted to asceticism, and reserved in manner. She passed her time in seclusion, dividing it between charitable works, the reading of pious books, and attendance at Mass and the other services of the Church. Monsieur de L’Enclos, on the other hand, was a votary of every pleasure and delightful distraction the world could afford him. Among them he counted duelling; he was a skilled swordsman, and his rapier play was of the finest. A brave and gallant soldier, he had served the royal cause during the later years of Henri IV., and so on into the reign of Louis XIII. He was a bon vivant, and arms and intrigue, which were as the breath of life to him, he sought after wherever the choicest opportunities of those were likely to be found.

Notwithstanding, the rule of life-long bickering and mutual reproach attending such ill-assorted unions, would seem to be proved by its exception in the case of Ninon’s parents; since no record of any such domestic strife stands against them. Bearing and forbearing, they agreed to differ, and went their several ways—Madame de L’Enclos undertaking the training and instruction of Ninon in those earliest years, in the fond hope that there would be a day when she should take the veil and become a nun. Before, however, she attained to the years of as much discretion as she ever possessed, she had arrived at the standpoint of the way she intended to take of the life before her, which was to roll into years that did not end until the dawning of the eighteenth century; and it in no way included any such intention. So sturdily opposed to it, indeed, was she, that it irresistibly suggests the possibility of her being the inspiration of the old song—“Ninon wouldn’t be a nun”—

“I shan’t be a nun, I won’t be a nun,

I am so fond of pleasure that I won’t be a nun!”

For Ninon was her father’s child; almost all her inherited instincts were from him. The endeavours of Madame de L’Enclos failed disastrously. The monotony and rigid routine of the young girl’s life repelled the bright, frank spirit, and drove it to opposite extreme, resulting in sentiments of disgust for the pious observances of her church; and taken there under compulsion day in, day out, she usually contrived to substitute some plump little volume of romance, or other light literature, at the function, for her Mass-book and breviary, to while away the tedium.

In no very long time Monsieur de L’Enclos, noting the bent of his daughter’s nature, himself took over her training. He carried it on, it is scarcely necessary to say, upon a plane widely apart from the mother’s. A man of refined intellect, he had studied the books and philosophy of the renaissance of literature; and before Ninon was eleven years old, while imbuing her with the love of reading such books as the essays of Montaigne and the works of Charon, he accustomed her to think and to reason for herself, an art of which she very soon became a past-mistress, the result being an ardent recognition of the law of liberty, and the Franciscan counsel of perfection: “Fay ce qu’et voudray.” Ninon possessed an excellent gift of tongues, cultivating it to the extent of acquiring fluently, Italian, Spanish, and English, rendered the more easy of mastery from her knowledge of Latin, which she so frequently quotes in her correspondence.

Her love of music was great; she sang well, and was a proficient on the lute, in which her father himself, a fine player, instructed her. She conversed with facility, and doubtless took care to cultivate her natural gifts in those days when the arts of conversation and causerie were indispensable for shining in society, and she loved to tell a good story; but she drew a distinct line at reciting. One day when Mignard, the painter, deplored his handsome daughter’s defective memory, she consoled him—“How fortunate you are,” she said, “she cannot recite.”

The popular acceptation of Ninon de L’Enclos’ claims to celebrity would appear to be her beauty, which she retained to almost the end of her long life—a beauty that was notable; but it lay less in perfection of the contours of her face, than in the glorious freshness of her complexion, and the expression of her magnificent eyes, at once vivacious and sympathetic, gentle and modest-glancing, yet brilliant with voluptuous languor. Any defects of feature were probably those which crowned their grace—and when as in the matter of a slight wrinkle, which in advanced years she said had rudely planted itself on her forehead, the courtly comment on this of Monsieur de St Evrémond was to the effect that “Love had placed it there to nestle in.” Her well-proportioned figure was a little above middle height, and her dancing was infinitely graceful.

Provincial by descent, Mademoiselle de L’Enclos was a born Parisian, in that word’s every sense. Her bright eyes first opened in a small house lying within the shadows of Notre-Dame, the old Cité itself, the heart of hearts of Paris, still at that time fair with green spaces and leafy hedgerows, though these were to endure only a few years longer. Her occasionally uttered wish that she had been born a man, hardly calls for grave consideration. The desire to don masculine garments and to ride and fence and shoot, and to indulge generally in manly pursuits, occurred to her when she was still short of twelve years old, by which time she was able to write well; and her earliest epistolary correspondence included a letter addressed to her father. It ran as follows:—

“My Very Honoured Father,—I am eleven years old. I am big and strong; but I shall certainly fall ill, if I continue to assist at three masses every day, especially on account of one performed by a great, gouty, fat canon, who takes at least twelve minutes to get through the Epistle and the Gospel, and whom the choir boys are obliged to put back again on his feet after each genuflexion. I would as soon see one of the towers of Notre Dame on the altar-steps; they would move quite as quickly, and not keep me so long from breakfast. This is not at all cheering I can tell you. In the interest of the health of your only child, it is time to put an end to this state of things. But in what manner, you will ask, and how is it to be set about? Nothing more simple. Let us suppose that instead of me, Heaven had given you a son: I should have been brought up by you, and not by my mother; already you would have begun to instruct me in arms, and mounted me on horseback, which would have much better pleased me than twiddling along the beads of a rosary to Aves, Paters, and Credos. The present moment is the one for me to inform you that I decide to be no longer a girl, and to become a boy.

“Will you therefore arrange to send for me to come to you, in order to give me an education suitable to my new sex? I am with respect, my very honoured father,—Your little

Ninon.”

This missive, which Ninon contrived to get posted without her mother’s knowledge, met with her father’s hearty approval. No more time was lost than it took to make her a handsome suit of clothes, of the latest mode, the one bearing the palm for grace and picturesqueness, far and away from all the fashions of men’s attire, speaking for itself in the canvases of Vandyck; and Ninon stands forth in the gallant bravery of silken doublet, with large loose sleeves slashed to the shoulder; her collar a falling band of richest point lace; the short velvet cloak hanging to the shoulder; the fringed breeches meeting the wide-topped boots frilled about with fine lawn; the plumed, broad-brimmed Flemish beaver hat, well-cocked to one side upon the graceful head, covered with waves of dark hair falling to the neck; gauntleted gloves of Spanish leather; her rapier hanging from the richly-embroidered baldric crossing down from the right shoulder—a picture that thrilled the heart of Monsieur de L’Enclos with ecstasy; and when, splendidly mounted, she rode forth, ruffling it gallantly beside him, he was the proud recipient of many a compliment and encomium on the son of whose existence until now nobody had been as much as aware.

These delightful days were destined, however, to come quickly to an end. Fresh disturbances arose with the Huguenots of La Rochelle and Loudun, and Monsieur de L’Enclos was summoned to join his regiment. Ninon would doubtless have liked of all things to go with him; but while this was impossible, she was spared the dreaded alternative of the fat canon and the three Masses a day, by her father accepting for her an invitation from his sister, the Baroness Montaigu, who lived on her estate near Loches, on the borders of the Indre. This lady, a widow and childless, had long been desirous of making the acquaintance of her young niece, and on his way north-west, Monsieur de L’Enclos left Ninon at the château. “And when we have settled these wretched Huguenots,” said Monsieur de L’Enclos, as he bade her farewell, and slipped a double louis into her hands, “I will return for you.”

Madame de Montaigu was a charming lady, of the same spirited, gay temperament as her brother. She received her niece with the utmost kindness, and having been initiated into the girl’s whim for playing the boy, she laughingly fell in with it, and addressed her with the greatest gravity as “my pretty nephew,” introducing to her, a—shall it be said?—another young gentleman, by name François de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac, the son of her intimate friend, the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld. The lad was a pupil at the celebrated Jesuits’ College of La Flêche, founded by Henri IV., and usually spent part of his holidays at the Loches château.

A year or two older than Ninon, Marsillac was a shy and retiring boy, and at first rather shrank from his robustious new companion, who, however, soon contrived to draw him out, putting him on his mettle by pretending to doubt his prowess with sword and rapier, and his skill generally in the noble art of fencing. She challenged him to measure weapons with her, and piqued at the idea of one younger than himself pretending to martial superiority, he cast aside his shyness, and the two falling on guard, clashed and clattered their steel in the galleries and chambers of the house, from morning till night, until the noise grew intolerable, and their weapons were taken away from them, in the fond hope of securing peace and quietness. It was, however, only partially realised; since the enforced idleness of Ninon’s hands suggested the surreptitious annexing of the head forester’s gun, with which she took aim at the blackbirds in the park avenues, and the young does in the forest: and then, seeking further variety, the two manned the pleasure-boat on the lake, and fared into such perilous places, that the voyages became strictly tabooed, and the boat was hidden away.

The constant tintamarre of the pair frequently brought its punishment; and one day, on the occasion of a too outrageous disturbance, they were locked into the library. Books they had no particular mind for that glorious sunshiny morning; still less enjoyable was the prospect of the promised dinner of dry bread and water, and they sat gloomily gazing upon the softly-waving boughs of the trees, and up through the open window into the free blue sky. Being some eighteen feet from the ground, it had not been thought necessary to bar the casement beyond possibility of their trying to escape. The feat would assuredly not so much as suggest itself. Nevertheless, the temptation crept into the soul of Ninon, and she quickly imparted it to Marsillac.

Looking down, they saw that soft green turf belted the base of the wall, and taking hurried counsel, they climbed to the window-sill, and at the risk of their necks, clutching by the carved stonework, and the stout old ivy trails with which it was mantled, they dropped to the ground, and then away they hied by the clipped yew alleys, mercilessly trampling the parterres—away till they found themselves in the forest. Free now as the sweet breeze playing in their hair, they ran on, pranking and shouting, now following the little beaten tracks, now bounding over the brushwood, heedless of the rents and scratches of the thorny tangles; until after some hours, Marsillac’s pace began to drag, and very soon he said he was tired.

“That is no matter,” said Ninon, “we will hire a carriage at the first place we come to”; but the name of that place was not even to be guessed at; inasmuch as they had not the least notion which way they had taken. The great thing was to arrive at last at Tours, where Ninon said they could at once enlist as soldiers. Marsillac was, however, tired—very tired; his legs ached, and he sat down for a little rest, observing rather crossly, in the cynical way which sometimes he had, that talking was all very well; but for one thing they were not big enough for soldiers, and for another, you could not have a carriage without paying for it.

“Of course not,” acquiesced Ninon, proudly producing her double louis. “Can I not pay?” But the hours passed, the sun declined, and not so much as a solitary cottage had presented itself to their eyes, into which a shade of anxiety had crept; and ere long they began to feel certain they saw wolves and lions and bandits lurking in all directions behind the huge black forest tree-trunks, and young Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld had now grown so tired that, he wanted nothing so much as to go to bed. Even supper was a secondary consideration. Still, desperately hungry as they both were, liberty is such a glorious thing; and were they not free?—free as the air that was growing so chilly, and the pale moonlight rays as they broke through some darkening clouds, seemed to make it almost shuddery. These, however, suddenly crossed something white, and though terrifying for the moment, the second glance to which they schooled themselves brought reassurance. The white patch they saw was a bit of a cottage wall pierced by a little lattice, through which gleamed the yellow light of a tallow candle; for the two, creeping close to the panes, peeped in. But noiselessly as they strove to render their movements, the attention of a couple of big dogs of the boule-dogue breed was aroused, to the extent of one of them fastening upon Marsillac’s haut-de-chausses, and he was only induced to forbear and drop off, under the knotty, chastising stick of a man, apparently the master of the house, who turned upon the trembling truants, and bade them clear off for the vagabonds they were. Their mud-stained and torn apparel, rendered more dilapidated in Marsillac’s case, by the dog’s teeth, justified to a great extent the man’s conclusions; but on their asseverating that they were not good-for-nothing at all; but two very well-born young gentlemen who had lost their way, and would be glad to pay generously for a supper, he called his wife, and committing them to her care, bade her entertain them with the best her larder afforded, and to put a bottle of good wine on the table. Then he went out, while an excellent little piece of a haunch of roe-deer—cooking apparently for the supper of the worthy couple themselves—which Dame Jacqueline set before the hungry wanderers, was heartily appreciated by both. Washed down by a glass or two of the fairly good wine, Marsillac grew hopelessly drowsy. Tired out, he wanted to go to bed. “And why not?” said the dame, not without a gleam of malice in her eyes, which had been keenly measuring the two—“but I have only one bed to offer you, our own, and you must make the best of it.” She smiled on.

“Not I,” said Ninon, rising from the settle like a giant refreshed—“I am going on to Tours. The moon is lovely. It will be delightful. How much to pay, dame? And a thousand thanks for your hospitality. Come, Marsillac,” and Ninon strode to the door. But the glimpses of the pillows within the shadow of the alcove had been too much for Marsillac, and he had already divested himself of his justaucorps, and jumped into bed.

“And now, my young gentleman, what about you?” inquired Jacqueline of the embarrassed Ninon, who seated herself disconsolately on a little three-legged stool. “Come, quick, to bed with you!”

“No!” said Ninon, “I prefer this stool.”

“Oh, ta! ta! that will never do,” said Jacqueline, who was beginning to heap up a broad old settle with a cushion or two, and some wraps. “Sooner than that, I would sit on that stool myself all night, and give you up my place here beside my—Ah! à la bonne heure! There he is,” she cried, as the heavy footsteps of the master of the house, crunching up the garden path, amid the barking of the dogs, grew audible—“and, as I say, give you up my own place—”

“Ah, mon Dieu! no,” distractedly cried Ninon, tearing off her cloak; and bounding into the alcove, to the side of the already fast asleep Marsillac, she dragged the coverings over her head.

“Well, good-night! Sweet repose, you charming little couple,” laughed on Dame Jacqueline, as she drew the curtains to. “But I’d not go to sleep yet awhile, look you. Some friends of yours are coming here to see you. Ah yes, here they are! This way, ladies.”

And the next moment, Madame de Montaigu and the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld stood within the alcove, gazing down with glances beyond power of words to describe.

Dragged by the two ladies from their refuge, Marsillac was hustled into his garments, but Ninon was bidden to leave hers alone, and to don the petticoats and bodice which the baroness had brought for the purpose. “No more masquerading, if you please,” said her aunt, in tones terrible with indignation and severity, “while I have you under my charge. Now, quick, home with you!”

And home they were conducted, disconsolate, crestfallen, arriving there in an extraordinarily short space of time; for the château lay not half a league off, and the two runaways, who had imagined that the best part of Touraine had been covered by them that fine summer day, discovered that the mazes of the forest paths had merely led them round and about within hail of Loches, and Dame Jacqueline and her husband had at once recognised them. The man had then hastened immediately to the château, and informed the ladies, to their indescribable relief, about the two good-for-nothings; for the hue and cry after Mademoiselle Ninon and young Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld had grown to desperation as the sun westered lower and lower.

Ninon wept tears of chagrin and humiliation at the penalty she had to pay of being a girl again; but Marsillac’s spirits revived with astonishing rapidity. He even seemed to be glad at the idea of his fellow-scapegrace being merely one of the weaker and gentler sex, and in her dejection he was for ever seeking to console her. “I love you ever so much better this way, dear one,” he was constantly saying. “Ah, Ninon, you are beautiful as an angel!”

But alas! for the approach of Black Monday, and the holidays ended, Marsillac had to go back to school.

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER II

Troublesome Huguenots—Madame de L’Enclos—An Escapade, and Nurse Madeleine—Their Majesties—The Hôtel Bourgogne—The End of the Adventure—St Vincent de Paul and his Charities—Dying Paternal Counsel—Ninon’s New Home—Duelling—Richelieu and the Times.

The attack upon La Rochelle, and the incessant Huguenot disturbances generally, detained Monsieur de L’Enclos almost entirely away from Ninon, who remained at Loches in the care of her aunt. From time to time he paid flying visits to Loches—one stay, however, lasting many months, enforced by a severe wound he had received. This period he spent in continuing the instruction of his daughter, on the plan originally mapped out, of fitting her to shine in society. The course included philosophy, languages, music, with his special objections to the matrimonial state—engendered, or at least aggravated by his own failure in the search after happiness along that path. Far better, undesirable as he held the alternative, to be wedded to cloistered seclusion than any man’s bride; and well knowing Ninon’s horror of a nun’s life, he left her to argue out the rest for herself in her own logical fashion; and there is no doubt that the whole of her future was influenced by the views he then inculcated. A modest decorum and sobriety of bearing were indeed indispensable to good breeding; but carpe diem was the motto of Monsieur de L’Enclos, as he desired it to be hers; and every pleasure afforded by this one life, certainly to be called ours, ought to be enjoyed while it lasted; and unswervingly, to the final page of her long record, Ninon carried out the comfortable doctrine.

At seventeen years of age, she was perfectly equipped. Beautiful and highly accomplished, amiable and winning, and though always well dressed, troubling vastly little over the petty fripperies and vanities ordinarily engrossing the female mind, she appears to have gained the commendation and affection of her aunt, who parted from her with great regret, when the failing health of Madame de L’Enclos necessitated Ninon’s departure from Loches, to go to Paris, where the invalid was residing.

Monsieur de L’Enclos fetched Ninon himself from Loches, and in a day or two she was by her mother’s couch. Madame de L’Enclos received her with affection, and affectionately Ninon tended her, going unmurmuringly through the old courses of religious reading and observance, even to renewing acquaintance with the gouty canon in Notre-Dame; but the invalid’s chamber was triste and monotonous, and now and again Ninon effected a few hours’ escape from it, ostensibly for the purpose of attending Mass or Benediction, or some service at one or other of the neighbouring churches. One of them, St Germain l’Auxerrois, was of special interest to Ninon, by reason of neighbouring the hotel of Madame de la Rochefoucauld; and she one day interrogated the guardian of the porte cochère, in the hope of learning some news of Marsillac, whom Time’s chances and changes had entirely removed from her ken; but whose memory endured in her heart; for she had been very sincerely attached to him. The Suisse informing her that he very rarely came to Paris, the philosophical mind of Ninon soon turned for consolation elsewhere. On this plea of devout attendance at church, Ninon was freely permitted leave of absence from the sick room, duennaed by her old nurse, Madeleine, who, however, frequently permitted herself to be dropped by the way, at a small house of public entertainment, above whose door ran the following invitation to step inside:—

“If of dyspepsia you’ve a touch,

Ache of tooth, or head, or such,

There’s nothing like a nip, you see,

Of my delicious Eau de Vie.”

On one of these occasions, her charge went off in the company of a fairly good-looking and agreeable young gentleman who addressed her, as she halted for an instant at the corner of the Pont Neuf, in terms of mingled respect and admiration. Under his escort, she gathered some conception of the manners and mode of existence in the gay city, and in the course of their first walk together, they ran against two of her cavalier’s friends, who were to be associated intimately with her future—Gondi, the future Cardinal de Retz, and the young Abbé Scarron—Abbé by courtesy, since he never went beyond the introductory degree of an ecclesiastical career. In the company of these three merry companions, she visited the Hôtel Bourgogne, a place which may be described as answering more to the music-halls, than to the theatres of the present time. Its frequenters could dine or sup at its tables, take a turn at tarot or thimblerig, and enjoy a variety entertainment carried out on lines mainly popular. It was a vast edifice, built in the Renaissance style, by Francis I., on the site of the gloomy, fortress-like mansion of Jean Sans Peur; and for a time it had been devoted to the representation of the Passion and Mystery plays, and the performances of the clerks of the Basoche, but grown decadent in these days of Louis XIII. Ninon obtained on her way a passing glimpse of His Majesty as he drove by, describing him “as a man of twenty-five; but looking much older, on account of his morose and taciturn expression, responding to the acclamations of the people only by a cold and ceremonious acknowledgment; while Anne of Austria, who followed in a coach preceded by other carriages, saluted the crowd with gracious smiles and wavings of her white hand.”

Having partaken of a light collation at one of the tables, the party gave attention for a while to the actors on the stage, whose performances were coarse, and not much to Ninon’s taste. Then Gondi and Scarron took leave of the two, and the sequel of the adventure proved a warning to young women endowed with any measure of self-respect, to refrain from making acquaintance with gallants in the street. Fortunately she escaped the too ardent attentions of the man, through the intervention and protection of one of more delicacy and honour. Though this one was quickly equally enthralled, he went about his wooing of the beautiful girl in more circumspect fashion, a wooing nipped in the bud by his death from a wound received a short time later.

In the sombre calm of the invalid’s room stands out the grand figure of St Vincent de Paul, bringing to her, as to all the afflicted and heavy-laden, the message of Divine love and pity, and impressing Ninon with a lasting memory of reverence for the serene, pure face and gentle utterances of a heart filled with devotion for the Master he served. Never weary in well-doing, seeming ever to see God, his life was one long self-sacrifice and work of charity. Moved to such compassion for the poor convict of the galleys, who wept for the thought of his wife and children, that the good priest took the fetters from the man’s limbs, and bidding him go free and sin no more, wound them upon his own wrists: a heart so thrilled with love and sorrow for the lot of the miserable little forsaken children of the great city, that he did not rest till he had effected the reforms so sorely-needed for their protection.

Hitherto the small waifs and strays had been under the superintendence of the Archbishop of Paris. The charge of them was, however, delegated to venal nurses, who would frequently sell them for twenty sous each. On fête and red-letter days, it had for long been a custom to expose the little creatures on huge bedsteads chained to the pavement of Notre-Dame, in order to excite the pity of the people, and draw money for their maintenance. St Vincent de Paul was stirred to the endeavour of putting a stop to these scandals; and instituted a hospital for the foundlings. It was situated by the Gate of St Victor, and the work of it was carried on by charitable ladies. The Hospital of Jesus, for eighty poor old men, was another of his good works; while he ministered to the lunatics of the Salpétrière, and to the lepers of St Lazare, within whose church walls he was laid to rest when at last he rendered up his life to the Master he had served; until the all-destroying Terror disturbed his remains: but “his works do follow him.” His compassion alone for the little ones will keep his memory green for all time.

Kneeling at his feet, at her mother’s bidding, the good priest bade Ninon rise, saying that to God alone the knee should be bent. Then he laid his hand on her head, calling down a benediction on her, and praying that she should be protected from the temptations of a sinful world. His words thrilled her powerfully for the time being. She felt moved to pour out all her heart to him, but “Satan,” she says, “held me fast, and would not let me approach God,” and the spell of the saintly man’s influence passed with his presence.

A few days later, Madame de L’Enclos died, calmly, and tended by her husband and her child, leaving at least affectionate respect for her memory. A year later, Monsieur de L’Enclos died. True to the last to his rule of life, the dying words he addressed to his daughter were these—

“My child, you see that all that remains to me in these last moments, is but the sad memory of pleasures that are past; I have possessed them but for a little while, and that is the one complaint I have to make of Nature. But alas! how useless are my regrets! You, my daughter, who will doubtless survive me for so many years, profit as quickly as you may of the precious time, and be ever less scrupulous in the number of your pleasures, than in your choice of them.”

The fortune of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos had been greatly diminished by the reckless extravagances of her father; and conscious, probably, of this error in himself, he was careful to protect her best interests, by purchasing for her an annuity which brought her 8,000 livres annual income. His prodigality was, however, one of the few of his characteristics she did not inherit. On the contrary, she displayed through life a conspicuous power of regulating the business sides of it with a prudence which enabled her to be generous to her friends in need, while not stinting herself, or the ordering of her households, and the entertainment of the company she delighted in; for the réunions and evenings of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos were a proverb for all that was at once charming and intellectual; varied as they were with sweet music, to which her own singing contributed—more notably still, by her performances on the lute, which were so skilful; though by these hangs the complaint that she ordinarily needed a great deal of pressing before she would indulge the company—a curious exception to the ruling of the ways of Ninon, ordinarily so entirely innocent of affectation.

At this time her beauty and accomplishments, united with her fortune, drew many suitors for her hand, and of these there would probably have been many more, but for the certainty she made no secret of, that marriage was not in the picture of the life she had sketched out for herself. Her passion for liberty of thought and action in every aspect, fostered ever by her father, was dominant in her, and not to be sacrificed for the most brilliant matrimonial yoke.

One of her first proceedings was the establishment of a home for herself. It consisted of a handsome suite of rooms in the rue des Tournelles, in the quarter of the Marais, then one of the most fashionable in Paris, and distinguished for the many intellectual and gifted men and women congregating in the stately, red-bricked, lofty-roofed houses surrounding the planted space in whose centre, a little later, was to stand the equestrian statue of Louis XIII. The square had been planned by Mansard, and Ninon’s home—Number 23—had been occupied by the famous architect himself.

A few doors off was the residence of Cardinal Richelieu, and within the convenient distance of a few houses—Number 6—lived Marion Delorme. For years this Place Royale, as it is now called—at one time Place des Vosges—had been, until Mansard transformed it, held an accursed spot, and let go to ruin; for here it was stood the palace of the Tournelles, a favourite residence of Henri II., and in its courtyard took place the fatal encounter between him and the Englishman Montgomery, whose lance pierced through the king’s eye, to his brain, and caused his death. Catherine de Médicis, in her grief and indignation at the tragic ending of that day’s tilt, caused the palace to be razed to the ground; but the old associations clung to the place, for it became the favourite spot for the countless duels which the young bloods and others were constantly engaging in; until Richelieu put an almost entire stop to them by his revival of the summary law against the practice, whose penalty was death by decapitation. The great cardinal’s ruling was not to be evaded, and several men of rank suffered death upon the scaffold for disobeying it.

Away beyond the St Antoine Gate at Picpus, Ninon established another dwelling for herself, in which it was her custom to rusticate during the autumn.

Beautiful—though in features not faultlessly so—she bore some resemblance to Anne of Austria, the adored of Buckingham, a likeness close enough to admit of the success of a freak played years later, when she contrived to deceive Louis the Great into the notion that the shade of his mother appeared to him, to chide him for certain evil ways. Her nose, like the queen’s, was large, and her beautiful teeth gleamed through lips somewhat full in their curves; her hair was dark and luxuriant, while her intelligent and sympathetic eyes expressed an indescribable mingling of reserve and voluptuous languor, magnetising all, coupled as it was with the charm of her gentle, courteous manner and conversation that sparkled with the wit and sentiment of a mind enriched by careful training and study of the literature of her own time, and of the past. It was her crowning grace that she made no display of these really sterling acquirements, and entertained a wholesome detestation of the pedantry and précieuse taint of the learned ladies mocked at so mercilessly by that dear friend of hers, Molière. Few could boast a complexion so delicately fresh as hers. She stands sponsor to this day to toilette powders and cosmetics. Bloom and poudre de Ninon boxes find place on countless women’s dressing-tables to this hour; but in her own case art rendered little assistance, possibly none at all; except for one recipe she employed daily through her life. The secret of it, sufficiently transparent, was equally in the possession of the beautiful Diana of Poitiers, who also retained her beauty for such a length of years.

For all who list to read, her letter-writing powers stand perpetuated in her published correspondence, and while the theme is almost unvarying—the philosophy of love and friendship—her wit and fancy treat it in a thousand graceful ways. Fickle as she was in love, she was constant in friendship, and the heat of the first, often so startlingly transient, frequently settled down into life-long camaraderie rarely destroyed. While not ungenerous to her rivals in the tender passion, she could be dangerously jealous; but gifted with the saving grace of humour, of which women are said to be destitute, the anger and malice were oftentimes allowed to die down into forgiveness, and perhaps also, forgetfulness. Rearing and temperament set Ninon de L’Enclos apart; even among those many notable women whose intimate she was. Essentially a product of her century, she lived her own life in its fulness. Following ever her father’s counsel, she was at once as boundlessly unrestricted in her observance of that perfect law of liberty to which she yielded obedience, as she was scrupulous in selection. Says Monsieur de St Evrémond of her—“Kindly and indulgent Nature has moulded the soul of Ninon from the voluptuousness of Epicurus and the virtue of Cato.”

And at last, after an interval of six years, Ninon and Marsillac met again. It was in the salon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, beautiful, sought after, already the centre of an admiring circle, the talk of Paris, and Monsieur le Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld, already for two or three years a gallant soldier, chivalrous, romantic, handsome with the beauty of intellect, interesting from his air of gentle, cynical pensiveness, ardent in the cause of the queen so mercilessly persecuted by Richelieu, and therefore lacking the advancement his qualities merited, still, however, finding opportunity to indulge in the gallantries of the society he so adorned. Someone has said that few ever less practically recognised the doctrines of Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld’s maxims, than did Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld himself, and the aphorisms have been criticised, and exception has again and again been taken to them, not perhaps altogether unreasonably; but in any case he justified himself of his dictum that “love is the smallest part of gallantry”; for when at last—and it took some time—Marsillac recognised his old scapegrace chum of the Loches château, homage and admiration he yielded her indeed; but it was far from undivided, and shared in conspicuously by her rival, Marion Delorme, a woman of very different mould from Ninon. Like her, beautiful exceedingly, but more impulsive, softer-natured, more easily apt to give herself away and to regret later on. Intellectually greatly Ninon’s inferior, she was yet often a thorn in the side of the jealous Mademoiselle de L’Enclos.

ARMAND JEAN DU PLESSIS Cardinal Duc de Richelieu Né à Paris le 5e 7bre 1585. Mort le 4 Décembre 1642. Paris chez Odieuvre Md d’Estampes Quai de l’Ecole vis à vis la Samarite à la belle Image; C.P.R.

To face page 24.

The times, as a great commentator has defined them, were indeed peculiar. The air, full of intrigue, was maintained by Richelieu at fever-heat, and wheel worked fast and furiously within wheel. There was the king’s party, though the king was little of it, or in it. The iron hand of the Cardinal Prime-Minister was upon the helm. Richelieu, who never stayed in resistance to the encroaching efforts of Spain—in his policy of crushing the feudal strength of the nobility of the provinces—or in annihilating Huguenot power as a political element in the State—saw in every man and woman not his violent partisan, an enemy to France and to the Crown. How far he was justified, how far he could have demanded “Is there not a cause?” stands an open question; but the effect was terrible. The relentless hounding down of the suspected, forms a page of history stained with the blood of noble and gallant men. Richelieu’s crafty playing with his marked victims, chills the soul. They were as ninepins in his hands, lured to their destruction, sprung upon, crushed often when most they believed themselves secure.

Sending de Thou to the scaffold for his supposed complicity in the crime Richelieu fixed on Cinq-Mars, the handsome, insouciant, brilliant young fellow he had himself provided for the king’s amusement, and when the time was ripe, having done him to death by the Lyons headsman upon a superficially-based accusation. Richelieu was dying then. The consciousness of Death’s hand upon his harassed, worn-out frame was fully with him; but no pity was in his heart for Cinq-Mars. It might have been the old rankling jealousy that urged him on, for the stern, inflexible Armand de Richelieu was a poor, weak tool of a creature where women were concerned. “There is no such word as fail,” he was wont to say; yet in his relations with women, and in his gallantries he failed egregiously. No fear of him held back Marion Delorme from the arms of Cinq-Mars, when she yielded to his persuasions to fly with him; and self-love must have been bitterly wounded, when Anne of Austria laughed his advances to scorn. Richelieu was not a lady’s man. Nature had given him a brain rarely equalled, a stupendous capacity and penetration, but she had neglected him personally—meagre, sharp-featured, cadaverous, scantily furnished as to beard and moustache, and lean as to those red-stockinged legs. True, or the mere fruit of cruel scandal, that saraband pas seul he was said to have been duped into performing for the delectation of the queen, will hang ever by the memory of the great Lord Cardinal.