"Mademoiselle, tu es un honnete homme!" ("Mademoiselle, you are an honest man!")
Three generations of Sevignes—father, son, and grandson—in turn loved Ninon during her seventy-five years of heartbreaking. Love for her seemed a hereditary trait in the Sevigne family.
But it was the old Duke of St. Evremond, of all her numberless wooers, for whom Ninon cared most. Though their love was soon dead, they remained loyal and devoted friends to the day of the duke's death. Their correspondence—prettily formal, yet with an undercurrent of true affection—is still extant. And through life Ninon ran always to the duke with every sorrow or perplexity; notably when, at the age of sixty, she discovered her first wrinkle, an all but invisible crease between her brows. In horror she related to St. Evremond the fearful tragedy. With a laugh he banished her dread.
"That is no wrinkle, ma petite," he reassured her. "Love placed it there to nestle in."
The mighty Prince de Conde, the left-handedly royal D'Estrees, La Rochefoucauld (the Machiavelli of France,) and many another of like rank and attainment were proud to count themselves Ninon's worshipers. To no one did she show more favor than to another. King of France or Scarron, the humpback poet—so long as they could amuse her, Ninon gave no thought to their titles or wealth or name. To her, one was as good as another. To none did she give fidelity. Nearly all of them she treated outrageously. Yet of them all, only one was ever driven away by her caprices before she was fully ready to dismiss him.
That sole exception was the gallant Comte de Fiesque, who, for a brief space of time, held her wandering heart and thoughts. Ninon as a rule was not quarrelsome. But she and De Fiesque were as flint and steel. Their affair was one fierce series of spats and disputes that blazed out at last in a pyrotechnic row.
As a result of this climax quarrel, De Fiesque scuttled away in red wrath, vowing that he was forever and ever done with so ill-tempered and cranky a woman as Ninon de L'Enclos.
Ninon was aghast. Paris was aghast. France was aghast. The love world at large was aghast. For the first time in her whole hectic life, Ninon de L'Enclos had been deserted—actually deserted! And by a nobody like De Fiesque! She who had snubbed a king, had tired of Condez, had yawned daintily in the half-monarchical face of D'Estrees himself!
It was unbelievable. For an instant her fame as a peerless and all-conquering Wonder Woman threatened to go into partial eclipse. But only for an instant.
De Fiesque, placed during a little hour on a pinnacle of flaring originality, began to receive tenderly reproachful letters from Ninon, beseeching him to come back to her, saying she had been wrong in their dispute, begging his forgiveness—Ninon, to whom princes had knelt trembling!—promising all sorts of meek, womanly behavior if only he would cure her heartbreak by a word of love.