Scarron was always poor and always importunate, and yet he was "a pleasant prodigy never before seen," he says of himself; rightfully claiming that he was able "to sport with misery and jest in pain." Paralyzed and still a prey to incurable torments, immovable in his armchair except for his nimble fingers, he drove his pen merrily to the making of comedies, tales, pamphlets, and the verse that, like him, was impishly awry with mockery, as if chattered by "a wilderness of monkeys." Letters, too, he wrote in this house, that give us striking glimpses of the man and of his time. In them we discover that "most terribly" was the sanctified slang then for the modern abomination "awfully." Appeals for money make up much of his correspondence, but there is never a hint of a loan in the charming letters to the "belle ange en deuil," Madame de Sévigné; in which he always assures her that she is a dangerous person, and that those who look on her without due care, grow sick upon it immediately, and are not long-lived. Mlle. de Lenclos was a favorite of his, too, and that "charmant objet, belle Ninon," came to sit for hours beside his invalid-chair. She made friends with the young wife, too, but complained that she was "trop gauche" to learn gallantry, and was "vertueuse par faiblesse." The large-minded lady frankly owns: "J'aurais voulu l'en guérir, mais elle craignait trop Dieu." For all that, the friendship then formed between the two women was never broken, and when the widow Scarron came to position and power she offered a place at court to her elder friend; an offer that was refused, for the old lady never grew old enough to change her mode of life. And there is little doubt that the younger woman often looked back with longing to those wretched days that were so happy. She said once, seeing the carp dying of surfeit in the Versailles pond: "Elles regrettent leur bourbe," suggesting that, like them, she suffered from satiety.
Years before his marriage, Scarron had lived with his sister in this same little street of "Twelve Doors," and had grown very fond of the "beau quartier des Marests." He asks: "Who can stay long from the Place Royale?" When he returned to Paris in 1654—having married in 1652, and having made a long stay in Touraine—he came back to his beloved Marais, and took a three-years' lease of this apartment. At its termination the lease was probably renewed, for it is a time-honored tradition that makes this old house the place of his death, on October 14, 1660.
Between fifty and one hundred years later—the exact date is not to be got at—the garret above was crowded with the pet dogs and cats and birds of Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, who lived in filth among them, seldom eating, never washing, always smoking. The big blond dramatist had fallen a victim to poverty and melancholy, after a short career of success on those boards which he stained with the blood of many violent deaths. He had said that, since Corneille had taken heaven for his own and Racine had seized upon earth, he could place his scenes only in hell. He was rescued, and taken from this garret, by the pension obtained through La Pompadour. That great lady was not prompted by any comprehension of the sombre power of his tragedy, but by a desire to wreak her spite against Voltaire by the exaltation of a rival.
Scarron's widow was left in poor case, with only her husband's small pension for support, and this was stopped by Colbert on the death of Anne of Austria, in 1666. That Queen-Mother had endowed an institution for poor girls and sick women, and with these "Hospitalières de la Place Royale," Madame Scarron found shelter, having sold all that she owned. In 1669 she was put in charge of the first child of the King and Madame de Montespan, and we know all the rest, to the secret marriage in 1685. Such of the buildings of the "Hospitalières" as are left now form part of the Hôpital Andral, and their old roofs and dormers and chimneys take our eye above the low wall as we turn into Rue des Tournelles. In this street is the hospital's main entrance, and through its gate we look across the garden, that stretches back to the former entrance in Impasse de Béarn; now opened only to carry out for burial the bodies of those dying in the hospital.
The line of walls along Rue des Tournelles was broken by only a few isolated houses, when François Mansart selected a site here, and put thereon his own dwelling, unpretending as the man himself, in contrast with the grand mansions he had planned for his noble and wealthy clients. This is his modest entrance-court, at No. 28 Rue des Tournelles, and behind it is the simple façade of his hôtel. This building probably formed his entire frontage, or it may have been the corps-de-logis of a more extensive structure, whose two wings reached out toward the street at Nos. 26 and 30. This number 28, whether the central or the entire body of the building, remains in perfect preservation. At Mansart's death, in 1666, it came, along with most of his property, to his sister's son, whom he had adopted, and trained to be the architect known as Jules Hardouin Mansart. He gained position and pay in the royal employ, more by this adoptive name than by his abilities. As Superintendent of Buildings under Louis XIV. he is responsible for most of the horrors of the palace of Versailles, yet the dome of the Invalides proves him to have been capable of less meretricious work.
On taking possession of his uncle's mansion, he had, as sole tenant of his spacious and inviting first floor, Mlle. Anne Lenclos, popularly christened Ninon de Lenclos, then fifty years of age. Her dwelling is the end and object of this short walk, and together with the house from which we started, and the one at which we stopped, it gives us a complete picture of the social doings of the Marais at that period. We are allowed to enter among the men with whom we have come, and we will go in, let us say, with young de Sévigné, who finds his way here frequently, from his pied-à-terre in his mother's house, as his father and his grandfather had found their way to Ninon's abode. Under the stone balcony on the court-front we step up into a goodly hall, from which rises a stone staircase, its outer end finely carved, its steps well worn by many visitors through the years. An admirable medallion looks down from the wall as we mount, and in the rooms above we find carved panels and decorated ceilings, many of them done by Lebrun and Mignard, probably for the fair tenant. They are so carefully kept that canvas covers such of them as are feared to be "trop lestes" for modern eyes, in the modest words of the ancient concierge. Mansart put an excellent façade on his garden-front, and its coupled Ionic columns, and balconies of wrought-iron railings, are all there unmutilated. But the garden, then stretching to Boulevard Beaumarchais, is now hidden under the shops that front on that boulevard.
To these rooms and this garden thronged the same men whom we have seen in the Sévigné and Scudéry salons, and these reunions were as decorous as those, and perhaps somewhat more cheerful and more natural in tone. For, while Ninon had the honor of being enrolled in the "Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses," published in 1661, and while she had been presented at the Hôtel de Rambouillet at the early age of seventeen, she had none of the pretensions nor the ridiculosities of "Les Femmes Savantes." She was absolutely genuine, not ashamed to be natural, quite ready to laugh or to cry with her friends. These friends, drawn to her less by her beauty than by her charm, were held always by her sunny amiability, her quick sympathies, her frank camaraderie. She was the Clarisse of Mlle. de Scudéry's "Clélie;" an enjouée aimable, who never denied herself the indulgence of any caprice of head or of heart. Yet, as she laughingly confessed, while she thanked God every night for the good wits given her, she prayed every morning for better protection against the follies of her heart. It is a faithful portrait that is given in the verse of her day:
"L'indulgente et sage Nature
A formé l'âme de Ninon,
De la volupté d'Épicure,