Ninon de l'Enclos and her century

by Mary C. Rowsell

Sometimes the wit carried a more flattering note, and once when disgrace shadowed him at Court for having appeared in the Sun-King’s presence in a pourpoint of a fashion not quite up to latest date, he said to His Majesty—“Sire, away from you, one is not merely unhappy: one also becomes ridiculous.” The conceit wiped away St Evrémond’s disfavour. He was a friend of several of the other renowned soldiers of his time, Turenne among them. It was one of Condé’s great delights to be read to by St Evrémond. The duke took pleasure in the lighter classics. Petronius had its attractions for him, as it had for the society generally of the time; but he would have none of Rabelais, finding the grossness of the Curé of Meudon intensely distasteful, and refusing to listen to the adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel and Grandgousier, and all their tribe, he insisted on the book being thrown aside. The merry romances of Petronius, or, at least, attributed to that “Elegantiæ Arbiter” of a pagan court, while ill adapted as milk for babes, as perhaps even for the more advanced in years, were not soiled with the lowermost grossness of the Christian man’s pen, and they were not without appeal to the students of the classic literature opened up by the Renaissance, even as the milder licence of Boccaccio charmed.

Truly, if the times were peculiar, it cannot be said of them that they were stagnant; and in movement and activity, the present century bears them some sort of comparison; though beyond this the parallel fails, to the winning of the days of Ninon. Autres temps, autres mœurs, and while there may be more veneer of morality in these present years of grace than then, the question remains whether the sense of it is deeper and more widely observed. It is one, however, outside the limits of these pages. Only that the aroma and delicacy of educated social intercourse do not permeate society as in that time is undoubted. Of course the impression existing in some minds of the widespread canker of profligacy and licentiousness then openly prevailing, is perverting of facts, since punctilio and the Court etiquette of the most punctilious of monarchs would not, and could not, have countenanced it. Such licence was indulged in by, and confined, as it is now, to a certain section of the “smart” community, and this possibly no such narrow one; but at least it was veiled then by certain elements of good taste, and some womanly graces now far to seek. Not then, as now, the motor craze made existence uglier; then as not now, the bold, inane stares and painted faces of many of the gentler sex frequenting the highways and byways, were mostly screened by masks, and an awkward gait was mantled. Some cultivation of expression, and a little more sense, if not wit, graced the tongues now devoted to slang and the misuse of words which hang about the higher education; while the clamour of ill-advised women without doors was unknown. The comments of a recent French writer on the charm of life in those past days, are too valuable to be laid aside unrecorded. “The keen intellects of the time,” he writes, “caught a glimpse of everything, desired everything, and grasped eagerly at every new idea. Only those,” he goes on to say, quoting Talleyrand, “could realise the joy of being alive. The childish present-day philosophy of optimism and effort fails to lend life a charm it never knew before. The most insignificant gallant of the Court of Louis experienced more varied sensations than any rough-rider or industrial king has ever been able to procure for himself.” Admittedly, the evils of the time cried aloud for redress of wrongs which were all to be washed away later by the river of blood; but these had been more ameliorated than aggravated by the scholarship of thoughtful writers. Wit, and the sense of beauty and delicacy of expression, carried, not unfrequently it is true, to affectations and absurdity, was the order of the day, binding men and women in links of an intellectual sympathy, whose pure gold was unalloyed by baser metal. Those réunions in the salons of the great ladies, must have been delightful, thronged as they were with distinguished men, and with women, many of them beautiful, spirituelle, or both. But for the sparkle of true wit, the music of sweet voices, the ripple of verse and epigram, the popularity of those gatherings would not have been so long maintained. The atmosphere of them was sweet with the lighter learning of old Rome and Greece, and the gaiety of graceful modern rhymes, or the sentiment of the latest sonnet. The passing of centuries had now left far behind the barbaric clash of warfare, and widened the old limitations of mediævalism and Scholasticism. From the hour the cruel knife of Ravaillac stilled the noble heart of the great Henri, the times had ripened to the harvest of a literature resplendent with promise of illustrious names.

Ever zealous for the glory of France, Richelieu founded the Académie Française; and later the college of the Sorbonne, where now he lies magnificently entombed, was rebuilt by him, and devoted to its old purpose of a centre of learning; and as of old, and as ever, men thronged from near and from afar to Paris for the study of art and learning, and to pay such homage to the modern Muses and enjoy their smiles, as good fortune might allow.

Amid such environment it was, that Ninon embarked upon the stream of the life she had elected to follow, hoping to pass, as indeed she did, through the years serenely and in fair content. If now and again some minor questions of spirit troubled her—conscience it could scarcely be called, since by the lights she had chosen to guide her, conscience could hardly be reproachful—it was but passingly. Yet the tale goes of the visits of a Man in Black, a most mysterious personage, who at his first interview, when she was about eighteen years old, brought her a phial containing a rose-coloured liquid, of which a little, a mere drop, went a very long way. It was the recipe for prolonged youthfulness, and certainly must have been very efficacious. It was, he said, to be mixed with a great deal of pure water, quite as much as a good-sized bath would contain—and a bath of pure water is, of course, in itself a very healthful sort of thing. Many a year went by before the Man in Black—or one so like him as to be his very double—came again, and Ninon was prone to shrink at the remembrance of him. When he did come, it was to inform her that some years of this life still lay before her; and then for the third time that Man in Black presented himself, and—But the cry is a far one to seventy years hence, and during that time, as far as Ninon was concerned, he remained in his own place, wherever that might be; and if, after all, he had been but a dream, in any case the shadow of his sable garb does not appear to have been very constantly cast upon the mirror of her existence. That was bright with love and friendship, the love and friendship of both sexes, and truly if in love she was frankly fickle à merveille, in friendship she was constant and unchanging. Ever following the dying parental counsel, she was fastidious in the choice of the aspirants to her favours. In her relations with women and men alike, honest and honourable and full of a kindly charm which made her exceptionally bonne camarade. It was small wonder that the salon of Mademoiselle Ninon de L’Enclos was a centre of foregathering greatly sought after.

CHAPTER IV

A “Delicious Person”—Voiture’s Jealousy—A Tardy Recognition—Coward Conscience—A Protestant Pope—The Hôtel de Rambouillet—St Evrémond—The Duel—Nurse Madeleine—Cloistral Seclusion and Jacques Callot—“Merry Companions Every One”—and One in Particular.

Six years had passed since as girl and boy Ninon and Marsillac had parted at Loches. At sixteen years old he had entered the army, and was now Monsieur le Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld, returned to Paris invalided by a serious wound received in the Valtellina warfare. Handsome, with somewhat pensive, intellectual features, chivalrous and amiable, he was “a very parfite gentle knight,” devoted to the service of the queen, which sorely interfered with his military promotion: devotion to Anne of Austria was ever to meet the hatred of the cardinal, and to live therefore in peril of life.

The daring young hoyden of Loches was now a graceful, greatly admired woman of the world, welcomed and courted in the ranks of the society to which her birth entitled her.