CHAPTER VI
Nemesis—Ninon’s Theories—Wits and Beaux of the Salons—Found at Last—“The Smart Set”—A Domestic Ménage—Scarron—The Fatal Carnival—The Bond of Ninon—Corneille and The Cid—The Cardinal’s Jealousy—Enlarging the Borders—Monsieur l’Abbé and the Capon Leg—The Grey Cardinal—A Faithful Servant.
Ninon’s intrigue with the young Marquis de Rambouillet gave great offence to Madame de Rambouillet. It sheds a curious light on the manner of the great world of the time, that the doors of the marquise’s house remained still open to her, yet so they did remain. The justly incensed lady contented herself with soliciting an order from the Court for the young man to rejoin his regiment in Auvergne without delay; and Ninon was left to console herself elsewhere, and to avenge as she might her annoyance at the epigrams showered upon her, not to speak of the severe blame cast upon women of society who were undeterred by any sense of propriety and the convenable—which she was well aware was mainly levelled at herself. All moral considerations aside, the breach of good taste is inconceivable in one who so prided herself, and generally with justice, on the observation of the general laws governing the people of her class. The hospitality of the famous mansion in the rue St Thomas du Louvre, however, was still accorded her, and if it was more chilly than formerly, Ninon consoled herself by enlisting many who frequented the brilliant gatherings, on the side of her easy-going philosophy, and discussing its tenets with amazing frankness.
The women were not many who upheld her arguments; but the men vastly applauded and seconded her sallies against the theory of Platonic love. In her opinion, it was an impossible doctrine, and on such themes she was Madame Oracle, and her beautiful mouth opened to expound, what dog dare bark? Unless indeed it might be the cardinal. “Mademoiselle,” he said, one evening when he was present, as he frequently was, in the Rambouillet salon, and Ninon ventured an observation not quite to his taste, “I never accept lessons, even when they issue from such pretty lips as yours.”
The stately mansion of Rambouillet, with its magnificent grand salon, and blue chamber, the special haunt of the poets, its daintily furnished smaller chambers, and richly-draped alcoves and cosy corners, was only one among many houses entertaining the society of the world which was devoted, or assumed devotion, to art and literature. There were the Saturdays of Madame de Sablé, and notably also the receptions of Mademoiselle Scudéri. Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ own apartments were thronged on her reception nights with the company of talented and famous men and women, though that genial admirer of hers, St Evrémond, once had the temerity to criticise the beauty, or the lack of it, in the ladies of the côtérie. It might, of course, as he said, arise from mere chance; but otherwise it was a mistake; since it suggested the idea that Ninon could not sufficiently prize her own beauty; and on the score of the hidden compliment the audacity was condoned. After the coolness that followed upon Ninon’s liaison with the Marquis de Rambouillet, the society of the salon of the marquise somewhat thinned for awhile; while the salon of the rue des Tournelles was more thronged than ever. The cachet that admitted to all these various assemblies would appear to have been that only of fair breeding and connexions, and some intellectual pretension, though the supply of that was not necessarily very great, since the leaven of would-be wits and of absolute stupidity—the “mostly fools” Carlyle says the world is peopled with—would seem to have been even curiously large. One and all, however, were full of ambition to air the rhymes, and often senseless epigrams and dreary sonnets and conceits, generated in their miserable brains.
Perhaps the only one of this crowd of triflers who is worth recording is the Baron de Miranges. In addition to the fact that he was never known to sit still two consecutive minutes, he was supremely ugly; marked with the smallpox, he squinted, his chin was awry, his nose twisted to one side. He was the first to jest at all these defects. One day he met a man on the Pont Neuf, an entire stranger to him, and halting before him, Miranges, in a sort of transport of satisfaction, gave a joyous cry and threw himself upon the individual’s neck, saying: “Oh, sir! how charmed I am at this meeting, and for what a number of years I have been looking for you!”
“Indeed?” said the other, in a tone of astonishment. “I do not think I have the honour of knowing you.”
“No. Unluckily I have met you much too late; but I look at you, I contemplate you, and I am happy.”
“But why?”
“Yes, yes, indeed,” replied Monsieur de Miranges; “let us embrace each other again. I have always despaired of ever finding a man uglier than myself, but now—yes, you are that man.”