and necessary—­all ministers of filth, each in his degree, from the secretaries of state to the lowest underlings in office—­clerks of the ordnance, victualing, stamps, customs, colonies, and postoffice, farmers and receivers general, judges and cooks, confessors and every other caterer to the royal appetite.  This was the order of things that Ninon de l’Enclos was contending against, and that she succeeded by methods that must be considered saintly compared with the others, stands recorded in the pages of history.

After Ninon had suffered from the indiscretion of the lover who made public the story of the famous pledge given la Chatre, she lost her fancy for the recreant, and though friendly, refused any closer tie.  He knew that he had done Ninon an injury and begged to be reinstated in her favor.  He was of charming manners and fascinating in his pleading, but he made no impression on her heart.  She agreed to pardon him for his folly and declined to consider the matter further.  Nor would she return to the conversation, although he persisted in referring to the matter as one he deeply regretted.  When he was departing after Ninon had assured him of her pardon, she ran after him and called out as he was descending the stairs:  “At least, Marquis, we have not been reconciled.”

Her good qualities were embalmed in the literature of the day, very few venturing to lampoon her.  Those who did so were greeted with so much derisive laughter that they were ashamed to appear in society until the storm had blown over.

M. de Tourielle, a member of the French Academy, and a very learned man, became enamored of her and his love-making assumed a curious phase.  To show her that he was worthy of her consideration, he deemed it incumbent upon him to read her long dissertations on scientific subjects, and bored her incessantly with a translation of the orations of Demosthenes, which he intended dedicating to her in an elaborate preface.  This was more than Ninon could bear with equanimity—­a lover with so much erudition, and his prosy essays, appealed more to her sense of humor than to her sentiments of love, and he was laughed out of her social circle.  This angered the Academician and he thought to revenge himself by means of an epigram in which he charged Ninon with admiring figures of rhetoric more than a sensible academic discourse full of Greek and Latin quotations.  It would have proved the ruin of the poor man had Ninon not come to his rescue, and explained to him the difference between learning and love.  After which he became sensible and wrote some very good books.

It should be understood that Ninon had no secrets in which her merry and wise “Birds” did not share.  She confided to them all her love affairs, gave them the names of her suitors, in fact, every wooer was turned over to this critical, select society, as a committee of investigation into quality and merit both of mind and body.  In this way she was protected from the unworthy, and when she made a selection, they respected her freedom of choice, carefully guarding her lover and making him one of themselves after the fitful fever was over.  They were all graduates in her school, good fellows, and had accepted Ninon’s philosophy without question.