LIFE, LETTERS
AND
EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY
OF
NINON
DE L'ENCLOS
The Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century
ROBINSON--OVERTON
1903
CONTENTS
LIFE OF NINON DE L'ENCLOS
CHAPTER I
Ninon de l'Enclos as a Standard
CHAPTER II
Considered as a Parallel
CHAPTER III
Youth of Ninon de l'Enclos
CHAPTER IV
The Morals of the Period
CHAPTER V
Ninon and Count de Coligny
CHAPTER VI
The "Birds" of the Tournelles
CHAPTER VII
Effect of Her Mother's Death
CHAPTER VIII
Her Increasing Popularity
CHAPTER IX
Ninon's Friendships
CHAPTER X
Some of Ninon's Lovers
CHAPTER XI
Ninon's Lovers (Continued)
CHAPTER XII
The Villarceaux Affair
CHAPTER XIII
The Marquis de Sévigné
CHAPTER XIV
A Family Tragedy
CHAPTER XV
Ninon's Bohemian Environments
CHAPTER XVI
A Remarkable Old Age
LETTERS TO THE MARQUIS DE SÉVIGNÉ
INTRODUCTION TO LETTERS
I--A Hazardous Undertaking
II--Why Love Is Dangerous
III--Why Love Grows Cold
IV--The Spice of Love
V--Love and Temper
VI--Certain Maxims Concerning Love
VII--Women Expect a Quid Pro Quo from Men
VIII--The Necessity for Love and Its Primitive Cause
IX--Love Is a Natural Inclination
X--The Sensation of Love Forms a Large Part of a Woman's Nature
XI--The Distinction Between Love and Friendship
XII--A Man in Love Is an Amusing Spectacle
XIII--Vanity Is a Fertile Soil for Love
XIV--Worth and Merit Are Not Considered in Love
XV--The Hidden Motives of Love
XVI--How to Be Victorious in Love
XVII--Women Understand the Difference Between Real Love and Flirtation
XVIII--When a Woman Is Loved She Need Not Be Told of It
XIX--Why a Lover's Vows Are Untrustworthy
XX--The Half-way House to Love
XXI--The Comedy of Contrariness
XXII--Vanity and Self-Esteem Obstacles to Love
XXIII--Two Irreconcilable Passions in Woman
XXIV--An Abuse of Credulity Is Intolerable
XXV--Why Virtue Is So Often Overcome
XXVI--Love Demands Freedom of Action
XXVII--The Heart Needs Constant Employment
XXVIII--Mere Beauty Is Often of Trifling Importance
XXIX--The Misfortune of Too Sudden an Avowal
XXX--When Resistance is Only a Pretence
XXXI--The Opinion and Advice of Monsieur de la Sablière
XXXII--The Advantages of a Knowledge of the Heart
XXXIII--A Heart Once Wounded No Longer Plays with Love
XXXIV--Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
XXXV--The Heart Should Be Played Upon Like the Keys of a Piano
XXXVI--Mistaken Impressions Common to All Women
XXXVII--The Allurements of Stage Women
XXXVIII--Varieties of Resistance Are Essential
XXXIX--The True Value of Compliments Among Women
XL--Oratory and Fine Phrases Do Not Breed Love
XLI--Discretion Is Sometimes the Better Part of Valor
XLII--Surface Indications in Women Are Not Always Guides
XLIII--Women Demand Respect
XLIV--Why Love Grows Weak--Marshal de Saint-Evremond's Opinion
XLV--What Favors Men Consider Faults
XLVI--Why Inconstancy Is Not Injustice
XLVII--Cause of Quarrels Among Rivals
XLVIII--Friendship Must Be Firm
XLIX--Constancy Is a Virtue Among Narrow Minded
L--Some Women Are Very Cunning
LI--The Parts Men and Women Play
LII--Love Is a Traitor with Sharp Claws
LIII--Old Age Not a Preventive Against Attack
LIV--A Shrewd But Not an Unusual Scheme
LV--A Happy Ending
* * * * *
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LORD SAINT-EVREMOND AND NINON DE L'ENCLOS
I--Lovers and Gamblers Have Something in Common
II--It Is Sweet to Remember Those We Have Loved
III--Wrinkles Are a Mark of Wisdom
IV--Near Hopes Are Worth as Much as Those Far Off
V--On the Death of De Charleval
VI--The Weariness of Monotony
VII--After the Death of La Duchesse de Mazarin
VIII--Love Banishes Old Age
IX--Stomachs Demand More Attention Than Minds
X--Why Does Love Diminish After Marriage?
XI--Few People Resist Age
XII--Age Has Some Consolations
XIII--Some Good Taste Still Exists in France
XIV--Superiority of the Pleasures of the Stomach
XV--Let the Heart Speak Its Own Language
XVI--The Memory of Youth
XVII--I Should Have Hanged Myself
XVIII--Life Is Joyous When It Is Without Sorrow
Letter to the Modern Leontium
NINON DE L'ENCLOS
LIFE AND LETTERS
INTRODUCTION
The inner life of the most remarkable woman that ever lived is here
presented to American readers for the first time. Ninon, or
Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, as she was known, was the most beautiful
woman of the seventeenth century. For seventy years she held
undisputed sway over the hearts of the most distinguished men of
France; queens, princes, noblemen, renowned warriors, statesmen,
writers, and scientists bowing before her shrine and doing her homage,
even Louis XIV, when she was eighty-five years of age, declaring that
she was the marvel of his reign.
How she preserved her extraordinary beauty to so great an age, and
attracted to her side the greatest and most brilliant men of the
century, is told in her biography, which has been entirely re-written,
and new facts and incidents added that do not appear in the French
compilations.
Her celebrated "Letters to the Marquis de Sévigné," newly translated,
and appearing for the first time in the United States, constitute the
most remarkable pathology of the female heart, its motives, objects,
and secret aspirations, ever penned. With unsparing hand she unmasks
the human heart and unveils the most carefully hidden mysteries of
femininity, and every one who reads these letters will see herself
depicted as in a mirror.
At an early age she perceived the inequalities between the sexes, and
refused to submit to the injustice of an unfair distribution of human
qualities. After due deliberation, she suddenly announced to her
friends: "I notice that the most frivolous things are charged up to
the account of women, and that men have reserved to themselves the
right to all the essential qualities; from this moment I will be a
man." From that time--she was twenty years of age--until her death,
seventy years later, she maintained the character assumed by her,
exercised all the rights and privileges claimed by the male sex, and
created for herself, as the distinguished Abbé de Chateauneauf says,
"a place in the ranks of illustrious men, while preserving all the
grace of her own sex."
LIFE OF NINON DE L'ENCLOS
CHAPTER I
Ninon de l'Enclos as a Standard
To write the biography of so remarkable a woman as Ninon de l'Enclos
is to incur the animadversions of those who stand upon the dogma, that
whoso violates one of the Ten Commandments is guilty of violating them
all, particularly when one of the ten is conventionally selected as
the essential precept and the most important to be observed. It is
purely a matter of predilection or fancy, perhaps training and
environment may have something to do with it, though judgment is
wanting, but many will have it so, and hence, they arrive at the
opinion that the end of the controversy has been reached.
Fortunately for the common sense of mankind, there are others who
repudiate this rigid rule and excuse for human conduct; who refuse to
accept as a pattern of morality, the Sabbath breaker, tyrant,
oppressor of the poor, the grasping money maker, or charity monger,
even though his personal chastity may entitle him to canonization.
These insist that although Ninon de l'Enclos may have persistently
transgressed one of the precepts of the Decalogue, she is entitled to
great consideration because of her faithful observance of the others,
not only in their letter but in their spirit, and that her life
contains much that is serviceable to humanity, in many more ways than
if she had studiously preserved her personal purity to the sacrifice
of other qualities, which are of as equal importance as virtues, and
as essential to be observed.
Another difficulty in the way of establishing her as a model of any
kind, on account of her deliberate violations of the sixth precept of
the Decalogue, is the fact that she was not of noble birth, held no
official position in the government of France, either during the
regency or under the reign of Louis XIII, but was a private person,
retiring in her habits, faithful in her liaisons and friendships,
delicate and refined in her manners and conversations, and eagerly
sought for her wisdom, philosophy, and intellectual ability.
Had she been a Semiramis, a Messalina, an Agrippina, a Catherine II,
or even a Lady Hamilton, the glamor of her exalted political position
might have covered up a multitude of gross, vulgar practices,
cruelties, barbarities, oppressions, crimes, and acts of
misgovernment, and have concealed her spiritual deformity beneath the
grandeur of her splendid public vices and irregularities. The mantle
of royalty and nobility, like dipsomania, excuses a multitude of sins,
hypocrisy, and injustice, and inclines the world to overlook,
disregard, or even condone, what in them is considered small vices,
eccentricities of genius, but which in a private person are magnified
into mountains of viciousness, and call forth an army of well meaning
but inconsistent people to reform them by brute force.
It is time to interpose an impasse to the further spread of this
misapprehension of the nature and consequences of human acts, and to
demonstrate the possibility, in humble walks of life, of virtues worth
cultivating, and to erect models out of those who, while they may be
derelict in their ethical duties, are still worthy of being imitated
in other respects. Our standards and patterns of morality are so high
as to be unattainable, not in the details of the practice of virtue,
but in the personnel of the model. Royal and noble blood permeated
with the odor of sanctity; virtuous statesmanship, or proud political
position attained through the rigid observance of the ethical rules of
personal purity, are nothing to the rank and file, the polloi, who can
never hope to reach those elevations in this world; as well expatiate
upon the virtues of Croesus to a man who will never go beyond his
day's wages, or expect the homeless to become ecstatic over the
magnificence of Nabuchodonosor's Babylonian palace. Such extremes
possess no influence over the ordinary mind, they are the mere
vanities of the conceited, the mistakes of moralists.
The history of Ninon de l'Enclos stands out from the pages of history
as a pre-eminent character, before which all others are stale,
whatever their pretensions through position and grandeur,
notwithstanding that one great quality so much admired in
women--womanly purity--was entirely wanting in her conduct through
life.
While no apology can be effectual to relieve her memory from that one
stigma, the other virtues connected with it, and which she possessed
in superabundance, deserve a close study, inasmuch as the trend of
modern society is in the direction of the philosophical principles and
precepts, which justified her in pursuing the course of life she
preferred to all others. She was an ardent disciple of the Epicurean
philosophy, but in her adhesion to its precepts, she added that
altruistic unselfishness so much insisted upon at the present day.