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Ingenuous Helen was sometimes your role, With her appetites, charms, and all else beside; Sometimes Roman probity wielded your soul, In honor becoming your rule and your guide. Here is a little variety, which I trust will not surprise you: L'indulgente et sage Nature A formé l'âme de Ninon De la volupté d'Epicure Et de la vertu de Caton. Ninon de l'Enclos to Saint-Evremond
During his long exile in England, the two corresponded at times, and the letters here given are the fragments of a voluminous correspondence, the greater part of which has been lost. They are to be found in the untranslated collated works of Saint-Evremond, and are very curious, inasmuch as they were written when Ninon and Saint-Evremond were in their "eighties."
A select society of wits and gallant chevaliers soon gathered around her, and it required influence as well as merit to gain an entrance into its ranks. Among this élite were Count de Grammont, Saint-Evremond, Chapelle, Molière, Fontenelle, and a host of other no less distinguished characters, most of them celebrated in literature, arts, sciences, and war.
If M. d'Olonne were alive and could have read your letters to me, he would have continued to be of your quality with his philosophy. M. de Lauzun is my neighbor, and will accept your compliments. I send you very tenderly, those of M. de Charleval, and ask you to remember M. de Ruvigny, his friend of the Rue des Tournelles. Ninon de l'Enclos to Saint-Evremond
It was Ninon de l'Enclos whose brilliant mentality and intellectual genius formed the minds, the souls, the genius, of such master minds as Saint-Evremond, La Rouchefoucauld, Molière, Scarron, La Fontaine, Fontenelle, and a host of others in literature and fine arts; the Great Condé, de Grammont, de Sévigné, and the flower of the chivalry of France, in war, politics, and diplomacy.
As says Saint-Evremond: "She contents herself with ease and rest, after having enjoyed the liveliest pleasures of life." Although she was never mistress of the invincible inclination toward the pleasures of the senses which nature had given her, it appears that Ninon made some efforts to control them.
To explain in two words to your satisfaction, Marquis. This is what I think of the letter I sent you yesterday: For a woman to profit by the advice of Monsieur de Saint-Evremond it is requisite that she should be affected with only a mediocre fancy, and have excited the passion of love.
What she wrote Saint-Evremond might give rise to the belief that she sometimes regretted her weakness: "Everybody tells me that I have less to complain of in my time than many another. However that may be, if any one had proposed to me such a life I would have hanged myself."
He complained one day to me that hymen and the possession of the beloved object weakened every day, and often destroyed the most tender love. We discussed the subject for a long time, and as I happened to write to Saint-Evremond that day, I submitted the question to him. This is his reply: SAINT-EVREMOND TO MADEMOISELLE DE L'ENCLOS.
Saint-Evremond, in a letter to the Duke d'Olonne, speaks of the sentiment which is incentive to piety: "There are some whom misfortunes have rendered devout through a certain kind of pity for themselves, a secret piety, strong enough to dispose men to lead more religious lives."
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