In a word, I besought and pressed her, but she is still irresolute.  Still, I do not doubt that you will finish by overcoming a resistance which she, herself, already deems very embarrassing.

Well, Marquis, if the anxiety all this has caused you, gives you the time to review what I have been saying to you for several days past, might you not be tempted to believe that I have contradicted myself?  At first I advised you to treat love lightly and to take only so much of it as might amuse you.  You were to be nothing but a gallant, and have no relations with women except those in which you could easily break the ties.  I then spoke to you in a general way, and relative to ordinary women.  Could I imagine that you would be so fortunate as to meet a woman like the Countess, who would unite the charms of her sex to the qualities of honest men?  What must be your felicity?  You are going to possess in one and the same person, the most estimable friend and a most charming mistress.  Deign to admit me to share a third portion of your friendship and my happiness will equal your own.  Can one be happier than in sharing the happiness of friends?

CORRESPONDENCE

BETWEEN

LORD SAINT-EVREMOND

AND

NINON DE L’ENCLOS

When over eighty years
of age

INTRODUCTION

Charles de Saint Denis, Lord of Saint-Evremond, Marshal of France, was one of the few distinguished Frenchmen, exiled by Louis XIV, whose distinguished abilities as a warrior and philosopher awarded him a last resting place in Westminster Abbey.  His tomb, surmounted by a marble bust, is situated in the nave near the cloister, located among those of Barrow, Chaucer, Spenser, Cowley and other renowned Englishmen.

His epitaph, written by the hand of a Briton, is singularly replete with the most eminent qualities, which the great men of his period recognized in him, though his life was extraordinarily long and stormy.  He was moreover, a profound admirer of Ninon de l’Enclos during his long career, and he did much toward shaping her philosophy, and enabling her to understand the human heart in all its eccentricities, and how to regulate properly the passion of love.

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.”

Saint-Evremond always claimed, that his extremely long and vigorous life was due to the same causes which Ninon de l’Enclos attributed to her great age, that is, to an unflagging zeal in observing the doctrines of the Epicurean philosophy.  These ideas appear in his letter to Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, written to her under the sobriquet of “Leontium,” and which is translated and appended to this correspondence.