Let no one be surprised,
If she should be advised
Of the virtue most renowned
In Plato to be found: 
For, counting up her age,
She lived, ’tis reason sound,
With that great personage.

Ninon had no rancor in her heart toward any one, much less against an unsuccessful suitor, hence she only laughed at Chapelle’s effusions and all Paris laughed with her.  The truth is, la Rochefoucauld had impressed her mind with that famous saying of his:  “Old age is the hell of women,” and not fearing any hell, reference to her age neither alarmed her, nor caused the slightest flurry in her peaceful life.  She was too philosophical to regret the loss of what she did not esteem of any value, and saw Chapelle slipping away from her with tranquillity of mind.  It was only during moments of gayety when she abandoned herself to the play of an imagination always laughing and fertile, that she repeated the sacrilegious wish of the pious king of Aragon, who wished that he had been present at the moment of creation, when, among the suggestions he could have given Providence, he would have advised him to put the wrinkles of old age where the gods of Pagandom had located the feeble spot in Achilles.

If Ninon ever felt a pang on account of the ungenerous conduct of Chapelle, his disciple, the illustrious Abbe de Chaulieu, the Anacreon of the age, who was called, when he made his entree into the world of letters “the poet of good fellowship,” more than compensated her for the injury done by his pastor.  The Abbe was the Prior of Fontenay, whither Ninon frequently accompanied Madame the Duchess de Bouillon and the Chevalier d’Orleans.  The Duchess loved to joke at the expense of the Abbe, and twit him about his wasted talents, which were more adapted to love than to his present situation.  It may be that the worthy Abbe, after thinking over seriously what was intended to be a mere pleasantry, concluded that Madame the Duchess was right, and that he possessed some talent in the direction of love.  However that might, have been, it is certain that he had cast an observant and critical eye on Ninon, and he now openly paid her court, not unsuccessfully it should be known.

The Abbe Gedoyn was her last lover so far as there is any account of her amours.  The story is related by Remond, surnamed “The Greek,” and must be taken with a grain of salt as Ninon was at that time seventy-nine years of age.  This Remond, notwithstanding her age, had made violent love to Ninon without meeting with any success.  Perhaps he was trying an experiment, being a learned man, anxious to ascertain when the fire of passion became extinct in the human breast.  Ninon evidently suspected his ardent professions for she refused to listen to him and forbade his visits altogether.

“I was the dupe of his Greek erudition,” she explained, “so I banished him from my school.  He was always wrong in his philosophy of the world, and was unworthy of as sensible a society as mine.”  She often added to this:  “After God had made man, he repented him; I feel the same about Remond.”