But to return to the Abbe Gedoyn:  he left the Jesuits with the Abbe Fraguier in 1694, that is to say, when Mademoiselle de l’Enclos was seventy-eight years of age.  Both of them immediately made the acquaintance of Ninon and Madame de la Saliere, and, astonished at the profound merit they discovered, deemed it to their advantage to frequent their society for the purpose of adding to their talents something which the study of the cloister and experience in the king’s cabinet itself had never offered them.  Abbe Gedoyn became particularly attached to Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, whose good taste and intellectual lights he considered such sure and safe guides.  His gratitude soon received the additions of esteem and admiration, and the young disciple felt the growth of desires which it is difficult to believe were real, but which became so pressing, that they revived in a heart nearly extinct a feeble spark of that fire with which it had formerly burned.  Mademoiselle de l’Enclos refused to accede to the desires of her lover until she was fully eighty years of age, a term which did not cool the ardor of the amorous Abbe, who waited impatiently and on her eightieth birthday compelled his benefactress to keep her word.

This incident recalls the testimony of a celebrated Countess of Salisbury, who was called to testify as an expert upon the subject of love in a celebrated criminal case that was tried over a hundred years ago in the English House of Lords.  The woman correspondent was of an age when human passion is supposed to be extinct, and her counsel was attempting to prove that fact to relieve her from the charge.  The testimony of the aged Countess, who was herself over seventy-five years of age, was very unsatisfactory, and the court put this question to her demanding an explicit answer.

“Madame,” he inquired, “at what age does the sentiment, passion, or desire of love cease in the female heart?”

Her ladyship, who had lived long in high society and had been acquainted with all of the gallants and coquettes of the English court for nearly two generations, and who, herself, had sometimes been suspected of not having been averse to a little waywardness, looked down at her feet for a moment thoughtfully, then raising her eyes and locking squarely into those of the judge, answered: 

“My Lord, you will have to ask a woman older than I.”

CHAPTER XII

The Villarceaux Affair

Party politics raged around Ninon, her “Birds” being men of high rank and leaders with a large following.  They were all her dearest friends, however, and no matter how strong personal passion was beyond her immediate presence, her circle was a neutral ground which no one thought of violating.  It required her utmost influence and tenderness, however, to prevent outbreaks, but her unvarying sweetness of temper and disposition to all won their hearts into a truce for