Ninon had always been an ardent supporter of the throne, and on that account imagined herself to be the enemy of Richelieu.  There were many others who believed the same thing.  They did not know that should the great Cardinal withdraw his hand for a single moment there would not be any more throne.  When the human hornets around him became annoying he was accustomed to pretend to withdraw his sustaining hand, then the throne would tremble and totter, but he always came to the rescue; indeed, there was no other man who could rescue it.  Cabals, plots, and conspiracies became so thick around Ninon at one period that she was frightened.  Scarron’s house became a rendezvous for the factious and turbulent.  Madame Scarron was aiming at the throne, that is, she was opening the way to capture the heart of the king.  This was too much for Ninon, who was more modest in her ambitions, and she fled frightened.

The Marquis de Villarceaux received her with open arms at his chateau some distance from Paris, and that was her home for three years.  There were loud protests at this desertion from her coterie of friends, and numerous dark threats were uttered against the gallant Marquis who had thus captured the queen of the “Birds,” but Ninon explained her reason in such a plausible manner that their complaints subsided into good-natured growls.  She hoped to prevent a political conflagration emanating from her social circle by scattering the firebrands, and she succeeded admirably.  The Marquis was constantly with her, permitting nobody to intervene between them, and provided her with a perpetual round of amusements that made the time pass very quickly.  Moreover, she was faithful to the Marquis, so wonderful a circumstance that her friend and admirer wrote an elegy upon that circumstance, in which he draws a picture of the pleasures of the ancients in ruralizing, but reproaches Ninon for indulging in a passion for so long a period to the detriment of her other friends and admirers.  But Ninon was happy in attaining the summit of her desire, which was to defeat Madame Scarron, her rival in the affections of the Marquis, keeping the latter by her side for three whole years as has already been said.

However delighted Ninon may have been with this arrangement, the Marquis, himself, did not repose upon a bed of roses.  The jealousy of the “Birds” gave him no respite, he being obliged in honor to respond to their demands for an explanation of his conduct in carrying off their leader, generally insisting upon the so-called field of honor as the most appropriate place for giving a satisfactory answer.  They even invaded his premises until they forced him to make them some concessions in the way of permission to see the object of their admiration, and to share in her society.  The Marquis was proud of his conquest, the very idea of a three years’ tete a tete with the most volatile heart in France being sufficient to justify him in boasting of his prowess, but whenever he ventured to do so a champion on the part of Ninon always stood ready to make him either eat his words or fight to maintain them.