The moral that the majority of writers draw from the three courts that occupied society at that time, the Rue des Tournelles, Madame de Sevigne, and Versailles, is, that men demand human nature and will have it in preference to abnormal goodness, and female debauchery.  Ninon never hesitated to declaim against the fictitious beauty that pretended to inculcate virtue and morality while secretly engaged in the most corrupt practices, but Moliere came with his Precieuses Ridicules and pulverized the enemies of human nature.  Ninon did not know Moliere personally at that time but she was so loud in his praise for covering her gross imitators with confusion, that Bachaumont and Chapelle, two of her intimate friends, ventured to introduce the young dramatist into her society.  The father of this Bachaumont who was a twin, said of him:  “My son who is only half a man, wants to do as if he were a whole one.”  Though only “half a man” and extremely feeble and delicate, he became a voluptuary according to the ideas of Chapelle, and by devoting himself to the doctrines of Epicurus, he managed to live until eighty years of age.  Chapelle was a drunkard as has been intimated in a preceding chapter, and although he loved Ninon passionately, she steadily refused to favor him.

Moliere and Ninon were mutually attracted, each recognizing in the other not only a kindred spirit, but something not apparent on the surface.  Nature had given them the same eyes, and they saw men and things from the same view point.  Moliere was destined to enlighten his age by his pen, and Ninon through her wise counsel and sage reflections.  In speaking of Moliere to Saint-Evremond, she declared with fervor: 

“I thank God every night for finding me a man of his spirit, and I pray Him every morning to preserve him from the follies of the heart.”

There was a great opposition to Moliere’s comedy “Tartuffe.”  It created a sensation in society, and neither Louis XIV, the prelates of the kingdom and the Roman legate, were strong enough to withstand the torrents of invectives that came from those who were unmasked in the play.  They succeeded in having it interdicted, and the comedy was on the point of being suppressed altogether, when Moliere took it to Ninon, read it over to her and asked her opinion as to what had better be done.  With her keen sense of the ridiculous and her knowledge of character, Ninon went over the play with Moliere to such good purpose that the edict of suppression was withdrawn, the opponents of the comedy finding themselves in a position where they could no longer take exceptions without confessing the truth of the inuendoes.