While Ninon de l'Enclos was receiving and encouraging the attentions of the most distinguished men of her time, literati, nobles, warriors, statesmen, and sages, in her house in the Rue des Tournelles, the mistress of the sovereign, the dear friend who had betrayed her to the Marquis de Villarceaux, was swallowing, at Versailles, the adulations of degraded courtiers of every rank and profession. There were met together there the vain and the ambitious, the designing and the foolish, the humblest and the proudest of those who, whether proud or humble, or ambitious, or vain, or crafty, were alike the devoted servants of the monarch or the monarch's mistress--princes, cardinals, bishops, dukes and every kind of nobility, excisemen and priests, keepers of the royal conscience and necessary--all ministers of filth, each in his degree, from the secretaries of state to the lowest underlings in office--clerks of the ordnance, victualing, stamps, customs, colonies, and postoffice, farmers and receivers general, judges and cooks, confessors and every other caterer to the royal appetite. This was the order of things that Ninon de l'Enclos was contending against, and that she succeeded by methods that must be considered saintly compared with the others, stands recorded in the pages of history. After Ninon had suffered from the indiscretion of the lover who made public the story of the famous pledge given la Châtre, she lost her fancy for the recreant, and though friendly, refused any closer tie. He knew that he had done Ninon an injury and begged to be reinstated in her favor. He was of charming manners and fascinating in his pleading, but he made no impression on her heart. She agreed to pardon him for his folly and declined to consider the matter further. Nor would she return to the conversation, although he persisted in referring to the matter as one he deeply regretted. When he was departing after Ninon had assured him of her pardon, she ran after him and called out as he was descending the stairs: "At least, Marquis, we have not been reconciled." Her good qualities were embalmed in the literature of the day, very few venturing to lampoon her. Those who did so were greeted with so much derisive laughter that they were ashamed to appear in society until the storm had blown over.