He fell passionately in love with her; but for a long time he maintained silence, until he could conceal his love no longer, and Ninon could no longer remain blind to the true state of the case. She was deeply distressed and perplexed. She assumed a sort of maternal tenderness towards him, which had simply the effect of heating the young man’s ardour to frenzy, and she was forced to forbid him her house. Fear of never seeing her again, drove him to say that he would cease to love her. Love forced him to do this, and to this promise love made him false. The excess of his passion would not permit him to exist longer in a state of doubt. He sought a last interview of her. Ninon had gone to her country-house, and thither he followed. He found her alone, and spoke like a man driven, as indeed he was, to desperation. Ninon, overcome with pity, overwhelmed with grief at being the cause of her son’s misery, could no longer maintain her firmness, and young de Villiers, believing that the moment of his happiness had arrived, approached her with passionate gestures. Seized with horror, she shrank from him and told him the truth. “I am your mother!” she cried in her distress. One instant de Villiers stood as if thunderstruck; then he turned and rushed into the garden, hurrying blindly on till he reached the little thicket at the end of it. There, in his despair, he drew his sword and stabbed himself to the death. Ninon waited, and when he did not return, she went in search of him, to find him weltering in his own blood. He was still breathing, and strove to speak; but his words were undistinguishable. The passionate love he felt for her still burned in his eyes; but the agitation her tenderness and despair occasioned him, only hastened the end, and he died in her arms. The horror of this tragedy nearly drove Ninon to take away her own life. Her pitying friends strove to bring some assuagement to her sufferings, and Madame Scarron nursed her in the long illness which ensued, and her gentle, tender ways and words, and her manner of winning Ninon to speak of the unhappy lost one, at last brought tears to her eyes, parched with her mental agony, and so relief came, and Françoise Scarron, weeping with her, was then her best friend. It was she who ordered a mausoleum tomb for the dead. It was placed where Charles de Villiers had been interred, a monument of black marble. Night and day the tapers burned around it, and many an hour in prayer Ninon knelt beside the last resting-place of Charles de Villiers. At this time, Madame Scarron, hitherto very far from a devotee, introduced to her a young priest of St Sulpice. His name was de la Mothe Fénelon. His touching words and sincere, gentle sympathy brought healing as time passed; but the shadow of sorrow and suffering never fully lifted—the gay, frivolous Ninon was known no more. Henceforth, till death, she was Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, bearing herself with dignity, self-restrained, and esteemed by most.