Sometimes Racine, a neighbour now of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, would declaim passages from his _Iphigénie_, or Madame de la Fayette would read from her history of Henrietta of England, just then on point of completion. She and Madame Montausier were Ninon’s sincerest and best-beloved friends. One day Madame de la Fayette asked her the cause of the coolness existing between herself and Madame de Sévigné. It was a coolness all on one side, shrugged Ninon. To be sure, she had the young Marquis de Grignan, Madame’s grandson, at her feet—as in times gone by, the Marquis _père_, and the Marquis _grandpère_ had sighed there. She inclined, however, to his marrying as his mother desired, all the more that, besides entertaining no overwhelming admiration for the little marquis, she was jealous of his worshipping also at the shrine of the great tragic actress, la Champmeslé, who had rendered herself so famous in the _Andromaque_ of Racine. The poet had introduced de Sévigné to the _tragédienne_, to whom Ninon conceded talent, but no beauty. The affair came to an amiable conclusion, and while a reconciliation was effected between Ninon and la Champmeslé, she concluded a peace with Madame de Sévigné, esteeming her friendship above the folly and trifling of her grandson. To effect this treaty of peace, she was conducted to the house of Madame de Sévigné by their mutual friend, Madame de la Fayette. The physical personal attraction of the queen of epistolary correspondence has been many times recorded; but the critical Mademoiselle de L’Enclos does not allow her any great claims to it. Her nose was long and sharp, with wide nostrils, and her countenance generally had something of a pedantic stamp. Still, Ninon’s opinion, while Madame de Sévigné’s portrait of her by Mignard exists at Les Rochers, needs not to be accepted as final, and she hastens to speak of her manner, at once so dignified and courteous. She went so far, in discussing Ninon’s _liaison_ with young de Sévigné, as to say that her objection was mainly rooted in the fear that her son’s attachment to her would endure and hinder his desire for marriage, for which Madame de Sévigné herself was so anxious. As things went, de Sévigné soon after took to himself a wife, and Ninon gained a friend, who became a frequent guest at the _réunions_ of the rue des Tournelles. Profiting by Madame Scarron’s favour at Court, Ninon sought to obtain the king’s pardon for her old friend, St Evrémond; this was accorded. St Evrémond, however, did not return to France. He found the land of his exile a pleasant Patmos, and the Court of Whitehall, where he had won troops of friends, more congenial than Versailles, and he never crossed the Channel again, but lived his span of life, lengthy as Ninon’s; and his resting-place is among the great in Westminster Abbey.