On one of these occasions, her charge went off in the company of a fairly good-looking and agreeable young gentleman who addressed her, as she halted for an instant at the corner of the Pont Neuf, in terms of mingled respect and admiration. Under his escort, she gathered some conception of the manners and mode of existence in the gay city, and in the course of their first walk together, they ran against two of her cavalier’s friends, who were to be associated intimately with her future—Gondi, the future Cardinal de Retz, and the young Abbé Scarron—Abbé by courtesy, since he never went beyond the introductory degree of an ecclesiastical career. In the company of these three merry companions, she visited the Hôtel Bourgogne, a place which may be described as answering more to the music-halls, than to the theatres of the present time. Its frequenters could dine or sup at its tables, take a turn at _tarot_ or thimblerig, and enjoy a variety entertainment carried out on lines mainly popular. It was a vast edifice, built in the Renaissance style, by Francis I., on the site of the gloomy, fortress-like mansion of Jean Sans Peur; and for a time it had been devoted to the representation of the Passion and Mystery plays, and the performances of the clerks of the Basoche, but grown decadent in these days of Louis XIII. Ninon obtained on her way a passing glimpse of His Majesty as he drove by, describing him “as a man of twenty-five; but looking much older, on account of his morose and taciturn expression, responding to the acclamations of the people only by a cold and ceremonious acknowledgment; while Anne of Austria, who followed in a coach preceded by other carriages, saluted the crowd with gracious smiles and wavings of her white hand.” Having partaken of a light collation at one of the tables, the party gave attention for a while to the actors on the stage, whose performances were coarse, and not much to Ninon’s taste. Then Gondi and Scarron took leave of the two, and the sequel of the adventure proved a warning to young women endowed with any measure of self-respect, to refrain from making acquaintance with gallants in the street. Fortunately she escaped the too ardent attentions of the man, through the intervention and protection of one of more delicacy and honour. Though this one was quickly equally enthralled, he went about his wooing of the beautiful girl in more circumspect fashion, a wooing nipped in the bud by his death from a wound received a short time later.