The women had borrowed from Spain the hideous deformity of _vertugadins_, cage-like objects composed of wire, horsehair, or both, which they bound upon their hips, to extend the hang of their petticoats. On the top of this monstrosity came the panier, a whalebone contrivance covered with cloth stuff, put to similar ends, and so greatly obstructing the thoroughfares, that the women were frequently obliged to stand on one side to allow of others passing. Pairing off with the older fashions, went the old French natural gaiety, graceful manners and conversation, and pompous deportment and stilted formalities of speech were the vogue. Ninon almost found consolation for growing old in face of these dreary surroundings, fostered and assiduously tended by Madame Louis Quatorze and her Jesuit director, Père la Chaise. Of what consequence was France and her well-being, provided these two carried their own ends to fruition? Possibly this altered state of things had something to do with Monsieur de St Evrémond’s decision to remain in England, where the natural atmosphere might be brumous, but the social conditions far less lugubrious. He wrote, at all events, to Ninon that, everything considered, he preferred to remain where he had now been for fifteen years, and would content himself with correspondence with her, and “I shall read with vast satisfaction about things which you will tell me that I know,” he writes, “but above all, tell me of the things about which I do not know.” And Ninon did write bright letters to her old friend, full of chat and the social events of the day, as of the days that were past—a sort of long confession, in which she did not specially spare anyone; certainly not herself. CHAPTER XXI A distinguished Salon—The Duke’s Homage—Quietism—The disastrous Edict—The writing on the Window-pane—The persecution of the Huguenots—The Pamphleteers—The story of Jean Larcher and _The Ghost of M. Scarron_—The two Policies. “The house of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos,” writes a contemporary author, “was then, 1694, the rendezvous of the persons of the Court and of the city who were regarded as the most intellectually gifted and estimable. The house of Ninon was, perhaps, in these latter years of her life, the only one where talent and wit found fair breathing-room, and where the time was passed without card-playing and without ennui, and until the age of eighty-seven she was sought by the best company of the time.” “And,” writes another eminent chronicler—