“Cast your gaze around; see all that magnificence and piety has endeavoured to do, to render honour to the hero: titles, inscriptions, vain records of what no longer exists, the weeping figures around the tomb and fragile images of a grief which Time, with all the rest, will bear away with it, columns which appear to lift to high heaven their magnificent testimony to him who is gone; and nothing is lacking in all this homage but him to whom it is given.... For me, if it is permitted to join with the rest in rendering the last duties beside your tomb, O Prince! noble and worthy subject of our praise and of our regrets, you will live eternally in my memory. I shall see you always, not in the pride of victory ... but as you were in those last hours under God’s hand, when His glory was breaking on you. It is thus I shall see you yet more greatly triumphing than at Fribourg and at Rocroi.... And in the words of the best-beloved disciple, I shall give thanks and say—‘The true victory is that which overcometh the world—even our faith.’” A noble purity of spirit and deep conviction inspired Bossuet’s eloquence. His knowledge was limited by his Jesuit training, though he studied anatomy at a later period, by the king’s desire, in order to instruct the Dauphin in the science; but with science generally and physics he was unacquainted. As a Jesuit he was opposed to Jansenism and the Port-Royalists; but for long the gentle piety of Fénelon retained the respect and admiration of Bossuet’s more fiery spirit. Both these great men gave instruction at St Cyr, by the desire of Madame de Maintenon and the king. Time must indeed have passed lightly by Ninon; for once again, at the age of eighty years, she inspired a young abbé, named Gedouin—a distant relative on the maternal side—with deep fervent admiration. Ninon at first believed that he was jesting with her, and rebuked him severely; but it was a very serious matter on his part, and though she told him of her fourscore years, he declared that it in no way altered his sentiments. “What of that?” he said; “wit and beauty know nothing of age,” and the Abbé Gedouin’s pleading, which was not in vain, terminated Ninon’s last _liaison_ with an affectionate and endearing friendship. When he was rallied on his conquest, the abbé’s rejoinder was that— “Ah, mes amis, lorsqu’une tonne A contenu d’excellent vin, Elle garde un parfum divin Et la lie en est toujours bonne.” Monsieur de Lauzun, on the other hand, being now over sixty years old, contracted a marriage with an English girl of sixteen. She was so fearfully thin, that the Duc de St Simon, who was one of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ _cercle_, said de Lauzun might as well have wedded all the bones of the Holy Innocents Cemetery, where the skulls and bones were piled in pyramids.