accompanied by halberdiers from the Bastille, who demanded the delivering up of the young man’s sword, and bore him off a prisoner to the horrible old prison, on the charge of neglect of military duty. Once again Ninon’s intercessions with Richelieu procured release and restoration; but Coligny was ungrateful and jealous of the red-robed priest, and would-be _galant homme_, and passing away from Ninon’s presence, he never entered it again, and in a very few weeks was married to the sister of the Duc de Luxembourg, an alliance possibly already entered upon at an earlier date, and the real ground of his rupture with Ninon. She soon found balm for the inflicted wounds of Coligny’s ingratitude, in the ardent admiration of the son of the Marquise de Rambouillet, seeing in him only the one absurd defect of desiring unchanging constancy, and on this point he was so tiresome that she was driven to promise fidelity for three months—“An eternity,” said Ninon, ever mocking at love, which she ranked far below friendship. [Illustration: FRANÇOIS VIDUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Né en M·DC·XIII M en M·DC·LXXX _Peint en émail par Petitot_ _Gravé en 1770 par PP Choffard. Desel Grav. de L. M. Imp. et du Roi d’Espagne._ _To face page 48._] The greatest apologist of the society of the seventeenth century could hardly describe it as strait-laced; except by comparison with the first half of the one succeeding; and if some of the _grandes dames_ of the circle in which she moved held aloof and deprecated the unconventionalities of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, for the most part they accepted them, more or less silently, and treated her with cordiality, delighting in her friendship, and fascinated by the elegance and dignity with which she conducted the hospitalities of her crowded salons. The prevailing charm of one graced with the refinement of no surface education, and accomplishments never unduly self-asserted, shone through the gentle gaiety of her demeanour. She was absolutely innocent of any shadow of self-interest; taste alone guided her inclinations, her competence protected her from greed, and natural generosity was ever prompting her to kindly actions. Once, at a later day, when Anne of Austria was beginning to settle into the calm austerities of maturer years, and urged by some prudes about her, she sent orders for the temporary retirement of Ninon into a convent, leaving her to select the one she preferred—the tale goes that she expressed her gratitude to the exempt of the guards who delivered the message, for the choice so left her, and that she would choose the convent of the Grands Cordeliers, an establishment about to be suppressed for the scandals attaching to it; but it is far more probable that the jest originated with some acquaintance; for to make light of orders from the Court was in no wise according with Ninon’s code.