That command, however, again reached her at a yet later time, and then was enforced. In Louis XIII.’s days, Ninon was often a guest at the Louvre, and on the occasion of one of the State balls given there, she was present with Rambouillet for her cavalier in chief. As she was entering her carriage to return home, she felt a pull at her mantle, and turning, she saw beside her “a little man, clad entirely in black velvet, whose smile was mocking and full of sarcasm, and his eyes shone like carbuncles. Rambouillet, seeing my terror,” she wrote later, “demanded of the man what he wanted; but the Man in Black silenced him with an imperious gesture, and said to me, in a tone of profound melancholy—‘You are proud of your beauty, mademoiselle, and you are right, for it is marvellous. But alas! all these charms will one day fade. The rosy hues of your skin will die out, age will come, and bring its wrinkles. Ah, believe me! Beware! Endeavour to hinder this misfortune, for afterwards there will be nothing left to you.’ So saying, he gravely saluted me, and disappeared among the arches of the colonnade.”[1] CHAPTER V An Excursion to Gentilly—“_Uraniæ Sacrum_”—César and Ruggieri—The rue d’Enfer and the Capucins—Perditor—The Love-philtre—Seeing the Devil—“Now You are Mine!” Ninon’s pledge of eternal fidelity to Rambouillet did not hinder other friendships; and about this time she one day made an excursion to Gentilly with the Comte de Lude, intent on visiting the great magician, Perditor, who conducted there his famous incantations. She chose de Lude for her companion on this occasion, because he was an utter disbeliever. The adventure was prompted by the craze, ever latent in society, and then recently kindled to fever-heat, for magic and occultism. The theme, as old almost as the ages, is ever new, and likely to remain so until the mysteries of life and death are revealed. And some short time previously, the rumour had circulated that a man named Febroni, intensely hated by Richelieu, was endeavouring to compass the cardinal’s destruction, by causing a wax image of him to be made and exposed to a slow fire, and as the image melted, so the minister’s life would dwindle to the death. This was, of course, no new device of witchcraft and _diablerie_; but it served to arouse intense interest and curiosity, and the air was as full of sorcery and demonology as when the first Ruggieri practised his arts for Catherine de Médicis, and watched the stars from the old tower-top of Blois, the observatory of the terrible queen, “_Uraniæ Sacrum_.”