Ninon’s intrigue with the young Marquis de Rambouillet gave great offence to Madame de Rambouillet. It sheds a curious light on the manner of the great world of the time, that the doors of the marquise’s house remained still open to her, yet so they did remain. The justly incensed lady contented herself with soliciting an order from the Court for the young man to rejoin his regiment in Auvergne without delay; and Ninon was left to console herself elsewhere, and to avenge as she might her annoyance at the epigrams showered upon her, not to speak of the severe blame cast upon women of society who were undeterred by any sense of propriety and the _convenable_—which she was well aware was mainly levelled at herself. All moral considerations aside, the breach of good taste is inconceivable in one who so prided herself, and generally with justice, on the observation of the general laws governing the people of her class. The hospitality of the famous mansion in the rue St Thomas du Louvre, however, was still accorded her, and if it was more chilly than formerly, Ninon consoled herself by enlisting many who frequented the brilliant gatherings, on the side of her easy-going philosophy, and discussing its tenets with amazing frankness. The women were not many who upheld her arguments; but the men vastly applauded and seconded her sallies against the theory of Platonic love. In her opinion, it was an impossible doctrine, and on such themes she was Madame Oracle, and her beautiful mouth opened to expound, what dog dare bark? Unless indeed it might be the cardinal. “Mademoiselle,” he said, one evening when he was present, as he frequently was, in the Rambouillet salon, and Ninon ventured an observation not quite to his taste, “I never accept lessons, even when they issue from such pretty lips as yours.”