A short time later the domestic felicity being enjoyed at the Loches château by Ninon and Monsieur de la Châtre was rudely broken up by a summons from Monsieur de la Châtre’s family, at Besançon, to repair to the deathbed of his father. The two parted with real regret, and so much devotion on the Marquis de la Châtre’s side, that nothing would content him short of a written and signed promise from Ninon of eternal fidelity to him. She accordingly wrote on a leaf of his tablets these words— “I swear to love you always.—NINON.” Carefully bestowing this precious bond in black and white in an innermost pocket of his vest, de la Châtre conducted Ninon back to Paris. He would have preferred to leave her in Touraine, to pass the time of his absence in the rural tranquillity of her beautiful little domain; but if Ninon desired to ruralise, was there not her charming country residence at Picpus?—and Picpus is much nearer Paris than Loches; and just then the Maréchal de Sévigné had arrived in Paris, a man of noble presence, distinguished for his recent successes in the king’s service, and the young Vicomte de Turenne, already entered upon the paths of his renown, by his splendid service in Lorraine and Italy, and both, eagerly seeking introduction to Ninon, came, saw, and were conquered by her charm. De Sévigné’s rendered homage was, however, on somewhat unconventional lines, the honeyed words of his admiration being tempered with just enough fault-finding as to render it unusually piquant; but Ninon’s favours, and just now especially, were in no wise exclusively bestowed on the heroes of the battlefield. She was no more _précieuse_ than she was _Platonicienne_; but she was genuinely gifted with a love of letters, which had been fostered by the excellent education her father had given her, and she entered ardently into the great intellectual movement of the time, in which the drama figured so prominently. Richelieu himself was so warm a devotee, that his ambition to excel as a dramatist equalled, if it did not surpass, his political ambition; and while jealous to the mean extent envy can reach, he did not withhold his patronage from the great genius of him who has been styled the father of the French dramatists, Pierre Corneille. Even had Richelieu not desired as he did, to make use of the brilliant talent of Corneille for his own ends, it would not have been possible for him to hold aloof amid the enthusiasm of the world of letters, and of society generally, which hailed in 1636 the production of _The Cid_.