It would not be easy to find characteristics more diverse than those distinguishing this pair. Their union was an alliance arranged for them—a _mariage de convenance_. Diametrically opposite in temperament, Monsieur was handsome and distinguished-looking; while the face and figure of Madame were ordinary. She was constitutionally timid, and intellectually narrow, devoted to asceticism, and reserved in manner. She passed her time in seclusion, dividing it between charitable works, the reading of pious books, and attendance at Mass and the other services of the Church. Monsieur de L’Enclos, on the other hand, was a votary of every pleasure and delightful distraction the world could afford him. Among them he counted duelling; he was a skilled swordsman, and his rapier play was of the finest. A brave and gallant soldier, he had served the royal cause during the later years of Henri IV., and so on into the reign of Louis XIII. He was a _bon vivant_, and arms and intrigue, which were as the breath of life to him, he sought after wherever the choicest opportunities of those were likely to be found. Notwithstanding, the rule of life-long bickering and mutual reproach attending such ill-assorted unions, would seem to be proved by its exception in the case of Ninon’s parents; since no record of any such domestic strife stands against them. Bearing and forbearing, they agreed to differ, and went their several ways—Madame de L’Enclos undertaking the training and instruction of Ninon in those earliest years, in the fond hope that there would be a day when she should take the veil and become a nun. Before, however, she attained to the years of as much discretion as she ever possessed, she had arrived at the standpoint of the way she intended to take of the life before her, which was to roll into years that did not end until the dawning of the eighteenth century; and it in no way included any such intention. So sturdily opposed to it, indeed, was she, that it irresistibly suggests the possibility of her being the inspiration of the old song—“Ninon wouldn’t be a nun”— “I shan’t be a nun, I won’t be a nun, I am so fond of pleasure that I _won’t_ be a nun!” For Ninon was her father’s child; almost all her inherited instincts were from him. The endeavours of Madame de L’Enclos failed disastrously. The monotony and rigid routine of the young girl’s life repelled the bright, frank spirit, and drove it to opposite extreme, resulting in sentiments of disgust for the pious observances of her church; and taken there under compulsion day in, day out, she usually contrived to substitute some plump little volume of romance, or other light literature, at the function, for her Mass-book and breviary, to while away the tedium.