“No, but in gowns and fal-lals. At least, you would own to the truth of it,” said de Gourville, “and I like that better.” But Ninon owned to no such thing. She bade de Gourville understand her rightly. Light, perhaps frivolous, she might be, but she prided herself on being honest; and going to fetch the bag of gold, she placed it before him with the fastenings intact. When de Gourville mentioned this circumstance among his friends, it was to accord Ninon signal praise; but to that Ninon utterly disclaimed right. There was, she said, no merit in doing one’s duty. Her mode of life was the result of the philosophical system she had adopted. To be honest, what should one be else? And for her mode of life, it had none of the glaring indifference to decent outward conduct, which some of the dames of society indulged in. Many ladies of blameless living came to her _réunions_. Among them was the Comtesse de Choisy, lady of honour to the queen, and she promised to befriend Ninon in the matter of the threat Anne ever held over her of sending her to a convent. The thought of cloistral seclusion was a terror to Ninon; unless now and again, theoretically it might be pleasant. Ninon observed certain restraints in her ways of life; and more than once she excluded from her _réunions_ fashionable high-born women who had scandalised society by their loose conduct. Moreover, Madame de Longueville was one now of her intimate friends, and she often brought with her to Ninon’s house her young brother, who had distinguished himself bravely in the Fronde, and she would not countenance corruption of the youthful hero by including women of notorious evil-living among her guests. Madame de Longueville, lacking the power to carry on any more political intrigue, took up literature, and set the Hôtel Rambouillet in a ferment, by her championing of Voitures sonnet on _Uranie_ against Benserade, who had composed one on _Job_. The Uranists and the Joblins contended fiercely over the merits of the two productions. The news of the victory of Rocroi did not create greater excitement than the clamour of rivalry made over the two poets. Madame de Longueville failed to win back the favour of the queen after the part she had taken in the Fronde. She grew disgusted with the world, and retired into the convent of the Visitation at Moulins, of which her aunt, the widow of the Duc de Montmorency, was the superior. Some time later, her husband persuaded her to return to the world; but it was not to Paris, but to Rome she went to live, and so the ties of friendship between her and Ninon fell away.