Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu were taken to their last home; Louis XIV. succeeded--the Augustan age of France--the age which gave her such soldiers as Turenne and Condé, such literati as Racine, Corneille, and Molière, such orators as Massillon, Bossuet, and Lamothe Fénélon, and which saw the exiled Stuarts repining at St. Germain; but still Ninon was young and lovely. She sedulously cultivated the fashions of each age, and wore the extreme of the mode--from the starched ruff of Louis the Thirteenth's time, to the _coiffure à la giraffe_--the towering head-dresses of the early part of the eighteenth century. As Le Sage says of Donna Inesilla (under which name he introduces Ninon in his novel of "Gil Blas") "she had been idolized by the noblemen of the old court, and saw herself adored by those of the new. Time, that spares not even beauty, had exerted itself upon hers in vain; he could not deprive her of the power to please, and a noble air, an enchanting wit, and graces that were peculiar to her, made her inspire men with passion, even in her old age." So was it with Ninon, save that her beauty never decayed. In her fifty-sixth year she was residing in her little country villa at the Cordeliers. It was delightfully situated, and was surrounded by a beautiful landscape, and there she usually spent the months of summer. During this year she had also spent the autumn there, to avoid a young cavalier, who had followed her constantly about the streets and public places of Paris, and whose attentions thus had caused her serious annoyance--all the more, perhaps, that the young man seemed somewhat poor, though very handsome and extremely well-bred. One evening Ninon was alone. She was reading "Les Amours du Grand Alcandre," under which name her father's comrade, the gay Maréchal Duc de Bassompierre, narrated some of the love affairs of Henri Quatre, when her page, the grandson of Guillot, announced that a gentleman in black, who would not give his name, desired to speak with her. She instantly thought of the mysterious visitor of 1633, and tremblingly said that he might be admitted. Contrary to her expectation, there entered a very handsome young man, about four-and-twenty years of age, dressed in a black velvet suit, slashed with white satin, and wearing a steel-hilted rapier slung in a white silk scarf. He knelt before her, and the volume of Bassompierre fell from her hand when she recognised the unknown lover who had followed her like her shadow about the streets of Paris. "Monsieur," said she, "you weary me! What is the object of your visit--and what is your name?" "Mademoiselle," said he, in trembling accents, and with a flushing cheek, "I am the Chevalier Guillaume de Villiers." At this name Ninon started and grew deadly pale. "A lieutenant in the regiment of Artois?" she asked. "The same, madame; but how know you that?" "It matters not how; but proceed."