Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de LEnclos, the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventee | Page 2

over the hearts of the most distinguished men of
France; queens, princes, noblemen, renowned warriors, statesmen,
writers, and scientists bowing before her shrine and doing her homage,
even Louis XIV, when she was eighty-five years of age, declaring that
she was the marvel of his reign.
How she preserved her extraordinary beauty to so great an age, and
attracted to her side the greatest and most brilliant men of the century,
is told in her biography, which has been entirely re-written, and new
facts and incidents added that do not appear in the French compilations.
Her celebrated "Letters to the Marquis de Sévigné," newly translated,
and appearing for the first time in the United States, constitute the most
remarkable pathology of the female heart, its motives, objects, and
secret aspirations, ever penned. With unsparing hand she unmasks the
human heart and unveils the most carefully hidden mysteries of
femininity, and every one who reads these letters will see herself
depicted as in a mirror.
At an early age she perceived the inequalities between the sexes, and
refused to submit to the injustice of an unfair distribution of human
qualities. After due deliberation, she suddenly announced to her friends:

"I notice that the most frivolous things are charged up to the account of
women, and that men have reserved to themselves the right to all the
essential qualities; from this moment I will be a man." From that
time--she was twenty years of age--until her death, seventy years later,
she maintained the character assumed by her, exercised all the rights
and privileges claimed by the male sex, and created for herself, as the
distinguished Abbé de Chateauneauf says, "a place in the ranks of
illustrious men, while preserving all the grace of her own sex."

LIFE OF NINON DE L'ENCLOS

CHAPTER I
Ninon de l'Enclos as a Standard
To write the biography of so remarkable a woman as Ninon de l'Enclos
is to incur the animadversions of those who stand upon the dogma, that
whoso violates one of the Ten Commandments is guilty of violating
them all, particularly when one of the ten is conventionally selected as
the essential precept and the most important to be observed. It is purely
a matter of predilection or fancy, perhaps training and environment
may have something to do with it, though judgment is wanting, but
many will have it so, and hence, they arrive at the opinion that the end
of the controversy has been reached.
Fortunately for the common sense of mankind, there are others who
repudiate this rigid rule and excuse for human conduct; who refuse to
accept as a pattern of morality, the Sabbath breaker, tyrant, oppressor
of the poor, the grasping money maker, or charity monger, even though
his personal chastity may entitle him to canonization. These insist that
although Ninon de l'Enclos may have persistently transgressed one of
the precepts of the Decalogue, she is entitled to great consideration
because of her faithful observance of the others, not only in their letter
but in their spirit, and that her life contains much that is serviceable to
humanity, in many more ways than if she had studiously preserved her
personal purity to the sacrifice of other qualities, which are of as equal
importance as virtues, and as essential to be observed.

Another difficulty in the way of establishing her as a model of any kind,
on account of her deliberate violations of the sixth precept of the
Decalogue, is the fact that she was not of noble birth, held no official
position in the government of France, either during the regency or
under the reign of Louis XIII, but was a private person, retiring in her
habits, faithful in her liaisons and friendships, delicate and refined in
her manners and conversations, and eagerly sought for her wisdom,
philosophy, and intellectual ability.
Had she been a Semiramis, a Messalina, an Agrippina, a Catherine II,
or even a Lady Hamilton, the glamor of her exalted political position
might have covered up a multitude of gross, vulgar practices, cruelties,
barbarities, oppressions, crimes, and acts of misgovernment, and have
concealed her spiritual deformity beneath the grandeur of her splendid
public vices and irregularities. The mantle of royalty and nobility, like
dipsomania, excuses a multitude of sins, hypocrisy, and injustice, and
inclines the world to overlook, disregard, or even condone, what in
them is considered small vices, eccentricities of genius, but which in a
private person are magnified into mountains of viciousness, and call
forth an army of well meaning but inconsistent people to reform them
by brute force.
It is time to interpose an impasse to the further spread of this
misapprehension of the nature and consequences of human acts, and to
demonstrate the possibility, in humble walks of life, of virtues worth
cultivating,