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NINON DE L'ENCLOS

PREMIERE SIREN OF TWO CENTURIES

This story opens with the account of a deathbed scene; somewhat different from any other you may have read. It is brought in to throw a light on what heredity and careful instruction can do in molding a young mind. But don't necessarily skip it for that reason.

One day in 1630, the Sieur de L'Enclos lay dying in his great, dreary bedroom in his great, dreary Touraine castle. There was no especial tragedy about the closing of his life. He was elderly, very rich, and possessed of a record for having used, to the full, every minute of a long and exciting life.

Beside his bed stood a fifteen-year-old girl, his only daughter, Anne; affectionately nicknamed by him—and later by all Europe and still later by all history—"Ninon." She was something below medium height, plump, with a peachblow complexion, huge dark eyes, and a crown of red-gold hair. Ninon and her father had been chums, kindred spirits, from the girl's babyhood.

The dying noble opened his eyes. They rested lovingly on the daughter who had bent down to hear the whispered sounds his white lips were striving to frame. Then, with a mighty effort, De L'Enclos breathed his solemn last words of counsel to the girl—counsel intended to guide her through the future that he knew must lie before so rich and so beautiful a damsel. This was his message to her:

"Ninon—little girl of mine—in dying I have but one single regret. I regret that I did not—get more fun out of life. I warn you—daughter—do not make the terrible mistake that I have made. Live—live so that at the last you will not have the same cause for sorrow!"

So saying, the Sieur de L'Enclos bade an exemplary farewell to earth and to its lost opportunities of fun. To judge from his career as well as from his last words, one may venture the optimistic belief that he had not thrown away as many such priceless chances as he had led his daughter to believe.

Ninon, then, at fifteen, was left alone in the world. And her actions in this sad state conformed to those of the customary helpless orphan—about as closely as had her father's death speech to the customary "last words." With a shrewdness miraculous in so young a girl, she juggled her Touraine property in a series of deals that resulted in its sale at a little more than double its actual value. Rich beyond all fear of want, she settled in Paris.

It was not there or then that her love life set in. That had begun long before. As a mere child she had flashed upon her little world of Touraine as a wonder girl. The superwoman charm was hers from the first. And she retained it in all its mysterious power through the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth; men vying for her love when she was ninety.

A full year before her father died, she had met the youthful Prince de Marsillac, and had, at a glance, wholly captivated his semi-royal fancy. It was Ninon's first love affair—with a prince. She was dazzled by it just a little, she whom monarchs later could not dazzle. She was only fourteen. And in Touraine a princely admirer was a novelty.

At Marsillac's boyish supplication, Ninon consented to elope with him. Off they started. And back to their respective homes they were brought in dire disgrace. There was all sorts of a scandal in the neighborhood. The princeling was soundly spanked and packed off to school. The Sieur de L'Enclos came in for grave popular disapproval by laughingly refusing to mete out the same stern penalties to Ninon.

To Paris, then, at sixteen, went the orphaned Ninon. Laughing at convention and at the threats of her shocked relatives, she set up housekeeping on her own account, managing the affairs of her Rive Gauche mansion with the ease of a fifty-year-old grande dame.

On Paris burst the new star. In a month the city was crazy over her. Not her beauty alone, nor her wit, nor her peculiar elegance, nor her incredibly high spirits.—Not any or all of these, but an all-compelling magnetism drew men to her in shoals and swarms.

By reason of her birth and breeding she took at once her place in the court society of the day. Before she was twenty, she was setting the fashions for feminine Paris, and was receiving in her salon the stateliest ladies of the court, in equal numbers with their far less stately husbands.

Frankly, she declared herself a votary, not of love, but of loves. For constancy she had no use whatsoever. One admirer who had won a temporary lease of her gay heart swore he would kill himself unless Ninon would swear to love him to eternity.

And as she loved him ardently, she made the rash vow. When at the end of ninety days she gave him his dismissal, he reproached her wildly and bitterly for her broken pledge.

"You swore you would love me to eternity!" he raged. "And now——"

"And now," she explained, as one might soothe a cranky child, "I have kept my vow. I have loved you for three endless months. That is an eternity—for love!"

And three months remained, to the end, Ninon's record for fidelity to any one man; which was, perhaps, as well, for the waiting list was as long as that of a hyper-fashionable club.

And now we come to a story that I do not ask you to believe, although all France unquestionably and unquestioningly believed it. Whether Ninon herself at first coined it as a joke, or whether it was a hoax that she herself credited, it is certain that she grew at last to have firm faith in it.

One night—so Ninon always declared—when she was about twenty, she returned home late from a ball at the Hotel St. Evremond. As she stood before the mirror of her boudoir, after her maid had left her for the night, she became aware of a shadowy reflection behind her.

Turning, she saw a man clad all in black, his face hidden by the low brim of his hat and by his cloak's folds. What little was visible of his countenance was ghastly pale. Ninon, ever fearless, did not cry out for help. Instead, she approached the black-shrouded stranger and demanded to know his business and how he had penetrated to her close-barred room.

The man in black, by way of answer, drew one sable-gloved hand from beneath his cloak. In his fingers he grasped a large phial, wherein sparkled and glowed a strange, pinkish liquid.

"Life is short," said the visitor, as Ninon still looked in amazed inquiry from his half-hidden face to the rose-colored phial he carried. "Life is short, but youth is far shorter. When youth is gone, love is gone. Love is the goal of life. Without youth, there is no love. Without love, life is a desert. The gifts of youth and beauty are yours. Would you make them long-lasting, instead of transient blessings that shall too soon become mere memories?"

As Ninon, dumb with wonder, hesitated to reply, he continued:

"The admiration of men melts like summer snow at the first touch of age in a woman. Their admiration is now yours. Would you hold it? One drop a day from this phial, in your bath, will keep you young, will keep you beautiful, will retain for you the love of men."

He set the flask on her dressing table and turned to go.

"You will see me again," he said very slowly and distinctly, "just three days before your death."

And he vanished.

To a generation that has substituted science for superstition, this tale of the Man in Black reads like stark nonsense. Perhaps it is. But no one in the seventeenth century thought so. It was an age rife with demon legends; legends of favors granted to mortals in return for a residuary mortgage on their souls; and all that sort of thing. The tale of Faust was still almost brand-new. Compared with many of the traditions that then passed for solid fact, the incident of Ninon and the Man in Black was almost commonplace.

We laugh at such things; probably with due justification. Yet was Ninon's adventure more inexplicable than some of the absolutely authenticated cases of Cagliostro's magic? As, for a single example, when on a certain date Cagliostro announced in Paris: "The Empress Maria Theresa of Austria died this morning." This was long before the time of telegraphy or even of railroads. It was a journey of several days from Paris to Vienna. Dispatches, reaching the French court a week later, announced the unforeseen death of Maria Theresa at the very hour named by Cagliostro.

Ninon may have invented the Man in Black. Or he may have been one of the many quacks who hung on the fringes of courts and made capital out of the superstitious folly of the rich. Or perhaps——

At all events, seventy years later, Ninon had either a most remarkable encounter with the same man, or else, in her dying moments, she took odd trouble to substantiate a silly lie that was nearly three-quarters of a century old. Finish the story and then form your own theories.

Paris was alive in those days with titled women whose antecedents were doubtful and about whose characters there could unluckily be no doubt. They moved in the best society—or, rather, in the highest. Most of them made a living by one form or another of graft. And always there was an exclusive class of women who would not receive them.

Ninon quickly proved she had neither lot nor parcel with these titled adventuresses. From first to last she accepted not a sou, not a jewel, not a favor—political or otherwise—from the grands seigneurs who delighted to do her honor. From first to last, too, she accepted as her due the friendship of the most respectable and respected members of her own sex.

She was never an adventuress, never a grafter, never a climber. She loved for love's own sake. And if the men to whom in lightning succession she gave her resilient heart chanced often to be among the foremost of the realm, it was only because the qualities that made them what they were made them also the type of man Ninon preferred.

She never benefited in any material way from their adoration. The nearest approach was when Richelieu, the grim old iron cardinal, bent his ecclesiastical and consumptive body before her altar. She used her power over Richelieu freely, but never for herself; always to soften the punishment of some luckless man or woman who had fallen under the rod of his eminence's displeasure.

Thereby, and through Richelieu's love for her, Ninon clashed with no less a personage than the Queen of France herself.

When Anne of Austria came from Spain to be the bride of Louis XIII of France, Richelieu fell in love with the pretty young queen. Anne had not wit enough to appreciate the cardinal's genius or to fear his possible hate. So—seeing in him only a homely and emaciated little man, whose pretensions she considered laughable—the queen hit on a scheme of ridding herself forever of Richelieu's love sighs.

She pretended to listen to his courtship, then told him coyly that his austerity and lack of human weakness and of humor made her afraid of him. The enamored Richelieu insisted that he could be as human and as fun loving as any other man. Anne bade him prove it by dressing as a circus clown and dancing a saraband for her. She said she would hide behind the curtains of a room in the palace and watch him do it. Then, were she convinced that he could really unbend and could she overcome her fear of his lofty dignity, she would come forth and tell him so.

The all-powerful Richelieu—the man of blood, whom even the haughtiest nobles feared—so far lost every remnant of sanity as to do as the queen bade him. As a harlequin, he capered and leaped about the empty room, his eyes ever on the curtain at its far end.

Suddenly, in the midst of his idiotic performance, the curtain was dashed aside; a howl of laughter swept the room; and the queen stood revealed to his gaze. Clustered around her and reeling with mirth were a score of courtiers; men and women both.

From that day Richelieu was Anne's sworn foe. He wrecked her repute with the king, and for a long time managed to have her kept a prisoner in the palace. In a thousand ways he made her life a torment.

And now, through the grim cardinal's love for Ninon de L'Enclos, Anne thought she saw a way of striking back at her enemy. She sent for Ninon, chided her for her mode of living, and ended by ordering her sharply to retire at once to a convent. Ninon simply smiled at the command, curtsied to the queen, and said demurely:

"I will gladly go to any convent your majesty may designate—just as soon as I become as unattractive to men as is the woman who wants to send me there."

She left the royal presence. And so great was the power of the girl's beauty in the hearts of those in France's high places, Anne did not dare put her command into effect. The tale of the conversation spread like the prehistorically bromidic "wildfire," and Ninon won new laurels thereby.

The Duke of St. Evremond, at that time one of the greatest men in Europe, offered her his heart and his princely fortune. She replied that his heart was a precious gift which she would prize forever—or for a month or two at the very least; but that she had no use whatever for his fortune, as she had all the money she needed and more would be only a burden.

And the duke—veteran of many a love affair where fortunes had counted for far more than hearts—made the quaint, historic reply: