a refuge with their children, if they had any.
This seems to have led to the establishment of a Casa del
Soccorso. In 1591 she died of fever, reconciled with God and
blessed by many unfortunates. She had a good heart and a sound
intellect, and was the last of the great Renaissance courtesans
who revived Greek hetairism (Graf, _Attraverso il Cinquecento_,
pp. 217-351). Even in sixteenth century Venice, however, it will
be seen, Veronica Franco seems to have been not altogether at
peace in the career of a courtesan. She was clearly not adapted
for ordinary marriage, yet under the most favorable conditions
that the modern world has ever offered it may still be doubted
whether a prostitute's career can offer complete satisfaction to
a woman of large heart and brain.

Ninon de Lenclos, who is frequently called "the last of the great
courtesans," may seem an exception to the general rule as to the
inability of a woman of good heart, high character, and fine
intelligence to find satisfaction in a prostitute's life. But it
is a total misconception alike of Ninon de Lenclos's temperament
and her career to regard her as in any true sense a prostitute at
all. A knowledge of even the barest outlines of her life ought to
prevent such a mistake. Born early in the seventeenth century,
she was of good family on both sides; her mother was a woman of
severe life, but her father, a gentleman of Touraine, inspired
her with his own Epicurean philosophy as well as his love of
music. She was extremely well educated. At the age of sixteen or
seventeen she had her first lover, the noble and valiant Gaspard
de Coligny; he was followed for half a century by a long
succession of other lovers, sometimes more than one at a time;
three years was the longest period during which she was faithful
to one lover. Her attractions lasted so long that, it is said,
three generations of Sevignes were among her lovers. Tallemant
des Reaux enables us to study in detail her _liaisons_.

It is not, however, the abundance of lovers which makes a woman a
prostitute, but the nature of her relationships with them.
Sainte-Beuve, in an otherwise admirable study of Ninon de Lenclos
(_Causeries du Lundi_, vol. iv), seems to reckon her among the
courtesans. But no woman is a prostitute unless she uses men as a
source of pecun