iary gain. Not only is there no evidence that this
was the case with Ninon, but all the evidence excludes such a
relationship. "It required much skill," said Voltaire, "and a
great deal of love on her part, to induce her to accept
presents." Tallemant, indeed, says that she sometimes took money
from her lovers, but this statement probably involves nothing
beyond what is contained in Voltaire's remark, and, in any case,
Tallemant's gossip, though usually well-informed, was not always
reliable. All are agreed as to her extreme disinterestedness.

When we hear precisely of Ninon de Lenclos in connection with
money, it is not as receiving a gift, but only as repaying a debt
to an old lover, or restoring a large sum left with her for safe
keeping when the owner was exiled. Such incidents are far from
suggesting the professional prostitute of any age; they are
rather the relationships which might exist between men friends.
Ninon de Lenclos's character was in many respects far from
perfect, but she combined many masculine virtues, and especially
probity, with a temperament which, on the whole, was certainly
feminine; she hated hypocrisy, and she was never influenced by
pecuniary considerations. She was, moreover, never reckless, but
always retained a certain self-restraint and temperance, even in
eating and drinking, and, we are told, she never drank wine. She
was, as Sainte-Beuve has remarked, the first to realize that
there must be the same virtues for men and for women, and that it
is absurd to reduce all feminine virtues to one. "Our sex has
been burdened with all the frivolities," she wrote, "and men have
reserved to themselves the essential qualities: I have made
myself a man." She sometimes dressed as a man when riding (see,
e.g., _Correspondence Authentique_ of Ninon de Lenclos, with a
good introduction by Emile Colombey). Consciously or not, she
represented a new feminine idea at a period when--as we may see
in many forgotten novels written by the women of that time--ideas
were beginning to emerge in the feminine sphere. She was the
first, and doubtless, from one point of view, the most extreme
representative of a small and distinguished group of French women
among whom Georges Sand is the finest personality.

Thus it is idle to attempt to adorn the history of prostitution