integrity of the people. Then it was, as Cyrano
says: "The world saw billows of scum vomited upon the royal purple and
upon that of the church." Vile rhyming poets, without merit or virtue,
sold their villainous productions to the enemies of the state to be
used in goading the people to riot. Obscene and filthy vaudevilles,
defamatory libels and infamous slanders were as common as bread, and
were hurled back and forth as evidence of an internecine strife which
was raging around the wearer of the Roman scarlet, who was thereby
justified in continuing his ecclesiastical rule to prevent the
wrecking of the throne.

Ninon had always been an ardent supporter of the throne, and on that
account imagined herself to be the enemy of Richelieu. There were many
others who believed the same thing. They did not know that should the
great Cardinal withdraw his hand for a single moment there would not
be any more throne. When the human hornets around him became annoying
he was accustomed to pretend to withdraw his sustaining hand, then the
throne would tremble and totter, but he always came to the rescue;
indeed, there was no other man who could rescue it. Cabals, plots, and
conspiracies became so thick around Ninon at one period that she was
frightened. Scarron's house became a rendezvous for the factious and
turbulent. Madame Scarron was aiming at the throne, that is, she was
opening the way to capture the heart of the king. This was too much
for Ninon, who was more modest in her ambitions, and she fled
frightened.

The Marquis de Villarceaux received her with open arms at his chateau
some distance from Paris, and that was her home for three years. There
were loud protests at this desertion from her coterie of friends, and
numerous dark threats were uttered against the gallant Marquis who had
thus captured the queen of the "Birds," but Ninon explained her
reason in such a plausible manner that their complaints subsided into
good-natured growls. She hoped to prevent a political conflagration
emanating from her social circle by scattering the firebrands, and she
succeeded admirably. The Marquis was constantly with her, permitting
nobody to intervene between them, and provided her with a perpetual
round of amusements that made the time pass very quickly. Moreover,
she was faithful to the Marquis, so wonderful a circumstance that her
friend and admirer wrote an elegy upon that circumstance, in which he
draws a picture of the pleasures