ells the story in a letter to her daughter, Madame
de Grignan:

"Elle (Ninon) voulut l'autre jour lui faire donner des lettres de la
comedienne (Champmele); il les lui donna; elle en etait jalouse; elle
voulait les donner a un amant de la princesse, afin de lui faire
donner quelque coups de baudrier. Il me le vint dire: je lui fis voir
que c'etait une infamie de couper ainsi la gorge a une petite creature
pour l'avoir aimer; je representai qu'elle n'avait point sacrifie ses
lettres, comme on voulait lui faire croire pour l'animer. Il entra
dans mes raisons; il courut chez Ninon, et moitie par adresse, et
moitie par force, il retira les lettres de cette pauvre diablesse."

It was easy for a doting mother like Madame de Sevigne to credit
everything her son manufactured for her delectation. The dramatic
incident of de Sevigne taking letters from Ninon de l'Enclos partly by
ingenuity and partly by force, resembled his tale that he had left
Ninon and that he did not care for her while all the time they were
inseparable. He was truly a lover of Penelope, the bow of Ulysses
having betrayed his weakness.

"The malady of his soul," says his mother, "afflicted his body. He
thought himself like the good Esos; he would have himself boiled in a
caldron with aromatic herbs to restore his vigor."

But Ninon's opinion of him was somewhat different. She lamented his
untimely end, but did not hesitate to express her views.

"He was a man beyond definition," was her panegyric. "He possessed a
soul of pulp, a body of wet paper, and a heart of pumpkin fricasseed
in snow."

She finally became ashamed of ever having loved him, and insisted that
they were never more than brother and sister. She tried to make
something out of him by exposing all the secrets of the female heart,
and initiating him in the mysteries of human love, but as she said:
"His heart was a pumpkin fricasseed in snow."

CHAPTER XIV

A Family Tragedy

Some of Ninon's engagements following upon one another in quick
succession were the cause of an unusual disagreement, not to say
quarrel, between two rivals in her affections. A Marshal of France,
d'Estrees and the celebrated Abbe Deffiat disputed the right of
parentage, the dispute waxing warm because both contended for the
honor and could not see any way out of their difficulty, neither
consenting to make the slightest concession. Ninon, however, calmed
the tempest by suggesting a way out of the difficulty