opprobrium the
prejudiced have put one of your birth, wherefore it was necessary to
conceal it from your delicacy of mind, but you would not have it so.
Know me as your mother, oh, my son, and pardon me for having given you
life."

Ninon burst into a flood of tears and pressed her son to her heart,
but he seemed to be crushed by the revelations he heard. Pale,
trembling, nerveless, he dared not pronounce the sweet name of mother,
for his soul was filled with horror at his inability to realize the
relationship sufficiently to destroy the burning passion he felt for
her person. He cast one long look into her eyes, bent them upon the
ground, arose with a deep sigh and fled. A garden offered him a
refuge, and there, in a thick clump of bushes, he drew his sword and
without a moment's hesitation fell upon it, to sink down dying.

Ninon had followed him dreading some awful calamity, and there, in the
dim light of the stars, she found her son weltering in his blood, shed
by his own hand for love of her. His dying eyes which he turned toward
her still spoke ardent love, and he expired while endeavoring to utter
words of endearment.

Le Sage in the romance of Gil Blas has painted this horrible
catastrophe of Ninon de l'Enclos in the characters of the old woman
Inisilla de Cantarilla, and the youth Don Valerio de Luna. The
incident is similar to that which happened to Oedipus, the Theban who
tore out his eyes after discovering that in marrying Jocasta, the
queen, he had married his own mother. Le Sage's hero, however, mourns
because he had not been able to commit the crime, which gives the case
of Ninon's son a similar tinge, his self-immolation being due, not to
the horror of having indulged in criminal love for his own mother, but
to the regret at not having been able to accomplish his purpose.

CHAPTER XV

Her Bohemian Environments

The daily and nightly doings at Ninon's house in the Rue des
Tournelles, if there is anything of a similar character in modern
society that can be compared to them, might be faintly represented by
our Bohemian circles, where good cheer, good fellowship, and freedom
from restraint are supposed to reign. There are, indeed, numerous
clubs at the present day styled "Bohemian," but except so far as the
tendency to relaxation appears upon the surface, they possess very few
of the characteristics of that society of "Birds" that assembled
around Mademoiselle de l'Enclos. They put aside all