Rue
des Tournelles strove against Saint Cyr. The world fluctuated between
these two systems established by women, both of them--shall it be
said--courtesans? The legality and morality of our modern common law
marriages and the ease and frequency of trivial divorces forbid it.
Ninon prevailed, however, and not only governed hearts but souls. The
difference between the two courts was, the royal salon was thronged
with women of the most infamous character who had nothing but their
infamy to bestow, while the drawing rooms of Ninon de l'Enclos were
crowded with men almost exclusively, and men of wit and genius.

The moral that the majority of writers draw from the three courts that
occupied society at that time, the Rue des Tournelles, Madame de
Sevigne, and Versailles, is, that men demand human nature and will
have it in preference to abnormal goodness, and female debauchery.
Ninon never hesitated to declaim against the fictitious beauty that
pretended to inculcate virtue and morality while secretly engaged in
the most corrupt practices, but Moliere came with his Precieuses
Ridicules and pulverized the enemies of human nature. Ninon did not
know Moliere personally at that time but she was so loud in his praise
for covering her gross imitators with confusion, that Bachaumont and
Chapelle, two of her intimate friends, ventured to introduce the young
dramatist into her society. The father of this Bachaumont who was a
twin, said of him: "My son who is only half a man, wants to do as if
he were a whole one." Though only "half a man" and extremely feeble
and delicate, he became a voluptuary according to the ideas of
Chapelle, and by devoting himself to the doctrines of Epicurus, he
managed to live until eighty years of age. Chapelle was a drunkard as
has been intimated in a preceding chapter, and although he loved Ninon
passionately, she steadily refused to favor him.

Moliere and Ninon were mutually attracted, each recognizing in the
other not only a kindred spirit, but something not apparent on the
surface. Nature had given them the same eyes, and they saw men and
things from the same view point. Moliere was destined to enlighten his
age by his pen, and Ninon through her wise counsel and sage
reflections. In speaking of Moliere to Saint-Evremond, she declared
with fervor:

"I thank God every night for finding me a man of his spirit, and I
pray Him every morning to preserve him from the follies of the heart."

There was a