ng such
characters in gross, and treating their virtues as Saint Austin was
wont to deal with those of his heathen adversaries, as no better than
"splendid vices," so unparalleled in their magnitude as to become
virtues by the operation of the law of extremes. There was no law
permitting a man to marry his sister, and there was no law forbidding
King Cambyses to do as he liked.

Another grave point to be considered is this: The world, as it now
stands, its laws, systems of government, manners and customs, and
social conditions, have been built up on these same "splendid vices,"
and whenever they have been tamed into subjection to mediocrity--let
us say to clerical, or ecclesiastical domination;--government, society
and morals have retrograded. The social condition in France during
Ninon de l'Enclos' time, and in England during the reign of Charles
II, is startling evidence of this accusation. Moreover, it is fast
becoming the condition to-day, a fact indicated by the almost
universal demand for a revolution in social ethics, the foundation to
which, for some reason, has become awry, threatening to topple down
the structure erected upon it. Society can see nothing to originate,
an incalculable number of attempts to better human conditions always
proving failures, and worsening the human status. It is dawning upon
the minds of the true lovers of humanity, that there is nothing else
to be done, but to revert to the past to find the key to any possible
reform, and to that past we are edging rapidly, though, it must be
said unwillingly, in the hope and expectation that the old foundations
are possessed of sufficient solidity to support a new or re-modeled
structure.

The life of Ninon de l'Enclos, upon this very point, furnishes food
for profitable reflection, inasmuch as it gives an insight into the
great results to be obtained by the following of the precepts of an
ancient philosophy which seems to have survived the clash of ages of
intellectual and moral warfare, and to have demonstrated its capacity
to supply defects in segregated dogmatic systems wholly incapable of
any syncretic tendencies.

CHAPTER III

Youth of Ninon de l'Enclos

Anne de l'Enclos, or "Ninon," as she has always been familiarly called
by the world at large, was born at Paris in 1615. What her parents
were, or what her family, is a matter of little consequence. To all
persons who have attained celebrity over the route pursued by her,
ori