and literary genius,
reaches the same opinion in his Letters to Clarissa.

Having reached this point in her reasoning, she advanced a step
further, and considered the unequal division of qualities distributed
between the two sexes. She perceived the injustice of it and refused
to abide by it. "I perceive," she declared, "that women are charged
with everything that is frivolous, and that men reserve to themselves
the right to essential qualities. From this moment I shall be a man."

All this growing out of the ardour of a first love, which is always
followed by the lassitude of satiety, so far from causing Ninon any
tears of regret, nerved her up to a philosophy different from that of
other women, and makes it impossible to judge her by the same
standard. She can not be considered a woman subject to a thousand
fantasies and whims, a thousand trifling concealed proprieties of
position and custom. Her morals became the same as those of the wisest
and noblest men of the period in which she lived, and raised her to
their rank instead of maintaining her in the category of the
intriguing coquettes of her age.

It is not improbable that her experience of the suffering attendant
upon the decay of such attachments, a suffering alluded to by those
who contemplate only the intercourse of the sexes through the medium
of poetry and sentiment, had considerable influence in determining her
future conduct. At an early age, following upon her liaison with Count
Coligny, she adopted the determination she adhered to during the rest
of her life, of retaining so much only of the female character as was
forced upon her by nature and the insuperable laws of society. Acting
on this principle, her society was chiefly composed of persons of her
adopted sex, of whom the most celebrated of their time made her house
a constant place of meeting.

A curious incident in her relations with Count de Coligny was her
success in persuading him to adjure the errors of the Huguenots and
return to the Roman Catholic Church. She had no religious
predilections, feeling herself spiritually secure in her philosophic
principles, but sought only his welfare and advancement. His obstinacy
was depriving him of the advantages due his birth and personal merit.
Considering that Ninon was scarcely sixteen years of age, respiring
nothing but love and pleasure, to effect by tenderness and the
persuasive strength of her reasoning powers, such a change in a man
so obstin