Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/484

470 who tried to strengthen those principles he had first instilled into her mind, saying he only regretted that he had enjoyed so few pleasures in proportion to what he might have had. He advised her, on the contrary, not to be scrupulous in the number, but the choice of them. The security in which he appeared to die, was a consolation to his daughter, and she arranged her little patrimony with great prudence, sinking the principal, so that she had 7 or 8000 livres annually. One motive for doing this was, the resolution she had made never to marry.

The poet Scarron was in the number of her friends, and because his infirmities kept him at home, and poverty made people slight him, she would often stay at his house several days together, by which means it was filled with the polite and the learned. She now found him married to Mademoiselle D'Aubigné, with whom she commenced an intimate friendship, although the latter robbed her of the heart of de Villarceaux.

One of her lovers having left Paris, confided to Ninon 10,000 crowns, and the like sum to a penitentiary, famous for the austerity of his manners. On his return to reclaim it, the latter affected not to understand him, saying they received money only as gifts for the poor. When the young man came to Ninon, she cried out, "I have had a misfortune in your absence." He supposed she was going to announce to him the loss of the money, but she continued, "I am sorry for you, if you still love me, for I no longer love you; but there is the money you confided to me." They then vowed an eternal friendship. Once when a gentleman was recounting his own good qualities, to court her