should be known.

The Abbé Gedoyn was her last lover so far as there is any account of
her amours. The story is related by Remond, surnamed "The Greek," and
must be taken with a grain of salt as Ninon was at that time
seventy-nine years of age. This Remond, notwithstanding her age, had
made violent love to Ninon without meeting with any success. Perhaps
he was trying an experiment, being a learned man, anxious to ascertain
when the fire of passion became extinct in the human breast. Ninon
evidently suspected his ardent professions for she refused to listen
to him and forbade his visits altogether.

"I was the dupe of his Greek erudition," she explained, "so I banished
him from my school. He was always wrong in his philosophy of the
world, and was unworthy of as sensible a society as mine." She often
added to this: "After God had made man, he repented him; I feel the
same about Rémond."

But to return to the Abbé Gedoyn: he left the Jesuits with the Abbé
Fraguier in 1694, that is to say, when Mademoiselle de l'Enclos was
seventy-eight years of age. Both of them immediately made the
acquaintance of Ninon and Madame de la Salière, and, astonished at the
profound merit they discovered, deemed it to their advantage to
frequent their society for the purpose of adding to their talents
something which the study of the cloister and experience in the king's
cabinet itself had never offered them. Abbé Gedoyn became particularly
attached to Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, whose good taste and
intellectual lights he considered such sure and safe guides. His
gratitude soon received the additions of esteem and admiration, and
the young disciple felt the growth of desires which it is difficult to