and said, 'Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will juggle you
out of my conversion.' St. Evremond said he would gladly die to go off
with so successful a bon-mot.

He became however, in time, serious, if not devout or penitent. Ninon de
l'Enclos having written to St. Evremond that the Count de Grammont had
not only recovered but had become devout, St. Evremond answered her in
these words:--

'I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the Count de Grammont
has recovered his former health, and acquired a new devotion. Hitherto I
have been contented with being a plain honest man; but I must do
something more: and I only wait for your example to become a devotee.
You live in a country where people have wonderful advantages of saving
their souls: there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode as virtue;
sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good-manners, as
much as religion. Formerly it was enough to be wicked, now one must be a
scoundrel withal to be damned in France.'

A report having been circulated that De Grammont was dead, St. Evremond
expressed deep regret. The report was contradicted by Ninon de l'Enclos.
The Chevalier was then eighty-six years of age; 'nevertheless he was,'
Ninon says, 'so young, that I think him as lively as when he hated sick
people, and loved them after they had recovered their health;' a trait
very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was always on the surface,
but whose selfishness was deep as that of most wits and beaux, who are
spoiled by the world, and who, in return, distrust and deceive the
spoilers. With this long life of eighty-six years, endowed as De
Grammont was with elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable
talent, an excellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a