Belle femme, belle lettres@ ninon de lenclos

Her name was Ninon de lenclos(1620 - 1705, another saying was 1615 - 1705), and she was born in 17th century, died in 18th century, lived for an extraordinary and extraordinarly long life. She came from a very humble family(according to Voltaire) or at best a family of middle class, but when she died, she was intimate friend of the most prominent men and women in the court, Madame de Maintenon, the secret second wife of King Louis XIV, and Queen of Sweden Christine among them, even the King himself acclaimed that Ninon de L'enclos was the best treasure of his court.

In her time, she was called "une femme complete" (a complete woman), she had beauty and brain, she was free minded and full of vitality, she loved both men and women and she was loved and even idolized by many, she writed and she writed beautifully. As a prolific letter, she has written many letters to Marquis de Sevigne, her protege, whom she was supposed to make into a real man, part of those letters were edited and translated into the book called Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos by Robinson Overton

How beautiful was she? In the above mentioned book, the author borrowed the descriptions of her contempory men:

"Entre l'amour et l'amitié, mon cœur ne balance jamais"

And what about her writing? Again, an important man who had lived in her own time, and witnessed her epistolary style, the celebrated Abbe de Chateauneuf, in his Dialogues on Ancient Music expressed it the best: (He refered to Ninon as Leontium, a name given to her by le Marechal de Saint-Evremond)

And one of her letters to Marquis de Sevigne, can very well served as a proof of such high complements:

Even today, her writing looked crispy and her philosophy sparkled with wisdom still relevant today. Perhaps God is really unfair afterall, he sometimes would creat some masterpiece which is as perfect as Ninon de L'enclos, to show us that he does, exist.

Il est plus difficile de bien faire l'amour que de commander des armées. It's more difficult to make love well than commanding an army