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Saint-Evremond to Ninon
de l’Enclos:
I have been trying for
more than a year to obtain news of you from everybody, but nobody
can give me any. M. de la Bastille tells me that you are in
good health, but adds, that if you have no more lovers, you are
satisfied to have a greater number of friends.
The falsity of the former
piece of news casts a doubt upon the verity of the latter, because
you are born to love as long as you live. Lovers and gamblers
have something in common: Who has loved will love. If I had
been told that you had become devout, I might have believed it,
for that would be to pass from a human passion to the love of God,
and give occupation to the soul. But not to love, is a species
of void, which cannot be consistent with your heart.
Ce repos languissant
ne fut jamais un bien;
C’est trouver sans mouvoir
l’êtat où l’on nest rien.
(‘Twas never a good this
languishing rest;
‘Tis to find; without
search a state far from blest.)
I want to know about
your health, your occupations, your inclinations, and let it be
in a long enough letter, with moralizing and plenty of affection
for your old friend.
The news here is that
the Count de Grammont is dead, and it fills me with acute sorrow.
If you know Barbin, ask
him why he prints so many things, which are not mine, over my name?
I have been guilty of enough folly without assuming the burden of
others. They have made me the author of a diatribe against
Père Bouhours, which I never even imagined. There is no writer
whom I hold in higher esteem. Our language owes more to him
than to any other author.
God grant that the rumor
of Count de Grammont’s death be false, and that of your health true.
The Gazette de Hollande says the Count de Lauzun is to be married.
If this were true he would have been summoned to Paris, besides,
de Lauzun is a Duke, and the name “Count” does not fit him.
Adieu. I am the
truest of your servants, who would gain much if you had no more
lovers, for I would be the first of your friends, despite an absence
that may be called eternal.
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