"Indigne de mes feux, indigne de mes larmes, Je renonce sans peine à tes faibles appas; Mon amour te prêtait des charmes, Ingrate, que tu n'avais pas."
Or, as might be said substantially in English:
Unworthy my flame, unworthy a tear, I rejoice to renounce thy feeble allure; My love lent thee charms that endear, Which, ingrate, thou couldst not procure.
Instead of being offended, Ninon took this mark of unreasonable spite good naturedly, and replied by another quatrain based upon the same rhyme as that of the disappointed suitor:
"Insensible à tes feux, insensible à tes larmes, Je te vois renoncer à mes faibles appas; Mais si l'amour prête des charmes, Pourquoi n'en empruntais-tu pas."
Caring naught for thy flame, caring naught for thy tear, I see thee renounce my feeble allure; But if love lends charms that endear, By borrowing thou mightst some procure.
It is not to be wondered at that a girl under such tutelage should abandon herself wholly, both mind and body, to a philosophy so contrary in its principles and practices to that which her mother had always endeavored to instill into her young mind. The father was absent fighting for Heaven alone knew which faction into which France was broken up, there were so many of them, and the mother and daughter lived apart, the disparity in their sentiments making it impossible for them to do otherwise. For this reason, Ninon was practically her own mistress, and not interfered with because the husband and wife could not agree upon any definite course of life for her to follow. Ninon's heart, however, had not lost any of its natural instincts, and she loved her mother sincerely, a trait in her which all Paris learned with astonishment when her mother was taken down with what proved to be a fatal illness.
Madame de l'Enclos, separated from both her husband and daughter, and devoting her life to pious exercises, acquired against them the violent prejudices natural in one who makes such a sacrifice upon the altar of sentiment. The worldly life of her daughter gave birth in her mind to an opinion which she deemed the natural consequence of it. The love of pleasure, in her estimation, had destroyed every vestige of virtue in her daughter's soul and her neglect of her religious duties had converted her into an unnatural being.