enduring the frightful pain. The reader can readily infer, however,
from his daily experiences with the human family, that this
construction is seldom put upon this canon, the world at large,
viewing it from the Epicurean interpretation, which meant earthly
pleasures, or the purely sensual enjoyments. It is certain that
Ninon's father did not construe any of these canons according to the
religious idea, but followed the commonly accepted version, and
impressed them upon his young daughter's mind in all their various
lights and shades.

Imbibing such philosophy from her earliest infancy, the father taking
good care to press them deep into her plastic mind, it is not
astonishing that Ninon should discard the more distasteful fruits to
be painfully harvested by following her mother's tuition, and accept
the easily gathered luscious golden fruit offered her by her father.
Like all children and many adults, the glitter and the tinsel of the
present enjoyment were too powerful and seductive to be resisted, or
to be postponed for a problematic pleasure.

The very atmosphere which surrounded the young girl, and which she
soon learned to breathe in deep, pleasurable draughts, was surcharged
with the intoxicating oxygen of freedom of action, liberality, and
unrestrained enjoyment. While still very young she was introduced into
a select society of the choicest spirits of the age and speedily
became their idol, a position she continued to occupy without
diminution for over sixty years. No one of all these men of the world
had ever seen so many personal graces united to so much
intellectuality and good taste. Ninon's form was as symmetrical,
elegant and yielding as a willow; her complexion of a dazzling white,
with large sparkling eyes as black as midnight, and in which reigned