mere thirst, and a desire for pleasure to be gratified by indulgence
like all other pleasure. The germ of philosophy already growing in her
soul, found nothing in this discovery that was essentially unnatural;
on the contrary, it was essentially natural. It was clear to her
logical mind, that a passion like love produced among men different
effects according to different dispositions, humors, temperament,
education, interest, vanity, principles, or circumstances, without
being, at the same time, founded upon anything more substantial than a
disguised, though ardent desire of possession, the essential of its
existence, after which it vanished as fire disappears through lack of
fuel. Dryden, the celebrated English poetic and literary genius,
reaches the same opinion in his Letters to Clarissa.

Having reached this point in her reasoning, she advanced a step
further, and considered the unequal division of qualities distributed
between the two sexes. She perceived the injustice of it and refused
to abide by it. "I perceive," she declared, "that women are charged
with everything that is frivolous, and that men reserve to themselves
the right to essential qualities. From this moment I shall be a man."

All this growing out of the ardour of a first love, which is always
followed by the lassitude of satiety, so far from causing Ninon any
tears of regret, nerved her up to a philosophy different from that of
other women, and makes it impossible to judge her by the same
standard. She can not be considered a woman subject to a thousand
fantasies and whims, a thousand trifling concealed proprieties of
position and custom. Her morals became the same as those of the wisest
and noblest men of the period in which she lived, and raised her to
their rank instead of maintaining her in the category of the
intriguing coquettes of her age.