Until she was twenty-one years of age, Manon Phlipon’s life was singularly free from care. Her studies, her letters to Sophie, her hours with her mother, her promenades, filled it full. Suddenly in 1775 its peace was broken by the death of Madame Phlipon. Manon’s veneration and affection for her mother were sincere and passionate, her dependence upon her complete. Her death left the girl groping pitifully. The support and the joy of her life seemed to have been taken from her. But the necessity of action, her obligations to her father, the kindness of her friends, her own philosophy, finally calmed her, and she made a brave effort to adjust herself to her new duties. Her real restoration, however,—that is, her return to happiness and to enthusiasm, was wrought by a book—the Nouvelle HÉloÏse, of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

In the middle and in the latter half of the eighteenth century France passed through a paroxysm of sentiment. Man was acknowledged a reasoning being, to be sure, but it was because he was a sensitive one that he was extolled. His mission was to escape pain and seek happiness. To laugh, to weep, to vibrate with feeling, was the ideal of happiness. This sensitiveness to sentiment was shown in the most extravagant ways. Words ran out in the efforts to paint emotion. Friends no longer saluted, they fell into each other’s arms. Tears were no longer sufficient for grief, they were needed for joy. Convulsions and spasms alone expressed sorrow adequately. At the least provocation women were in a faint and men trembling. Acute sensibility was cultivated as an Anglo-Saxon cultivates reserve.

The prophet of this sentimental generation was Jean Jacques Rousseau, the hand-book he gave his followers the Nouvelle HÉloÏse. Here sentimentalism reaches the highest point possible without becoming unadulterated mawkishness and sensuality, if, indeed, it does not sometimes pass the limit. To France, however, the book was a revelation. Rousseau declares that Frenchwomen particularly were intoxicated by it, and that there were few ladies of rank of whom he could not have made the conquest if he had undertaken it. It is only necessary to read the memoirs of the day, to see that Rousseau tells the truth. The story that George Sand tells of her grandmother, and those Madame de Genlis relates of the reception of the book by the great ladies of the Palais Royal, are but examples of the general outburst of admiration which swept through feminine hearts.

The Nouvelle HÉloÏse was a revelation in sentiment to Manon Phlipon. The severe studies of the past few years had checked and regulated the excessive and uncontrolled emotions of her girlhood. She had become an intelligent, reflecting creature. But the death of her mother had overthrown her philosophy for the moment; then came the Nouvelle HÉloÏse. Its effect on her was like that of Plutarch twelve years before. It kindled her imagination to the raptures of love, the beauty of filial affection, the peace of domestic life, the joy of motherhood.

Her vigorous, passionate young nature asserted itself; her mind burned with the possibilities of happiness; sentiment regained the power temporarily given to the intellect, and from that time was the ruling force of her life.

“I fear that he strengthened my weakness,” Manon wrote of Rousseau towards the end of her life, and certainly he did destroy the fine harmony that she had established between her reason and her feelings, making the latter master. She was quite right in thinking it fortunate that she had not read him earlier. “He would have driven me mad; I should have been willing to read nobody but him.”

The Nouvelle HÉloÏse was not, however, the first of Rousseau she had read. Émile had passed through her hands, and her religious convictions had unquestionably been influenced by the Profession of Faith of the Vicar of Savoy. But she had read him critically so far. Now all was changed. She plunged enthusiastically into his works. She found there clearly and fully stated what she herself had vaguely and imperfectly felt; the sentiments he interpreted had stirred her; many of the principles he laid down for conduct she had been practising. In less than a year she was defending his works to Sophie.

“I am astonished that you wonder at my love for Rousseau. I regard him as the friend of humanity, as its benefactor and mine. Who pictures virtue in a nobler and more touching manner? Who renders it more worthy of love? His works inspire a taste for truth, simplicity, wisdom. As for myself, I know well that I owe to them all that is best in me. His genius has warmed my soul, I have been inflamed, elevated, and ennobled by it.

“I do not deny that there are some paradoxes in Émile, some proceedings that our customs make impracticable. But how many profound and wholesome opinions, how many useful precepts! how many beauties to save the faults! Moreover, I confess that observation has led me to approve things that at first I treated as foolish and chimerical. His HÉloÏse is a masterpiece of sentiment. The woman who can read it without being better or at least without desiring to become so, has only a soul of clay, a mind of apathy. She will never rise above the common.... In all that he has done one recognizes not only a genius, but an honest man and citizen.... And a scaffold has come near being erected for this man, to whom, in another century, one will perhaps raise altars!”

Manon Phlipon had found in Rousseau her guide. The feminine need of an authority was satisfied. She accepted him en bloc, and to defend and follow him became henceforth her concern.

Manon’s first appreciation of Rousseau was, naturally enough, an attempt to play Julie to a fancied Saint-Preux. It is not to be supposed that this is the first time in her life that her attention was turned towards a lover. Ever since her piety began to cool under the combined effects of study and observation, and her natural vanity and love of attention began to assert themselves, she had thought a great deal of her future husband. In a French girl’s life a future husband is a foregone conclusion, and Manon, like all her countrywomen, had been accustomed to the presentation of this or that person whom some zealous friend thought a fitting mate for her. The procession of suitors that passes before the readers of her Memoirs is so long and so motley that one is inclined to believe that more than one is there by virtue of the heroine’s imagination. Manon Phlipon was one of those women who see in every man a possible lover.

The applications for her hand began with her guitar master, who, having taught her all he knew, ended by asking her to marry him. Then there was a widower who had prepared himself for his courtship by having a wen removed from his left cheek; the family butcher, who sought to win her regard by sending her the choicest cuts of steak, and appearing on Sunday in the midst of the Phlipons’ family promenade, arrayed in lace and fine broadcloth; and in turn all the eligible young men and widowers of the Place Dauphine. They were, without exception, peremptorily declined by the young woman through her father. Had she read Plutarch and all the philosophers, only to tie herself up to a merchant bent on getting rich and cutting a good figure in his quarter?

Her parents, flattered and amused by this cortÈge, did not at first try to influence Manon to accept any one, but at last her father became anxious. The disdain with which she refused all representatives of commerce annoyed him a little, too. “What kind of a man will suit you?” he asked her one day.

“You have taught me to reflect, and allowed me to form studious habits. I don’t know to what kind of a man I shall give myself, but it will never be to any one with whom I cannot share my thoughts and sentiments.”

“But there are men in business who are polished and well educated.”

“Yes, but not among those I see. Their politeness consists in a few phrases and salutations. Their knowledge is always of business. They would be of little use to me in the education of my children.”

“Raise them yourself.”

“That task would seem heavy to me if it were not shared by my husband.”

“Don’t you think L——’s wife is happy? They have just gone out of business; they have bought a large property; their house is well kept; and they see a great deal of good society.”

“I cannot judge of the happiness of others, and mine will never depend upon wealth. I believe that there is no happiness in marriage except when hearts are closely united. I can never give myself to one who has not the same sentiments as I. Besides, my husband must be stronger than I; nature and the laws make him my superior, and I should be ashamed of him if he were not so.”

“Is it a lawyer that you want? Women are never too happy with such men; they are bad tempered and have very little money.”

“But, papa, I shall never marry anybody for his gown. I don’t mean to say that I want a man of such and such a profession, but a man that I can love.”

“But, if I understand you, such a man cannot be found in business?”

“Ah! I confess that seems to me very probable; I have never found any one there to my taste; and then business itself disgusts me.”

“Nevertheless, it is a very pleasant thing to live tranquilly at home while one’s husband carries on a good business. Look at Madame A——; she knows good diamonds as well as her husband; she carries on the business in his absence; she will continue to carry it on if she should become a widow; their fortune is already large. You are intelligent; you would inspire confidence; you could do what you wanted to. You would have a very agreeable life if you would accept Delorme, Dabreuil, or Obligeois.”

“Hold on, papa; I have learned too well that in business one does not succeed unless he sells dear what he has bought cheap; unless he lies and beats down his workmen.”

“Do you believe, then, that there are no honest men in commerce?”

“I am not willing to say that; but I am persuaded that there are but few of them; and more than that, that those honest men have not the qualities that my husband must have.”

“You are making matters very difficult for yourself. What if you do not find your ideal?”

“I shall die an old maid.”

“Perhaps that will be harder than you think. However, you have time to think of it. But remember, one day you will be alone; the crowd of suitors will end,—but you know the fable.”

“Oh, I shall revenge myself by meriting happiness; injustice cannot deprive me of it.”

“Ah, there you go in the clouds.”

The first of Manon’s suitors who really interested her was Pahin de la Blancherie, a bel esprit who frequented a salon where she was often seen. He had been attracted by the girl and had by a clever trick, which Madame Phlipon had seen fit to ignore, gained an entrance to the house. He interested Manon more than her usual callers. He had read the philosophers; he expressed noble views; he had been to America; he was writing a book. This was much better than the young man who plied a trade and repeated the gossip of the Pont Neuf, and when she learned from her father that he had asked her hand, but had been dismissed because of his lack of fortune, she told the loss rather coldly to Sophie.

“He seemed to me to have an honest heart, much love for literature and science, art and knowledge. In fact, if he had a secure position, was older, had a cooler head, a little more solidity, he would not have displeased me. Now he has gone and without doubt thinks as little of me as I do about him.”

This was nearly two years before Madame Phlipon’s death and Manon saw almost nothing of La Blancherie until some four months after her loss, when he came unexpectedly one evening to see her, pale and changed by a long illness. The sight of the young man agitated her violently. It recalled her mother, recalled, too, the fact that he alone of all her suitors had seemed worthy of her. Her agitation embarrassed him. With tears she told him her grief. He tried to console her and confided to her the proof-sheets of his forthcoming book.

Manon described the meeting to Sophie and added her appreciation of the book. “You know my Loisirs,^[1] do you not? Here are the same principles. It is my whole soul. He is not a Rousseau, doubtless, but he is never tiresome. It is a beautiful morality, agreeably presented, supported by facts and an infinite number of historic allusions and of quotations from many authors. I dare not judge the young man because we are too much alike, but I can say of him what I said to Greuze of his picture, ‘if I did not love virtue, he would give me a taste for it.’”

Manon’s imagination was violently excited by this interview and she received La Blancherie’s visits with delight. Her father, however, was displeased and insisted that the young man cease coming to the house. This was all that was needed for Manon to persuade herself that she was in love. She went farther—she was convinced La Blancherie loved her, was suffering over their separation, and she shed tears of sympathy for him. She comforted herself with dreams of his noble efforts to better his situation and to win her in spite of her cruel father. She wrote Sophie long letters describing their mutual efforts to be worthy of each other, letters drawn entirely from her own fancy.

“We are trying to make each other happy by making ourselves better, and in this sweet emulation virtue becomes stronger, hope remains. If he has an opportunity to do a good action, I am sure that he will do it more gladly when he thinks that it is the sweetest and the only homage that he can render me.” All this she assumed, but she thought she had sufficient reason for her opinion. “I judge him by my own heart, nothing else is so like him. We do not see each other, but we know we love each other without ever having avowed it. We count on each other. We hasten along the path of virtue and of sacrifice that we have chosen; there at least we shall be eternally together.”

She wrote him a fervent letter, which Sophie delivered, telling him that it was not her will that he was forbidden the house. She saw that he had a card for the Mass celebrating her mother’s death. She idealized him in a manner worthy of Julie herself, without knowing anything in particular of him, and without his ever having made her any declaration.

A sentimental young woman rarely conceives her lover as he is. Certainly the actual La Blancherie was a very different young man from the paragon of stern virtue Mademoiselle Phlipon pictured, and when the creation of her imagination was brought face to face, one day in the Luxembourg, with the flesh and blood original, the latter made a poor showing. To begin with, he had a feather in his cap, a common enough thing in that day—“Ah, you would not believe how this cursed plume has tormented me,” she wrote Sophie. “I have tried in every way to reconcile this frivolous ornament with that philosophy, with that taste for the simple, with that manner of thinking which made D. L. B. [it is thus that she designates La Blancherie in her letters] so dear to me.” But she did not succeed. No doubt her inability to forgive the feather was made greater by a bit of gossip repeated to her the same day by a friend who was walking with her, that La Blancherie had been forbidden the house of one of her friends because he had boasted that he was going to marry one of the daughters, and that he was commonly known among their friends as “the lover of the eleven thousand virgins.”

Her cure was rapid after this, and when, a few months later, La Blancherie succeeded in getting an interview with her and represented his misfortunes and his hopes, she listened calmly, and told him, at length, that after having distinguished him from the ordinary young man, and indeed placed him far higher, she had been obliged to replace him among the large class of average mortals. For some four hours they debated the situation, and at last La Blancherie withdrew.

Manon’s first love affair was over, and she sat down with rare complacency to describe the finale to Sophie. She had no self-reproach in the affair. As always, she was infallible.

La Blancherie was, no doubt, an excellent example of the eighteenth-century literary adventurer. His first book, a souvenir of college life and his travels in America, was an impossible account of youthful follies and their distressing results, and seems never to have aroused anybody’s interest save Manon’s, and that only during one year. His next venture was to announce himself as the General Agent for Scientific and Artistic Correspondence, and to open a salon in Paris, where he arranged expositions of pictures, scientific conferences, lectures and art soirÉes. In connection with his salon La Blancherie published from 1779 to 1787 the Nouvelles de la rÉpublique des lettres et des arts, and a catalogue of French artists from Cousin to 1783. Both of these works, now extremely rare, are useful in detailed study of the French art of the eighteenth century, and were used by the De Goncourts in preparing their work on this subject.

In 1788 La Blancherie’s salon was closed, and he went to London. By chance he inhabited Newton’s old house. He was inspired to exalt the name of the scientist. His practical plan for accomplishing this was to demand that the name of Newton should be given alternately with that of George to the Princes of England, that all great scientific discoveries should be celebrated in hymns which should be sung at divine services, and that in public documents after the words the year of grace should be added and of Newton.

In short, La Blancherie was in his literary life vain and pretentious, without other aim than to make a sensation. In his social relations he was a perfect type of le petit maÎtre, whose philosophy Marivaux sums up: “A Paris, ma chÈre enfant, les coeurs on ne se les donne pas, on se les prÊte” (In Paris, my dear, we never give our hearts, we only lend them). Manon Phlipon’s idealization and subsequent dismissal of La Blancherie is an excellent example of how a sentimental girl’s imagination will carry her to the brink of folly, and of the cold-blooded manner in which, if she is disillusioned, she will discuss what she has done when under the influence of her infatuation.

No doubt the decline of Manon’s interest in La Blancherie was due no little to the rise of her interest at this time in another type of man,—the middle-aged man of experience and culture whom necessity has forced to work in the world, but whom reflection and character have led to remain always aloof from it.

The first of these was a M. de Sainte-Lettre, a man sixty years of age, who, after thirteen years’ government service in Louisiana with the savages, had been given a place in Pondicherry. He was in Paris for a year, and having brought a letter of introduction to M. Phlipon, soon became a constant visitor of his daughter. His wealth of observation and experience was fully drawn upon by this curious young philosopher, and probably M. de Sainte-Lettre found a certain piquancy in relating his traveller’s tales to a fresh and beautiful young girl whose intelligence was only surpassed by her sentimentality, and whose frankness was as great as her self-complacency. At all events they passed some happy hours together. “I see him three or four times a week,” she wrote Sophie; “when he dines at the house, he remains from noon until nine o’clock. There is perfect freedom between us. This man, taciturn in society, is confiding and gay with me. We talk on all sorts of subjects. When I am not up, I question him, I listen, I reflect, I object. When we do not wish to talk, we keep silent without troubling ourselves, but that does not last long. Sometimes we read a fragment suggested by our conversation, something well known and classic, whose beauties we love to review. The last was a song of the poet Rousseau and some verses of Voltaire. They awakened a veritable enthusiasm,—we both wept and re-read the same thing ten times.”

To this odd pair of philosophers a third was added,—a M. Roland de la PlatiÈre, of whom we are to hear much more later on. Manon began at once to effervesce. “These two men spoil me,” she declared to Sophie; “I find in them the qualities that I consider most worthy my esteem.”

But Roland and de Sainte-Lettre both left Paris, the latter retiring to Pondicherry, where he died some six weeks after his arrival. Before going away, however, he had put Mademoiselle Phlipon into relation with an intimate friend of his, a M. de SÉvelinges, of Soissons, a widower some fifty-two years of age, of small fortune but excellent family and wide culture. This acquaintance was kept up by letter, and in a few months M. de SÉvelinges asked her hand. Now Mademoiselle Phlipon had but a small dot and that was fast disappearing through the dissipation of her father, who, since her mother’s death, had taken to amusing himself in expensive ways. M. de SÉvelinges had children who did not like the idea of his marrying a young wife without fortune. It was to imperil their expected inheritance. Manon appreciated this and refused M. de SÉvelinges. But he insisted and they hit upon a quixotic arrangement which Mademoiselle Phlipon describes thus to Sophie:

“His project is simply to secure a sister and a friend, under a perfectly proper title. I thank him for a plan that my reason justifies, that I find honorable for both, and that I feel myself capable of carrying out.... My sentiments, my situation, everything drives me to celibacy. In keeping it voluntarily while apparently living in an opposite state, I do not change the destiny which circumstances have forced upon me, and at least I contribute by a close relation to the happiness of an estimable man who is dear to me.... How chimerical this idea would be for three-fourths of my kind! It seems as if nobody but M. de SÉvelinges and I could have conceived it, and that you are the only one to whom I could confide it. The realisation of this dream would be delightful it seems to me. I can imagine nothing more flattering and more agreeable to one’s delicacy and confidence than this perfect devotion to pure friendship. Can you conceive of a more delicate joy than that of sacrificing oneself entirely to the happiness of an appreciative man?”

The affair with M. de SÉvelinges came to nothing, and as Manon gradually ceased to think of him she became more and more interested in the M. Roland already mentioned.

M. Roland de la PlatiÈre was a man about forty-two years of age when he first met Mademoiselle Phlipon, in 1776. He held the important position of Inspector-General of Commerce in Picardy, and lived in Amiens, the chief town of the province. In his specialty he was one of the best known men in France. His career had been one of energy and patience. Leaving his home in the Lyonnais when but a boy of eighteen, rather than to take orders or to go into business as his family proposed, he had spent two years studying manufacture and commerce in Lyons, and then had gone to Rouen, where, through the influence of a relative, he had passed ten years in familiarizing himself with the methods of the factories of Normandy, at that time one of the busiest manufacturing provinces in France. M. Roland’s work at Rouen had not been of a simple, unintelligent kind. He had studied seriously the whole subject of manufacturing in its relations to commerce, to government, to society, and had worked out a most positive set of opinions on what was necessary to be done in France in order to revive her industries. He had already begun to write, and his pamphlets had attracted the attention of the ablest men in his department of science.

In 1764 he had been sent to look after the manufacturing interests of Languedoc, then in a serious condition, and in 1776 the position of Inspector in Picardy, the third province of the country from a manufacturing point of view, was given to him. For a man without ambition, the duties of the office were simple. They required him to see that the multitude of vexatious rules which were attached then to the making of goods and articles of all kinds, were carried out; that the regulations governing masters and workmen were observed; that the formalities attending the establishment of new factories were not neglected; that everything of significance that happened in the factories in his province was reported; and that all suggestions for improvement which occurred to him were presented. Evidently an ordinary man, well protected, could fill the position of an inspector of manufactures and have an easy life.

But M. Roland did not understand his duties in this way. The value of the position in his eyes was that it permitted the regulation of disputes, allowed criticism, invited suggestions, encouraged study, and welcomed pamphlets. From the beginning of his connection with Picardy he had displayed an incredible activity in all of these directions. The various industrial interests of the province were clashing seriously at the moment, and the lawyers and councils were only making the disagreement greater. Roland dismissed all interference and became himself “the council, the lawyer, and the protector of the manufacturer.” He became familiar with every master workman of Picardy, with every industry, with every process, and in the reports sent to the Council of Commerce at Paris, he attacked, praised, suggested voluminously. At the same time he was studying seriously. Nothing was foreign to his profession as he understood it, and though already he had the reputation of being a savant he went every year to Paris to do original work in natural history, physics, chemistry, and the arts.

Roland had only been long enough in Picardy to organize his office well when he began to urge the Council to try to introduce into France some of the superior manufacturing processes of other countries. The idea seemed wise and he was invited to undertake a thorough study of foreign and domestic manufacturing methods. This commission led him into many countries. Before M. Roland met Mademoiselle Phlipon, in 1776, he had been through Flanders, Holland, Switzerland, England, Germany, and France in pursuit of information. He had studied lace-making at Brussels, ironware at Nuremberg, linen-making in Silesia, pottery in Saxony, velvet and embroidered ribbons on the Lower Rhine, paper-making at LiÈge, cotton weaving and printing in England.

His observations had been limited to no special step of the manufacturing. He looked after the variety of plant which produced a thread and studied the way it was raised. He knew how native ores were taken out in every part of Europe. The processes of bleaching, dyeing, and printing in all countries were familiar to him. He understood all sorts of machines and had improved many himself. His ideas on designing were excellent and had been enlarged by intelligent observation of the arts of many countries.

On all of his travels Roland had amassed samples of the stuffs he had seen, had taken notes of dimensions, of prices, of the time required for special processes, of the cost of materials, had gathered the pamphlets and volumes written by specialists, often had brought back samples of machines and utensils. All of this he had applied faithfully in Picardy, and before the time he comes into our story he had had the satisfaction of seeing, as a result of his efforts, the number of shops in his domain tripled, the utensils gradually improved, a great variety of new stuffs made, the old ones improved, and many new ideas introduced from other countries.

At the same time the full reports made of his investigations had won him honors; the Academy of Science in Paris, the Royal Society of Montpellier, had made him a correspondent; the academies of Rouen, Villefranche, and Dijon, an honorary member; different societies of Rome, an associate.

He had, too, something besides technical knowledge. He was quite up to the liberal thought of the day and had ranged himself with the large body of French philosophers who were working for greater freedom in commerce, in politics, in religion. In short, M. Roland de la PlatiÈre was a man of more than ordinary value, who had rendered large services to his country. But with all his value, and partly because of it, he was not an easy man to get along with. His hard work had undermined his health and left him morose and irritable. He was so thoroughly convinced of his own ability and usefulness that he could not suffer opposition even from his superiors, and he used often, in his reports, an arrogant tone which exasperated those who were accustomed to official etiquette. A large quantity of Roland’s business correspondence still exists, and throughout it all is evidence of his pettish, unbending superiority. In fact, some very serious controversies arose between him and his associates at different times, in which if Roland was usually right in what he urged, his way of putting it was offensive to the last degree.

Roland prided himself not only on his services, but on his character. He was independent, active, virtuous. He admired noble deeds and good lives. He cultivated virtue as he did science and he made himself a merit of being all this. Nothing is more offensive than self-complacent virtue. Be it never so genuine, the average man who makes no pretensions finds it ridiculous and is unmoved by it. Goodness must be unconscious to be attractive.

Above all, Roland prided himself on the perfect frankness of his character, and to prove it he refused to practise the amiable little flatteries and deceits which, under the name of politeness, keep people in society feeling comfortable and kindly. Shoe-buckles were a vain ornament, so he wore ribbons, though by doing it he offended the company into which he was invited. To tell a man he was “charmed” to see him when he was merely indifferent, was a lie, therefore he preserved a silence. He would not follow a custom he could not defend philosophically, nor repeat a formality which could not be interpreted literally. By the conventional, what is there to be done with such a character? They may respect his scientific worth, but they cannot countenance such contempt for the laws of life as they understand them.

Mademoiselle Phlipon, however, was not conventional. She admired frankness and Roland’s disregard of formalities seemed to her a proof of his simplicity and honesty. She was not offended by the man’s display of character. She herself was as self-conscious, as convinced of her own worth, and as fond as he of using it as an argument. As for his irritability and scientific arrogance, she had little chance to judge of it. He was so much wiser than she, that she accepted with gratitude and humility the information he gave.

It was in 1776 that Roland first came to visit Manon, to whom he had been presented by Sophie Cannet, with whose family he was allied in Amiens. The acquaintance did not go far; for in the fall of that year Roland started out on one of his long trips, this time to Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, and Malta. It was his plan to put his observations into letter form and on his return to publish them. He needed some one to whom he could address the letters, who would guard the copy faithfully in his absence, and would edit it intelligently if he should never return. Manon seemed to him a proper person, and so he requested her to permit his brother, a curÉ in Cluny College, in Paris, to bring the letters to her. She naturally was flattered, and the letters which came regularly were a great delight to her.

Now the sole object of Roland was evidently to have a safe depot for his manuscript, yet as the trip stretched out Manon became more and more interested. Might it not be that this grave philosopher had a more personal interest in her than she had thought? Might he not be the friend she sought? Her fancy was soon bubbling in true Rousseau style. The long silences of M. Roland and the formal letters he wrote were not sufficient to quiet it. An excuse for this premature ebullition was the fact that Roland seemed to be the only person in her little world upon whom for the moment she could exercise her imagination. De Sainte-Lettre was dead, M. de SÉvelinges had withdrawn. True, there was a Genevese of some note, a M. Pittet, at that time in correspondence with Franklin, whom she often saw. M. Pittet wrote for the Journal des dames and talked over his articles beforehand with Mademoiselle Phlipon, even answering in them objections she had made. She was flattered, it is evident from her letters to Sophie, by their relation and only waited a sign to transfer her interest to this eminent Genevese, but the sign was never given.

Another reason for her exercising her imagination on Roland was the dulness of her life at the moment. Though Manon had a large number of good-natured and devoted relatives and friends who exerted themselves to please her, she went out but little save to visit her uncle the curÉ Bimont. The curÉ lived in the chÂteau at Vincennes. Manon was a real favorite with the bizarre and amusing colony of retired officers and their wives, discarded favorites of the Court, and nobles worn out in the service, to whom a home had been given there. Some of the persons she met at Vincennes are highly picturesque. Among others were a number of Americans from Santo Domingo on a visit to an officer. She quickly came to an understanding with them, and questioned them closely on the revolution in progress in the neighboring colony.

In Paris she went out rarely, but when she did go it was usually for a visit which, at this distance, is of piquant interest. An amusing attempt she made to see Rousseau is recounted in a letter to Sophie. Not that she was entirely original in this effort. It was the mode at the moment to practise all sorts of tricks to get a glimpse of the sulky philosopher, and Mademoiselle Phlipon, devoted disciple that she was, could not resist the temptation. A friend of hers had an errand to Rousseau, of which he spoke before her. He saw immediately that she would like to discharge it in order to see the man, and kindly turned it over to her. Manon wrote a letter into which she put many things besides the errand, and announced that she would go on such a day to receive the answer. The visit she describes:

“I entered a shoemaker’s alley, Rue PlÂtriÈre. I mounted to the second story and knocked at the door. One could not enter a temple with more reverence than I this humble door. I was agitated, but I felt none of that timidity which I feel in the presence of petty society people whom at heart I esteem but little. I wavered between hope and fear.... Would it be possible, I thought, that I should say of him what he had said of savants: ‘I took them for angels; I passed the threshold of their doors with respect; I have seen them; it is the only thing of which they have disabused me.’

“Reasoning thus, I saw the door open; a woman of at least fifty years of age appeared. She wore a round cap, a simple clean house-gown, and a big apron. She had a severe air, a little hard even.

“‘Is it here that M. Rousseau lives, Madame?’

“‘Yes, Mademoiselle.’

“‘May I speak to him?’

“‘What do you want?’

“‘I have come for the answer to a letter I wrote him a few days ago.’

“‘He is not to be spoken to, Mademoiselle, but you may say to the person who had you write—for surely it is not you who wrote a letter like that—’

“‘Pardon me,’ I interrupted—

“‘The handwriting is a man’s.’

“‘Do you want to see me write?’ I said, laughing.

“She shook her head, adding, ‘All that I can say to you is that my husband has given up all these things absolutely. He has left all. He would not ask anything better than to be of service; but he is of an age to rest.’

“‘I know it, but I should have been flattered to have had this answer from his mouth. I would have profited eagerly by the opportunity to render homage to the man whom I esteem the highest of the world. Receive it, Madame.’

“She thanked me, keeping her hand on the lock, and I descended the stairs with the meagre satisfaction of knowing that he found my letter sufficiently well written not to believe it the work of a woman.”

Not all of her visits were so unsuccessful, as her description of one to Greuze shows:

“Last Thursday, Sophie, I recalled tenderly the pleasure that we had two years ago, at Greuze’s. I was there on the same errand. The subject of his picture is the Paternal Curse. I shall not attempt to give you a full description of it; that would be too long. I shall simply content myself with saying that, in spite of the number and the variety of the passions expressed by the artist with force and truthfulness, the work, as a whole, does not produce the touching impression which we both felt in considering the other. The reason of this difference seems to me to be in the nature of the subject. Greuze can be reproached for making his coloring a little too gray, and I should accuse him of doing this in all his pictures if I had not seen this same day a picture of quite another style, which he showed me with especial kindness. It is a little girl, naÏve, fresh, charming, who has just broken her pitcher. She holds it in her arms near the fountain, where the accident has just happened; her eyes are not too open; her mouth is still half-agape. She is trying to see how the misfortune happened, and to decide if she was at fault. Nothing prettier and more piquant could be seen. No fault can be found with Greuze here except, perhaps, for not having made his little one sorrowful enough to prevent her going back to the fountain. I told him that and the pleasantry amused us.

“He did not criticise Rubens this year. I was better pleased with him personally. He told me complacently certain flattering things that the Emperor said to him.... I stayed three-quarters of an hour with him. I was there with Mignonne [her bonne] simply. There were not many people. I had him almost to myself.

“I wanted to add to the praises that I gave him:

I kept still, and that was the best thing I did.”

In the quiet life Manon was leading her habits of study and writing served her to good purpose, and the little room overlooking the Pont Neuf, where she had worked since a child, was still her favorite shrine. Almost every day she added something to the collection of reflections she had begun under the title of Mes loisirs, or prepared something for the letters to Sophie; for these letters to her friend, outside of the gossip and narrative portions, were anything but spontaneous. Her habit was to copy into them the long digests she had made of books she read and of her reflections on these books. Among the manuscript lent me by M. Marillier I found several evidences of the preparations she made of her letters.

In spite of friends, visits, books, and letters, however, Manon was sad at this period. Her father was leading an irregular life, which shocked and irritated her. No two persons could have been more poorly prepared for entertaining each other than M. Phlipon and his daughter. He was proud of her, but he had no sympathy with the sentiments which made her refuse the rich husband her accomplishments would have won her. He found no pleasure in talking with her of other than ordinary events. He recognized that she felt herself superior to him in many ways, and though he probably cared very little whether she was or not, he was annoyed that she felt so.

Manon, on her part, lacked a little in loyalty towards her father, as well as in tenderness. She considered him an inferior and always had. When he took to dissipation, after her mother’s death, in spite of the honest effort she made to keep his house pleasant and to be agreeable to him, her pride, as well as her affection, was hurt, and she sometimes took a censorious tone which could not fail to aggravate the case. There were often disagreeable scenes between them, after which M. Phlipon went about with averted eyes and gloomy brow.

Manon complained to her relatives of the condition of her home, and the private lectures M. Phlipon received from them only made him more sullen. Sometimes, to be sure, there were returns to good feeling and Manon felt hopeful, but soon an extravagant or petty act of her father brought back her worry. In her despair she was even tempted to give up her philosopher and marry one of the ordinary but honest and well-to-do young men her friends and relatives presented.

Manon was thus occupied and annoyed when M. Roland came back from Italy in the spring of 1778. As he was much in Paris, the relation between them soon became very friendly, and he was often at the Quai de l’Horloge. But we hear almost nothing of him in the letters to Sophie. The reason was simply that M. Roland had requested his new friend to say nothing to the Cannets about his visits. Probably he foresaw gossip in Amiens if it was known he saw much of Mademoiselle Phlipon. Then, too, Henriette, an older sister of Sophie, was interested in him and he feared an unpleasant complication in case she knew of his attentions. Manon carried out his wishes implicitly in spite of her habit of writing everything to her friend. She even practised some clever little shifts to make Sophie believe that she did not see M. Roland often and then only on business connected with his manuscript, or to ask him some questions about Italian, which she had begun to study.

The frankness on which she prided herself was completely set aside—a thing of which she would not have been capable if she had not been more anxious to please her new friend than she was to keep faith with the old. Probably, too, she was very well pleased to have an opportunity to give Roland this proof of her feeling for him.

In the winter of 1778–79 Roland told her that he loved her. Manon, “en hÉroine de la dÉlicatesse,” as she puts it, felt that in the state of her fortune, which her father was threatening to finish soon, and with the danger there was of M. Phlipon bringing a scandal on the family, it was not right for her to marry. She told all this to Roland, who agreed with her, and they hit on a sort of a Platonic arrangement which went on very well for a time. They openly declared their affection to each other; they worked and studied together; they confessed to each other that the happiness of their lives lay in this mutual confidence and sympathy. But love is stronger than philosophy, and Roland was ardent. Manon became unhappy. Was her dream going to fade? Restless and uncertain, she wrote Roland, who had returned to Amiens, of her fears, and a correspondence began which soon put an end to their Platonic idyl, and landed them amid the irritating details which attend a French betrothal. As this correspondence has never been published, and as it throws much light on the sentimental side of Manon Phlipon’s life, it is quoted from rather fully in the following pages.

Roland had laughed at her first letter complaining of his fervor. In answer she wrote him a voluminous epistle in which she traced the birth and growth of her sentimental nature.

“You laugh at my sermon, now listen to my complaints. I am sad, discontented, ill. My heart is heavy, and burning tears fall without giving me relief... I do not understand myself... but let me tell you once for all what I am and wish always to be.

“It is almost twenty-five years since I received life from a mother whose gentleness, wisdom, and goodness would be an eternal reproach if they were not an inspiration. The death of this loved mother caused the deepest grief I have ever known. By nature I am sensitive (should I pity or congratulate myself?); a solitary education concentrated my affections, made them more fervid and profound. I felt happiness and sorrow before I could call them by name. It was on them that I first reflected. I was active and isolated.... I was meditating when usually a child is busy with toys.

“I have often told you how I was stirred by religious ideas, and how the restless and vague sentiments which had oppressed me were finally fixed on certain determined objects. Soon I awoke to the joy of friendship, and before one would have supposed that I knew I had a heart, it was overflowing. Young, ardent, happily situated, unconscious of the clash of interests which makes men wicked, love of duty became a passion with me and the mere name of virtue aroused my enthusiasm.

“Eager to know, I began to read history. It became more and more interesting to me. The story of a brave deed excited me almost to a delirium. How many times I wept because I had not been born a Spartan or a Roman! As my horizon enlarged, I began to think about my creed, and my faith was overthrown. Humanity was dear to me, and I could not endure to see it condemned without distinction and without pity. I threw over the authority which would force me to believe a cruel absurdity. The first step taken, the rest of the route was soon travelled, and I examined all with the scrupulous defiance which one gives to a doctrine false in an essential point. The philosophic works that I read at this time aided me, but did not determine me to come to a decision. Each system seemed to me to have its weakness and its strength. I held to some of my brilliant chimeras; I became sceptical by an effort, and I took for my creed beneficence in conduct and tolerance in opinion.

“These changes in my ideas had no influence on my morals. They are independent of all religious system because founded on the general interest which is the same everywhere. Harmony in the affections seem to me to constitute the individual goodness of a man; the justice of his relations with his kind, the wisdom of the social man. The multiplied relations of the civil life have also, without doubt, multiplied laws and duties, and those peculiar to each one should be the first subject of his study.

“The place which my sex should occupy in the order of nature and of society very soon fixed my curious attention. I will not say what I thought of the question which has been raised as to the pre-eminence of one sex over the other. It has never seemed to me worthy of the attention of a serious mind. We differ essentially, and the superiority which in some respects is yours does not alter the reciprocal dependence in happiness which can only be the common work of both.

“I appreciated the justice, the power, and the extent of the duties laid upon my sex. I trembled with joy on finding that I had the courage, the resolution, and the certainty of always fulfilling them.... I resolved to change my condition only for the sake of an object worthy of absolute devotion. In the number of those who solicited (my hand), one only of whom I have talked to you (M. de SÉvelinges) merited my heart. For a long time I was silent, and it was only when I realized all the barriers between us that I asked him to leave me. I have had reason since to congratulate myself on this resolution, which was painful for me beyond expression.

“Many changes have come since, but I have steadily refused to marry except for love. I have lost my fortune and my pride has increased. I would not enter a family which did not appreciate me enough to be proud of the alliance or which would think it was honoring me in receiving me. I have felt in this way a long time, and have looked upon a single life as my lot. My duties, true, would be fewer and not so sweet, perhaps, but none the less severe and exacting. Friendship I have regarded as my compensation, and I have wished to taste it with all the abandon of confidence. But you are leading me too far, and it is against that that I would protect myself.

ROLAND DE LA PLATIÈRE.
After the painting by Hesse.