CHAPTER XIV

THOSE LEFT BEHIND 303

BIBLIOGRAPHY 313

INDEX 321

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Madame Roland at the Conciergerie—From a painting by

Jules Goupil, now in the museum of Amboise _Frontispiece_

Madame Roland—From a cameo in the Musée Carnavalet _Title_

FACING

PAGE

The Place Dauphine in the Eighteenth Century 8

The Pont Neuf in 1895 40

Roland de la Platière—After the painting by Hesse 64

Le Clos de la Platière 96

Madame Roland—From the painting by Heinsius in the

museum of Versailles 128

Madame Roland—After a crayon portrait owned by the

family 152

Madame Roland—From a painting by an unknown artist in

the Musée Carnavalet 192

Engraving of Buzot by Nargeot—After the portrait worn by

Madame Roland during her captivity 224

Inscription written by Madame Roland on the back of the

portrait of Buzot which she carried while in prison 240

The prison, called the Abbaye, where Madame Roland

passed the first twenty-four days of her imprisonment 256

The Conciergerie in 1793—Prison where Madame Roland

passed the last eight days of her captivity, and from

which she went to the guillotine. Pont au Change in

the foreground 288

Roland de la Platière—From a drawing by Gabriel 304

MADAME ROLAND

I

THE GIRLHOOD OF MANON PHLIPON

Since the days when all of the city of Paris, save a few mills,

fortresses, and donjon-towers, was to be found on the Île de la Cité,

the western end of that island has been the quarter of the gold and

silver smiths. Here, in the olden times, when this part of the island

was laid out in gardens and paths, the sellers of ornaments and metal

vessels arranged their wares on the ground or in rude booths; later when

peaked-roofed, latticed-faced buildings filled the space, these same

venders opened their workshops in them; later still, when good King

Henry IV. filled up this western end, built the Pont Neuf and put up the

two fine façades of red brick and stone—mates for the arcades of the

Place Royale—the same class continued here their trade. Even to-day, he

who knows Paris thoroughly seeks the neighborhood of the Quai de

l’Horloge and the Quai des Orfèvres for fine silverware and jewels.

Among the master engravers who in the latter part of the eighteenth

century plied their trade in this quarter was one Pierre Gatien Phlipon.

His shop was in one of the houses of King Henry’s façade—a house still

standing almost intact, although the majority of them have been replaced

or rebuilt so as to be unrecognizable—that facing the King’s statue on

the west and looking on the Quai de l’Horloge on the north.

M. Phlipon’s shop was in one of the best situations in Paris. The Pont

Neuf, on which his house looked, was the real centre of the city. Here

in those days loungers, gossips, recruiting agents, venders of all

sorts, _saltimbanques_, quacks, men of fashion, women of pleasure, the

high, the low, _tout Paris_, in short, surged back and forth across the

bridge. So fashionable a promenade had the place become that Mercier,

the eighteenth-century gossip, declared that when one wanted to meet a

person in Paris all that was necessary to do was to promenade an hour a

day on the Pont Neuf. If he did not find him, he might be sure he was

not in the city.

Engraver by profession, M. Phlipon was also a painter and enameller. He

employed several workmen in his shop and received many orders, but he

had an itching for money-making which led him to sacrifice the artistic

side of his profession to the commercial and to combine with his art a

trade in jewelry and diamonds. We may suppose, in fact, that the reason

M. Phlipon had removed his shop to the Pont Neuf, instead of remaining

in the Rue de la Lanterne, now Rue de la Cité, near Notre Dame, where he

lived until about 1755, was because he saw in the new location a better

opportunity for carrying on trade.

As his sacrifice of art to commerce shows, M. Phlipon was not a

particularly high-minded man. He was, in fact, an excellent type of what

the small _bourgeoisie_ of Paris was, and is to-day,—good-natured and

vain, thrifty and selfish, slightly common in his tastes, not always

agreeable to live with when crossed in his wishes, but on the whole a

respectable man, devoted to his family, with too great regard for what

his neighbors would say of him to do anything flagrantly vulgar, and too

good a heart to be continually disagreeable.

His vanity made him fond of display, but it kept him in good company. If

he condescended to trade, he never condescended to traders, but

carefully preserved the relations with artists, painters, and sculptors

which his rank as an engraver brought him. “He was not exactly a

high-minded man,” said his daughter once, “but he had much of what one

calls honor. He would have willingly taken more for a thing than it was

worth, but he would have killed himself rather than not to have paid the

price of what he had bought.” What M. Phlipon lacked in dignity of

character and elevation of sentiments, Madame Phlipon supplied—a serene,

high-minded woman, knowing no other life than that of her family,

ambitious for nothing but duty. She is a perfect model for the gracious

housewife in _La mère laborieuse_ and _Le Bénédicité_ of Chardin, and

her face might well have served as the original for the exquisite pastel

of the Louvre, Chardin’s wife.

Madame Phlipon’s marriage had been, as are the majority of her class,

one of reason. If she had suffered from a lack of delicacy on the part

of her husband, had never known deep happiness or real companionship,

she had, at least, been loved by the rather ordinary man whom her

superiority impressed, and her home had been pleasant and peaceful.

The Phlipons led a typical _bourgeois_ life. The little home in the

second story of the house on the Quai de l’Horloge contained both shop

and living apartments. As in Paris to-day the business and domestic life

were closely dovetailed. Madame Phlipon minded the work and received

customers when her husband was out, helped with the accounts, and

usually had at her table one or more of the apprentices. Their busy

every-day life was varied in the simple and charming fashion of which

the French have the secret, leisurely promenades on Sunday, to

Saint-Cloud, Meudon, Vincennes, an hour now and then in the Luxembourg

or Tuileries gardens, an occasional evening at the theatre. As the

families of both Monsieur and Madame Phlipon were of the Parisian

_bourgeoisie_ they had many relatives scattered about in the commercial

parts of the city, and much animation and variety were added to their

lives by the constant informal visiting they did among them.

The chief interest of the Phlipon household was centred in its one

little girl—the only child of seven left—Marie-Jeanne, or Manon, as she

was called for short. Little Manon had not been born in the house on the

Quai de l’Horloge, but in the Rue de la Lanterne (March 18, 1754), and

the first two years of her life had been spent with a nurse in the

suburbs of Arpajon. She was already a happy, active, healthy, observant

child when she was brought back to her father’s home. The change from

the quiet country house and garden, all of the world she had known, to

the shifting panorama of the Seine and the Pont Neuf made a vivid

impression upon her. The change, in fact, may be counted as the first

step in her awakening. It quickened her power of observation and aroused

in her a restless curiosity.

Never having known her mother until now, she was almost at once taken

captive by the sweet, grave woman who guarded her with tenderest care,

yet demanded from her implicit obedience. Madame Phlipon obtained over

the child a complete ascendency and kept it so long as she lived. The

father, on the contrary, never was able to win from his little daughter

the homage she gave her mother. Monsieur Phlipon was often impatient and

arbitrary with Manon. The child was already sufficiently developed when

she began to make his acquaintance to discriminate dimly. While she was

pliable to reason and affection, she was obstinate before force and

impatience. She recognized that somehow they were illogical and unjust

and she would endure but never yield to them. Thus among Manon’s first

experiences was a species of hero-worship on one hand, of contempt for

injustice on the other.

An incessant activity was one of the little girl’s natural qualities.

This and her curiosity explain how she came to learn to read without

anybody knowing exactly when. By the time she was four years old nothing

but the promise of flowers tempted her away from her books, unless,

indeed, it was stories; and with these the artist friends of M. Phlipon

often entertained her, weaving extravagances by the hour, varying the

pastime by repeating rhymes to her—an amusement which was even more

entertaining to them since she repeated them like a parrot.

Madame Phlipon was a sincere and ardent Catholic and she took advantage

of the eager activity of little Manon to teach her the Old and New

Testament and the catechism. When the child was seven years old, she was

sent to the class to be prepared for her first communion. Here she

speedily distinguished herself, carrying away the prizes, much to the

glory of her uncle Bimont, a young curé of the parish charged with

directing the catechism.

M. Phlipon and his wife, delighted with the child’s precocity, gave her

masters,—one to teach her to write and to give her history and

geography, another for the piano, another for dancing, another for the

guitar. M. Phlipon himself gave her drawing, and the Curé Bimont Latin.

She attacked these duties eagerly,—getting up at five in the morning to

copy her exercises and do her examples,—active because she could not

help it.

But her real education was not what she was getting in these

conventional ways. It was what the books she read gave her. These were

of the most haphazard sort: the Bible in old French, to which she was

greatly attached, the _Lives of the Saints_, _The Civil Wars of Appias_,

Scarron, the _Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier_, a treatise on

Heraldry, another on Contracts, many travels, dramas of all sorts,

_Télémaque_, _Jerusalem Delivered_, even _Candide_.

The child read with passionate absorption. At first it was simply for

something to do, as she did her exercises or fingered her guitar; but

soon she began to feel strongly and she sought in her books food for the

strange new emotions which stirred her heart, brought tears to her eyes,

and awakened her to the mysteries of joy and sorrow long before she was

able to call those emotions by name.

In the motley collection of books read by Manon at this period one only

made a life-long impression upon her,—it was Dacier’s _Plutarch_. No one

can understand the eighteenth century in France without taking into

consideration the profound impress made upon it by _Plutarch’s Lives_.

The work was the source of the dreams and of the ambitions of numbers of

the men who exercised the greatest influence on the intellectual and

political life of the period. Jean Jacques Rousseau declares that when

he first read _Plutarch_, at about nine years of age, it cured him of

his love of romance, and formed his free and republican character, and

the impatience of servitude which tormented him throughout his life.

Hundreds of others like Rousseau, many of them, no doubt, in imitation

of him, trace their noblest qualities to the same source.

When little Manon Phlipon first read the _Lives_, the stories of these

noble deeds moved her almost to delirium. She carried her book to church

all through one Lent in guise of a prayer-book and read through the

service. When at night, alone in her room, she leaned from the window

and looked upon the Pont Neuf and Seine, she wept that she had not been

born in Athens or Sparta. She was beginning to apply to herself what she

read, to feel that the noble actions which aroused such depths of

feeling in her heart were not only glorious to hear of but to perform.

She was filled with awe at the idea that she was herself a creature

capable of sublime deeds. A solemn sense of responsibility was awakened,

and she felt that she must form her soul for a worthy future. When most

children are busy with toys she was trembling before a mysterious

possibility,—a life of great and good deeds, a possibility which she

faintly felt was dependent upon her own efforts.

[Illustration:

THE PLACE DAUPHINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Mademoiselle Phlipon lived in the second story of the house on the

left.

]

Once penetrated by this splendid ideal, however vague it may have been,

it was inevitable that the rites of the Church, full of mysticism and

exaltation, the teachings of devotion and self-abnegation, the pictures

of lives spent in holy service, should appeal deeply to Manon’s

sensitive and untrained consciousness. As the time of her first

communion approached, and curé and friends combined to impress upon the

child the solemn and eternal importance of the act, she was more and

more stirred by dread and exaltation. All her time was given to

meditation, to prayer, to pious reading. Every day she fingered the

_Lives of the Saints_, sighing after the times when the fury of the

pagans bestowed the crown of martyrdom upon Christians.

The necessary interruptions to her devotions which occurred in the

household, disturbed her. At last she felt that she could not endure any

longer the profane atmosphere; throwing herself at her parents’ feet,

she begged to be allowed to go to a convent to prepare for the

sacrament. M. and Madame Phlipon, touched by the zeal of their daughter,

consented to let her leave them for a year.

It was not a difficult matter to find a convent suitable for a young

girl of any class, in the Paris of the eighteenth century. That selected

by the Phlipons for Manon stood in the Rue Neuve Ste. Étienne, a street

now known as Rue Rollin and Rue Navarre. The convent, Dames de la

Congrégation de Notre Dame, established in 1645, was well known for the

gratuitous instruction its sisters gave the children of the very poor as

well as for the simplicity and honesty with which the _pension_ for

young girls was conducted, a thing which could not be said of many of

the convents of that day.

The instruction given by the Dames de la Congrégation was not, however,

any better than that of other institutions of the kind, if the morals

were. The amount of education regarded as necessary for a French girl of

good family at this period was, in fact, very meagre; even girls of the

highest classes being allowed to grow to womanhood in astonishing

ignorance. Madame du Deffand says that in the convent where she was

placed nothing was taught except “reading and writing, a light, very

light tinting of history, the four rules, some needle-work, many

pater-nosters—that was all.” Madame Louise, the sister of Louis XVI.,

did not know her alphabet at twelve, so says Madame Campan. Madame de

Genlis taught her handsome sister-in-law, the favorite of the Duke of

Orleans, to write after she was married. Madame de Genlis herself at

twelve years of age had read almost nothing.

Manon Phlipon’s acquirements when she entered the convent, at a little

over eleven years of age, were certainly much greater than those of

these celebrated women at her age. It is probable that her instruction

was far above that not only of the girls of her age in the school, but

of the most advanced pupils, perhaps even of some of the good sisters

themselves.

The superior training of the new pupil was soon known. The discovery

caused her to be petted by all the sisterhood, and she was granted

special privileges of study. She continued her piano lessons and

drawing, so that she had sufficient work to satisfy her active nature

and to make the leisure given her sweet. This leisure she never passed

with her companions. Her frame of mind was altogether too serious to

permit her to romp like a child. The recreation hours she spent apart,

in a quiet corner of the silent old garden, reading or dreaming,

permeated by the beauty of the foliage, the sigh of the wind, the

perfume of the flowers. All this she felt, in her exalted state, was an

expression of God, a proof of his goodness. With her heart big with

gratitude and adoration, she would leave the garden to kneel in the dim

church, and listen to the chanting of the choir and the roll of the

organ.

Sensitive, unpractical, fervent, the imposing and mystic services

allured her imagination and moved her heart until she lost self-control

and wept, she did not know why.

During the first days at the convent, a novice took the veil,—one of the

most touching ceremonies of the Church. The young girl appeared before

the altar, dressed like a bride, and in a tone of joyous exaltation sang

the wonderful strain, “Here I have chosen my dwelling-place, here I

establish myself forever.” Then her white garments were taken from her,

and cruel shears cut her long hair, which fell in masses to the floor;

she prostrated herself before the altar, and in sign of her eternal

separation from the world a black cloth was spread over her. Even to the

experienced and unbelieving the sight is profoundly affecting. Manon,

sensitive and overstrung, was seized with the terrible, death-in-life

meaning of the sacrifice; she fancied herself in the place of the young

_dévouée_ and fell to the floor in violent convulsions.

Under the influence of such emotions, intensified by long prayers,

retreats, meditation, exhortations, from curé and sisters, she took her

first communion. So penetrated was she by the solemnity and the joy of

the act that she was unable to walk alone to the altar. The report of

her piety went abroad in the convent and in the parish, and many a good

old woman whom she met afterwards, mindful of this extraordinary

exaltation, asked her prayers.

Fortunately for the child’s development, this excessive mysticism, which

was developing a melancholy, sweet to begin with, but not unlikely to

become unhealthy, was relieved a few months after she entered the

convent by a friendship with a young girl from Amiens, Sophie Cannet by

name.

When Sophie first appeared at the Congrégation, Manon had been deeply

touched by her grief at parting from her mother. Here was a sensibility

which approached her own. She soon saw, too, that the new _pensionnaire_

avoided the noisy groups of the garden, that she loved solitude and

revery. She sought her and almost at once there sprang up between the

two a warm friendship. Sophie was three years older than Manon; she was

more self-contained, colder, more reasonable. She loved to discuss as

well as to meditate, to analyze as well as to read. She talked well,

too, and Manon had not learned as yet the pretty French accomplishment

of _causerie_, and she delighted to listen to her new friend.

If the girls were different, they were companionable. Their work, their

study, their walks, were soon together. They opened their hearts to each

other, confided their desires, and decided to travel together the path

to perfection upon which each had resolved.

To Manon Phlipon this new friendship was a revelation equal to the

vision of nobility aroused by Plutarch; or to that of mystic purity

found in the Church. So far in life she had had no opportunity for

healthy expression. Her excessive sensibility, the emotions which

frightened and stifled her, the aspirations which floated, indefinite

and glorious, before her, all that she felt, had been suppressed. She

could not tell her mother, her curé, the good sisters. Even if they

understood her, she felt vaguely that they would check her, calm her,

try to turn her attention to her lessons, to the practice of good deeds,

to pious exercises. She did not want this. She wanted to feel, to

preserve this tormenting sensibility which was her terror and her joy.

To Sophie she could tell everything. Sophie, too, was sensitive, devout,

and understood joy and sorrow. The two girls shared the most secret

experiences of their souls. There grew up between them a form of

Platonic love which is not uncommon between idealistic and sensitive

young girls, a relation in which all that is most intimate, most

profound, most sincere in the intellectual and spiritual lives of the

two is exchanged; under its influence the most obscure and indefinite

impressions take form, the most subtile emotions materialize, and vague

and indefinite thoughts shape themselves.

The effect of this relation on the emotional nature of Manon was

generally wholesome. Her affection for Sophie gave a new coloring to the

pleasure she found in her work, and it dispelled the melancholy which

hitherto had tinged her solitude. More important, it compelled her to

define her feelings so that her friend could understand them: to do this

she was forced to study her own moods and gradually her intelligence

came to be for something in all that she felt.

When the year which Manon’s parents had given her for the convent was

up, she was obliged to leave her friend. For some time after the parting

Sophie remained at the Congrégation, so that they saw each other often;

but, afterwards, it was by letters that their friendship was kept up.

Never were more ardent love letters written than those of Manon to

Sophie. She commiserated all the world who did not know the joys of

friendship. She suffered tortures when Sophie’s letters were delayed,

and, like every lover since the beginning of the postal service, evolved

plans for improving its promptness and its exactness. She read and

re-read the letters which always filled her pockets, and she rose from

her bed at midnight to fill pages with declarations of her fondness.

This correspondence became one of the great joys of her life. All that

she thought, felt, and saw, she put into her letters. The effort to

express all of herself clearly compelled her to a greater degree of

reflection and crystallized her notions wonderfully. Beside making her

think, it awakened in her a passion for the pen which never left her.

Indeed, it became an imperative need for her to express in writing

whatever she thought or felt. Her emotions and ideas seemed to her

incomplete if they had not been written out. In her early letters there

is a full account of all the influences which were acting on her life,

and of the transformation and evolution they produced.

When Manon left the Congrégation, it was with the determination to

preserve not only her friend, but her piety. To do the latter, she had

made up her mind to fit herself secretly to return to a convent life

when she reached her majority. She had even chosen already the order

which she should join, and had selected Saint François de Sales, “one of

the most amiable saints of Paradise,” as she rightly characterized him,

as her patron.

For the time being, however, not a little of the world was mixed with

her preparations for religious retirement. When she came back to the

Quai de l’Horloge,—her first year out of the convent was spent on the

Île Saint Louis with her grandmother Phlipon,—her father and mother

began gradually to initiate her into the round of life which presumably

would be hers in the future. M. Phlipon took especial pride in his

fresh, bright-faced daughter. By his wish she was always dressed with

elegance, and she attracted attention everywhere. The tenderness with

which he introduced her always touched Manon in spite of the fact that

she was often embarrassed by his too evident pride in her. The two went

together to all the Salons and the expositions of art objects, and M.

Phlipon carefully directed her taste here where he was so thoroughly at

home. It was the only real point of contact between them.

Sundays and fête days were usually devoted to promenades by the

Phlipons. The gayest paths, gardens, and boulevards were always chosen

by M. Phlipon. He enjoyed the crowd and the mirth; and, above all, he

enjoyed showing off his pretty daughter. But she, stern little moralist,

when she discovered that her holiday toilette really gave her pleasure,

that she actually felt flattered when people turned to look at her, that

she found compliments sweet and admiring glances gratifying, trembled

with apprehension. She might forgive her father’s vanity, but she could

not forgive such a feeling in herself. Was it to walk in gardens and to

be admired that she had been born? She gradually convinced herself that

these promenades were inconsistent with her ideal of what was “beautiful

and wise and grand,” and she urged her parents to the country, where all

was in harmony with her thoughts and feelings. Meudon, still one of the

loveliest of all the lovely forests in the environs of Paris, was her

favorite spot. Its quiet, its naturalness, its variety, pleased her

better than the movement and the artificiality of such a place as

Saint-Cloud. In the forest of Meudon her passion for nature was fully

satisfied; here she could study flower and tree, light and shade.

In her love for nature Manon was in harmony with one of the curious

phases of the sentimental life of the eighteenth century in France.

Nature as food for sentiment seems to have never been discovered until

then by the French people. One searches in vain in French literature

before Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau for anything which

resembles a comprehension of and feeling for the external world—yet

unaided Manon Phlipon became naturalist and pantheist. Never did

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau, in their tramps in the environs

of Paris, rejoice more profoundly over the beauties of the world, enter

more deeply into its mysteries, than did she when in her girlhood she

wandered in the _allées_ of the forest of Meudon or of the Bois de

Vincennes.

But Manon was to see still another side of life,—people in their

relations to one another and to herself. Thus far she had been easily

first in her little world. She had never known the time when she was not

praised for her superiority. Whatever notions of equality she

entertained it is certain that she had not yet discovered that Manon

Phlipon was secondary to anybody else.

It was on the visits which she began to make with her relatives, that

she first discovered that in the world men are not graded according to

their wisdom and their love for and practice of virtue. She went one day

with her grandmother Phlipon to visit a rich and would-be-great lady,

Madame de Boismorel, in whose house Madame Phlipon had, for many years

after her husband’s death, acted as a kind of governess. She was wounded

on entering by a sentiment not purely democratic—the servants, who loved

the old governess and wished to please her, crowded about the little

girl and complimented her freely. She was offended. These people might,

of course, _look_ at her, but it was not their business to compliment

her. Once in the grand salon she found a typical little old Frenchwoman,

pretentious, vain, exacting. Her _chiffons_, her rouge, her false hair,

her lofty manner with the beloved grandmamma Phlipon whom she addressed

as Mademoiselle,—_Mademoiselle_ to her grandmother, one of the great

personages of her life so far,—her assumption of superiority, her

frivolous talk, revolted this Spartan maid. She lowered her eyes and

blushed before the cold cynicism of the old lady. When she was asked

questions, she replied with amusing sententiousness. “You must have a

lucky hand, my little friend, have you ever tried it in a lottery?”

“Never, Madame, I do not believe in games of chance.”

“What a voice! how sweet and full it is, but how grave! Are you not a

little devout?”

“I know my duty and I try to do it.”

“Ah! You desire to become a nun, do you not?”

“I am ignorant of my destiny, I do not seek to penetrate it.”

Little wonder that after that Madame de Boismorel cautioned the

grandmother, “Take care that she does not become a blue-stocking; it

would be a great pity.”

Manon went home from this visit full of disdain and anxiety. Evidently

things were not as they ought to be when servants dared to compliment

her to her face; when her own noble ideas were greeted coldly, and when

a vain and vulgar woman could patronize a sweet and bright little lady

like her grandmother; when her grandmother, too, would submit to the

patronage—perhaps even court it.

She was to observe still more closely the world’s practices. An

acquaintance of the family, one Mademoiselle d’Hannaches, was in

difficulty over an inheritance and obliged to be in Paris to work up her

case. Madame Phlipon took her into her house, where she stayed some

eighteen months. Now Mademoiselle d’Hannaches belonged to an ancient

family, and on account of her birth demanded extra consideration from

those about her and treated her _bourgeois_ friends with a certain

condescension. Manon became a sort of secretary to her and often

accompanied her when she went out on business. “I noticed,” wrote Manon

afterwards, “that in spite of her ignorance, her stiff manner, her

incorrect language, her old-fashioned toilette,—all her

absurdities,—deference was paid her because of her family. The names of

her ancestors, which she always enumerated, were listened to gravely and

were used to support her claim. I compared the reception given to her

with that which Madame de Boismorel had given to me and which had made a

profound impression upon me. I knew that I was worth more than

Mademoiselle d’Hannaches, whose forty years and whose genealogy had not

given her the faculty of writing a sensible or legible letter. I began

to find the world very unjust and its institutions most extravagant.”

Mademoiselle Phlipon had scarcely become accustomed to these vanities in

the society which she frequented, before she began to observe equally

puzzling and ridiculous pretensions in artistic and literary circles.

Through the kindness of her masters and of the friends of M. and Madame

Phlipon, she was often invited to the reunions of _bels esprits_, so

common in Paris then and now. It was not in a spirit of humiliation and

flattered vanity that so independent an observer and judge as she had

become, surveyed the celebrities she was allowed to look upon and to

listen to, in the various salons to which she was admitted. She saw

immediately the pose which characterized nearly all of the gatherings,

the pretentious vanity of those who read verses or portraits, the

insincerity and diplomacy of those who applauded. The blue-stockings who

read as their own verses which they had not always written, and who were

paid by ambitious salon leaders for sitting at their table; the small

poets who found inspiration in the muffs and snuff-boxes of the great

ladies whose favor they wanted; the bold, and not always too chaste,

compliments,—verily, if they made the gatherings _délicieuses_, as they

who followed them declared, there was a deep gulf between Manon

Phlipon’s standards and those of the society which her family

congratulated her upon being able to see.

It was during Mademoiselle d’Hannaches’ stay with the Phlipons that

Manon made a visit of eight days to Versailles, then the seat of the

French Court, with her mother, her uncle, and their guest, to whose

influence indeed they owed their garret accommodations in the château.

Many things shocked and humiliated her in the life she saw there, but

she did not go home nearly so bitter and disillusioned as she tried to

represent herself to have been, nine years later, when she told the

story to posterity as an evidence of her early revolt against the abuses

of the monarchy. In fact, the reflections which the week at Versailles

awakened were very just and reasonable. We have them in a letter written

to Sophie some days after her return:

“I cannot tell you how much what I saw there has made me value my own

situation and bless Heaven that I was born in an obscure rank. You

believe, perhaps, that this feeling is founded on the little value which

I attach to opinion and on the reality of the penalties which I see to

be connected with greatness? Not at all. It is founded on the knowledge

that I have of my own character which would be most harmful to myself

and to the state if I were placed at a certain distance from the throne.

I should be profoundly shocked by the enormous chasm between millions of

men and one individual of their own kind. In my present position I love

my King because I feel my dependence so little. If I were near him, I

should hate his grandeur.... A good king seems to me an adorable being;

still, if before coming into the world I had had my choice of a

government I should have decided on a republic. It is true I should have

wanted one different from any in Europe to-day.”

Manon was twenty years old when she wrote this letter to Sophie Cannet.

Its reasonable tone is very different from what one would expect from

the passionate little mystic of the convent of the Congrégation, the

sententious critic of Madame de Boismorel. In fact, Manon’s attitude

towards the world had changed. By force of study and reflection she had

come to understand human nature better, and to accept with philosophical

resignation the contradictions, the pettiness, and the injustice of

society. “The longer I live, the more I study and observe,” she told

Sophie, “the more deeply I feel that we ought to be indulgent towards

our fellows. It is a lesson which personal experience teaches us every

day,—it seems to me that in proportion to the measure of light which

penetrates our minds we are disposed to humaneness, to benevolence, to

tolerant kindness.”

Nor had she at this time any bitterness towards the existing order of

government. If she “would have chosen a republic if she had been allowed

a choice before coming into the world,” she had so far no idea of

rejecting the rule under which she was born. Indeed, she was a very

loyal subject of Louis XVI. When that prince came to the throne she

wrote to her friend: “The ministers are enlightened and well disposed,

the young prince docile and eager for good, the Queen amiable and

beneficent, the Court kind and respectable, the legislative body

honorable, the people obedient, wishing only to love their master, the

kingdom full of resources. Ah, but we are going to be happy!” Nor did

her ideas of equality at this period make her see in the mass of the

common people equals of those who by training, education, and birth had

been fitted to govern. “Truly human nature is not very respectable when

one considers it in a mass,” she reflected one day, as she saw the

people of Paris swarming even to the roofs to watch a poor wretch

tortured on the wheel. In describing a bread riot in 1775, she condemned

the people as impatient, called the measures of the ministers wise, and

excused the government by recalling Sully’s reflection: “With all our

enlightenment and good-will it is still difficult to do well.” And

again, apropos of similar disturbances, she said: “The King talks like a

father, but the people do not understand him; the people are hungry—it

is the only thing which touches them.” Nothing in all this of contempt

of the monarchy, of the sovereignty of the people, of the divine right

of insurrection.

Manon Phlipon had in fact become, by the time she was twenty years of

age, a thoroughly intelligent and reflective young woman. Instead of

extravagant and impulsive opinions, results of excessive emotionalism

and idealism, which her first twelve years seemed to prophesy, we have

from her intelligent judgments. If it was not a question of some one she

loved, she could be trusted to look at any subject in a rational and

self-controlled way.

This change had been brought about largely by the reading and reflecting

she had done since leaving the convent. For some time what she read had

depended on what she could get. Her resolution to enter a convent

eventually had made her at first prefer religious books, and she read

Saint Augustine and Saint François de Sales with fervor and joy. With

them she combined, helter-skelter, volumes from the _bouquinistes_,

mainly travels, letters, and mythology. Fortunately she happened on

Madame de Sévigné. Manon appreciated thoroughly the charming style of

this most agreeable French letter-writer, and her taste was influenced

by it, though her style was but little changed.

This stock was not exhausted before she had the happiness to be turned

loose in the library of an abbé—a friend of her uncle. It was a house

where her mother and Mademoiselle d’Hannaches went often to make up a

party of tric-trac with the two curés. As it was necessary always to

take her along, all parties were satisfied that Manon could lose herself

in a book. For three years she found here all she could read: history,

literature, mythology, the Fathers of the Church. Dozens of obscure

authors passed through her hands; now and then she happened on a

classic—something from Voltaire, from Bossuet. Here too she read _Don

Quixote_.

But the good abbé died, the tric-trac parties in his library ceased, and

Manon had to turn to the public library for books. She chose without any

plan, generally a book of which she had heard. So far her reading had

been simply out of curiosity, from a need of doing something. Usually

she had several books on hand at once—some serious, others light, one of

which she was always reading aloud to her mother. The habit of reading,

especially aloud, was one of the chief means advised by the French

educators of the time for carrying on a girl’s education. Madame de

Sévigné, Fénelon, Madame de Maintenon, L’abbé de Saint-Pierre, the

authorities at Port Royal, all had made much of the practice. Manon read

their treatises, and finding that she had herself already adopted

methods similar to those of the wisest men and women of her country,

continued her work with new vigor.

All that she read she analyzed carefully, and she spent much time in

making extracts. Through the courtesy of one of the descendants of

Mademoiselle Phlipon, M. Léon Marillier of Paris, I had in my possession

at one time, for examination, a large number of her _cahiers_ prepared

at this period. They are made of a coarse, grayish-blue paper, with

rough edges, and are covered with a strong, graceful handwriting, almost

never marred by erasures or changes, much of it looking as if it had

been engraved; more characteristic and artistic manuscript one rarely

sees.

The subjects of the quotations in the _cahiers_ are nearly always deeply

serious. In one there are eight pages on Necessity, long quotations on

Death, Suicide, the Good Man, Happiness, the Idea of God. Another

contains a long analysis of a work on Divorce Legislation, which had

pleased her. Buffon and Voltaire are freely quoted from.

The passages which attracted her are philosophic and dogmatic rather

than literary and sentimental, or devout. In fact, Manon became, in the

period between fourteen and twenty-one, deeply interested in the

philosophic thought of the day. Soon she was examining dispassionately,

and with a freedom of mind remarkable in so unquestioning a believer as

she had been, the entire system of religion which she had been taught.

Once started on this track, her reading took a more systematic and

intelligent turn. She read for a purpose, not simply out of curiosity.

It was the controversial works of Bossuet which first induced Manon

Phlipon to apply the test of reason to her faith. Soon after she began

to study the Christian dogma rationally, she revolted against the

doctrines of infallibility and of the universal damnation of all those

who never knew or who had not accepted the faith. When she discovered

that she could not accept these teachings, she resolved to find out if

there was anything else which she must give up, and so attacked eagerly

religious criticism, philosophy, metaphysics. She analyzed most

thoroughly all she read and compared authorities with unusual

intelligence.

As her investigations went on, she found that her faith was going, and

she told her confessor, who immediately furnished her with the

apologists and defenders of the Church, Abbé Gauchat, Bergier, Abbadie,

Holland, Clark, and others. She read them conscientiously and annotated

them all; some of these notes she left in the books, not unwittingly we

may suspect. The Abbé asked her in amazement if the comments were

original with her.

These annotations were, in fact, calculated to startle a curé interested

in conserving the orthodoxy of a parishioner. Part of those she made on

the works of the Abbé Gauchat fell into my hands with the extracts

spoken of above. They are the bold, intelligent criticisms of a person

who has resolved to subject every dogma to the test of reason. They are

never contemptuous or scoffing, though there is frequently a tone of

irritation at what she regards as the feebleness of the logic. They are

free from prejudice and from sentiment, and show no deference to

authority.

Another result of the curé’s loan of controversial works was to intimate

to Manon what books they refuted, and she hastened to procure them one

after another. Thus the _Traité de la tolérance_, _Dictionnaire

philosophique_, the _Questions encyclopédiques_, the _Bons sens_ and the

_Lettres juives_, of the Marquis d’Argens, the works of Diderot,

d’Alembert, Raynal, in fact all the literature of the encyclopedists

passed through her hands.

Manon Phlipon did not change her religious feelings or devout practices

during this period. She was living a religious life of peculiar

intensity, all the time that she was deep in the examination of

doctrines. The one was for her an affair of the heart, the other of the

head. Her letters to Sophie, after the question of doubt had once been

broached between them, are filled, now with philosophical analyses of

dogma, now with glowing piety, now with severe rules of conduct. It was

some time after she took to reasoning before the subject came up.

Sophie’s own faith was troubled and she pictured her state to her

friend. Manon, touched by this confidence, greater than her own had

been, freely portrayed afterwards her own mental and spiritual

condition. From these letters we find that she reached, very early in

her study, certain conclusions which she never abandoned, and upon these

as a basis erected a system which satisfied her heart and mind and which

regulated her conduct.

When she first wrote Sophie she was so convinced of the existence of God

for “philosophical reasons” that she declared the authority of the world

could not upset her. With this went the immortality of the soul. These

two dogmas were enough to satisfy her heart and imagination. She did not

need them to be upright, she said, but she did to be happy. She did

right because she had convinced herself that it was to her own and to

her neighbor’s interest. She was happy because she had a reasonable

basis for goodness and nobility, and because she believed in God and in

immortality. On this foundation further study became an inspiration. “My

sentiments have gained an energy, a warmth, a range,” she wrote to

Sophie after reading Raynal’s _Philosophical History_, “that the

exhortations of priests have never given them—the General Good is my

idol, because it must be the result and the reasonable end of

everything. Virtue pleases me, inflames my imagination because it is

good for me, useful to others, and beautiful in itself. I cherish life

because I feel the value of it. I use it to the best advantage possible.

I love all that breathes, I hate nothing but evil, and still I pity the

guilty. With a conduct conformed to these ideas, I live happy and

tranquil, and I shall finish my career in peace and with the greatest

confidence in a God whom I dare believe to be better than I have been

taught.”

She had her fundamentals, but she had not by any means finished her

investigations. Each system she examined, fascinated her. In turn she

was Jansenist, stoic, deist, materialist, idealist.

“The same thing happens to me sometimes,” she wrote Sophie, “that

happened to the prince who went to the Court to hear the pleas,—the last

lawyer who spoke always seemed to him to be right.” “I am continually in

doubt, and I sleep there peacefully as the Americans in their hammocks.

This state is best suited to our situation and to the little we know.”

Whatever her mental vagaries, she never altered her religious practices.

She did not wish to torment her mother, or to set a bad example to those

who took her as a model; for instance, there was her _bonne_ whom she

desired should keep her faith. “I should blame myself for weakening it,”

she said, “as I should for taking away her bread.”

Only two months before the end of her life Madame Roland summed up her

religious and philosophical life in a passage of her Memoirs. It is

simply a résumé of what in her girlhood she wrote at different times to

Sophie. The main points of this philosophy have been given above.

II

LOVERS AND MARRIAGE

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.’”

Footnote 1:

Manon Phlipon wrote before her marriage a series of philosophical and

literary essays which she called _Œuvres de loisir_ or _Mes Loisirs_.

They are reflections on a great variety of subjects, generally

following closely the books she read. Fragments from many of these

essays are found in the letters to Sophie Cannet. It was Mademoiselle

Phlipon’s habit to lend the manuscript of her productions to her

intimate friends and Sophie, of course, was familiar with them all.

The greatest part of the _Loisirs_ were published in 1800 in the

edition of Madame Roland’s works prepared by Champagneux.

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.

[Illustration:

THE PONT NEUF IN 1895.

The house in which Madame Roland lived as a girl is the second of the

two to the right of the picture.

]

“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 cœurs 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:

On dit, Greuze, que ton pinceau

N’est pas celui de la vertu romaine;

Mais il peint la nature humaine:

C’est le plus sublime tableau.

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.

[Illustration:

ROLAND DE LA PLATIÈRE.

After the painting by Hesse.

]

“I have seen in your strong, energetic, enlightened, practical soul, the

stuff for a friend of first rank. I have been delighted to regard you as

such, and to all the seriousness of friendship I wanted to add all the

fervor of which a tender soul is capable. But you have awakened in my

heart a feeling against which I believed myself armed. I have not

concealed it. I showed it unreservedly and I expected you to give me the

generous support which I needed. But far from sparing my weakness, you

became each day rasher, and you have dared ask me the cause of my

pensiveness, my silence, my pain. Sir, I may be the victim of my

sentiments, but I will never be the plaything of any man.... I cannot

make an amusement of love. For me it is a terrible passion which would

submerge my whole being and which would influence all my life. Give me

back friendship or fear—to force me to see you no more.

“O my friend, why disturb the beautiful relation between us? My heart is

rich enough to repay you in tenderness for all the privations it imposes

upon you.... Spare me the greatest good that I know, the only one which

makes life tolerable to me,—a friend sincere and faithful. I have not

enough of your philosophy or I have too much of another which does not

resemble yours in this point only, to give myself up inconsiderately to

a passion which for me would be transport and delirium.

“My friend, come back more moderate, more reserved, let us cherish

zealously, joyfully, and confidently the tastes which can strengthen the

sweet tie which unites us....”

This letter threw Roland into confusion. He had taken her at her word

when she suggested an intimate friendship. He had taken her at her word

when she told him her affection was becoming love. He had been, perhaps,

too fervent, but how was one to regulate so delicate a situation? He

wrote her a piteous and helpless sort of letter in which he declared he

was unhappy. Manon replied in a way which did not help him particularly

in his quandary:

“In the midst of the different objects which surround and oppress me, I

see, I feel but you. I hear always, ‘I am unhappy.’ O God! how, why,

since when, are you unhappy? Is it because I exist or because I love

you? The destruction of the first of these causes is in my power and

would cost me nothing. It would take away with it the other, over which

I have no longer any control.”

Even after this Roland was so obtuse that he was uncertain of her

feeling for him, but finally he asked her squarely if it could be that

all this meant that she loved him. Very promptly she replied: “If I

thought that question was unsettled for you to-day, I should fear it

would always be.” Will she marry him then, _oui ou non_? He asked the

question despairingly, in the tone of a man who expected a scene to

follow, but could see nothing else for him to do honorably. In a letter

of passionate abandon Manon promised to be his wife. Roland was the

happiest of men.

“You are mine,” he wrote. “You have taken the oath. It is irrevocable. O

my friend, my tender, faithful friend, I had need of that _yes_.”

Manon’s joy was unbounded and she told it in true eighteenth-century

style. “I weep, I struggle to express myself, I stifle, I throw myself

upon your bosom, there I remain, entirely thine.” Immediately they

entered upon a correspondence, voluminous, extravagant, passionate.

Manon explained to Roland the beginning and the development of her

affection for him, and labored to harmonize two seemingly incongruous

experiences,—her interest in Roland during the time he was in Italy and

the marriage she had contemplated with M. de Sévelinges. The harmony

seems incomplete to the modern reader, but probably Roland was not

exacting since he was sure of his possession.

In every way she tried to please him, even keeping their betrothal a

secret from Sophie—this at Roland’s request. They planned, confided,

rejoiced, and made each other miserable in true lover-like style. For

some time the worst of their misunderstandings were caused by delays in

letters, but, unfortunately, there were to be annoyances, in the course

of their love, more serious than those of the postman. There was M.

Phlipon; there was Roland’s family; there were all the vexatious

formalities which precede marriage in France. M. Phlipon was the most

serious obstacle to their happiness. Since his wife’s death he had been

constantly growing more dissipated and common. Roland regarded him with

the cold and irritating disapproval of a man convinced of his own

infallibility, and M. Phlipon, conscious of his own shortcomings,

disliked Roland heartily. For some time Roland refused to ask M. Phlipon

for his daughter, but he counselled her to insist upon having the

remnant of her dowry turned over.

She began to talk to her father of this, and he, incensed at the

suspicion this demand implied, became surly and defiant. He talked to

the neighbors of his desire to live alone and accused Manon of

ingratitude and coldness. She held to her rights, however, and succeeded

finally in having her estate settled. She found at the end that she had

an income of just five hundred and thirty francs a year.

The disagreement with her father made her unhappy. She wrote Roland

letters full of complaints and sighs. She saw everything black. She

declared that they were farther apart than ever, that her heart was

breaking. After a few weeks of melancholy she came to an understanding

with her father and wrote joyously again. This occurred several times

until at last Roland grew seriously out of patience with her. He told

her that it was her lack of firmness that was at the bottom of her

father’s conduct; that she was “always irresolute, always uncertain,

reasoned always by contraries.” His letters became brief, dry,

impatient. Finally, however, he wrote M. Phlipon, asking for Manon.

The difficulty that Roland had foreseen with his prospective

father-in-law was at once realized. The old gentleman, incensed that his

daughter would not give him Roland’s letters to examine before he

replied, answered in a way which came very near ending negotiations on

the spot. Since his daughter had taken her property into her own hands

and since she refused to let him see the correspondence which had passed

between her and Roland, she could enjoy still further the privileges her

majority gave her and marry without his consent.

Roland wrote to Manon, on receiving this curt response, that the _soul_

of M. Phlipon horrified him; that he loved her as much as ever,

but—“your father, my friend, your father,” and delicately hinted that it

would be impossible for him to present such a man to his own family.

This was in September. For two months they lived in a state of miserable

uncertainty. Roland accused Manon of irresolution, of inconsistency, and

inconsequence; she accused him of fearing the prejudices of society, of

caring less for her than for his family’s good-will. With M. Phlipon

Manon alternately quarrelled and made up. Wretched as the lovers were,

their letters nearly always ended in protestations of affection and

appeals for confidence.

The first of November Mademoiselle Phlipon brought matters to a crisis

by leaving her father for good and retiring to the Convent of the

Congregation. She wrote Sophie, who, of course, had known nothing of her

affair with Roland, but to whom she had often written freely of her

trouble with her father, that she had taken this resolution in order to

save her family, if possible, from further disgrace.

In going into the convent she had broken with Roland. They were to

remain friends, but dismiss all projects of marriage; but they continued

to write heart-broken letters to each other. She told him, “I love you.

I feel nothing but that. I repeat it as if it were something new. Your

agonized letters inflame me. I devour them and they kill me. I cover

them with kisses and with tears.”

Roland was quite as unhappy. He had taken Manon at her word again when

she declared that their engagement was at an end, and that they would

remain friends; but he could not support her unhappiness; he was too

wretched himself. The worst of it was that he could not make out what

she wanted: “You continually reproach me,” he wrote her in November, “of

not understanding you. Is it my fault? Do you not go by

contraries?”—“You complain always of what I say, and you always tell me

to tell you all.... You protest friendship and confidence at the moment

you give me proofs of the contrary. All your letters are a tissue of

contradictions, of bitterness, of reproaches, of wrangling.”

This unhappy state continued until January, when Roland went to Paris

and saw Manon. Her sadness and her tears overcame him, and again he

begged her to marry him. This time the affair was happier, and in

February Manon Phlipon became Madame Roland.

Twelve years later, in her Memoirs, Madame Roland gave an account of

this courtship and marriage, which is a curious contrast to that one

finds in the letters written at the time. If these letters show

anything, it is that she was, or at least imagined herself, desperately

in love; that after having outlined a Platonic relation she had broken

it by telling Roland she loved him too well to endure the restrictions

of mere friendship; that she had been extravagantly happy in her

betrothal, and correspondingly miserable in her liberation; and that

when the marriage was finally effected she was thoroughly satisfied.

But in her Memoirs she says of Roland’s first proposal: “I was not

insensible to it because I esteemed him more than any one whom I had

known up to that time,” but—“I counselled M. Roland not to think of me,

as a stranger might have done. He insisted: I was touched and I

consented that he speak to my father.” She gives the impression that as

far as she was concerned her heart was not in the affair, that she

merely was moved by Roland’s devotion, and that she saw in him an

intelligent companion. Of his coming to her at the convent, she says

that it was he alone who was inflamed by the interview, and she gives

the impression that his renewed proposal awakened in her nothing but

sober and wise reflections: “I pondered deeply what I ought to do. I did

not conceal from myself that a man under forty-five would have hardly

waited several months to make me change my mind, and I confess that I

had no illusions.... If marriage was, as I thought it, a serious tie, an

association where the woman is for the most part charged with the

happiness of two persons, was it not better to exercise my faculties, my

courage, in that honorable task, than in the isolation in which I

lived?”

But at the time that Madame Roland wrote her Memoirs she was under the

influence of a new and absorbing passion. The love, which twelve years

before had so engulfed all other considerations and affections that she

could for it break up her home, desert her father, take up a solitary

and wretched existence, even contemplate suicide, had become an

indifferent affair of which she could talk philosophically and at which

she could smile disinterestedly.

III

SEEKING A TITLE

The first year of their marriage the Rolands spent in Paris. New

regulations were being planned by the government for the national

manufactures, and Roland had been summoned to aid in the work. It was an

irritating task. His principles of free trade, and free competition,

were sadly ignored, even after all the concessions obtainable from the

government had been granted, and Madame Roland saw for the first time

the irascibility and rigidness of her husband when his opinions were

disregarded.

They lived in a _hôtel garni_, and she gave all her time to him,

preparing his meals even, for he was never well, and spending hours in

his study aiding him in his work. Roland’s literary labors seem to have

awed her a little at first, and she took up copying and proof-reading

with amusing humility and solemnity. It was not an inviting task for a

young and imaginative mind accustomed to passing leisure hours with the

best thinkers of the world. Roland was writing on manufacturing arts and

getting his letters from Italy ready for the printer. As always, he was

overcrowded with work. He was particular and tenacious, careless about

notes, and wrote an execrable hand,—about the most aggravating type

possible to work with. But his wife accommodated herself to him with a

tact, a submission, a gentleness which were perfect. He found her

judgment so true, her devotion so complete, her notions of style so much

better than his own, that he grew to depend upon her entirely. It was

the object she had in view. She wanted to make herself indispensable to

him.

Thus the first year of her marriage was largely an apprenticeship as a

secretary and proof-reader. In order to be better prepared for her

duties, she determined to follow the lectures in natural history and

botany at the Jardin des Plantes. This study, begun for practical

reasons, was in reality a delight and a recreation; for she had already

a decided taste for science, and was even something of an observer. The

lectures led to her forming one of the most satisfactory relations of

her life, that with Bosc, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and well

known in Paris for his original work. Bosc took an active interest in

Madame Roland and her husband, and was of great use to them in their

studies, as well as a most congenial comrade. In fact, they saw almost

no one but him at this time. Absorbed in her husband and her new duties,

Madame Roland relished no one who was not in some way essential to that

relation. Even Sophie was neglected; only six letters to her during the

year 1780, after the marriage, appearing in the published collection,

and evidently from their contents they are about all she wrote.

The year was broken towards its close by a two months’ visit to the

Beaujolais, where Roland’s family lived. That she was heartily welcomed

by her new relatives and charmed by her visit, her reports to Sophie

show. “We are giving ourselves up like school children to the delights

of a country life,” she wrote from Le Clos, “seasoned by all that

harmony, intimacy, sweet ties, pleasant confidences, and frank

friendship can give. I have found brothers to whom I can give all the

affection that the name inspires, and I share joyfully bonds and

relations which were unknown to me.” When she returned to Paris she

declared that she was delighted with her trip, that the separation from

her new family was painful in the extreme, and that the two months with

them were passed in the greatest confidence and closest intimacy.

From Paris they went to Amiens, which was to be their home for some

time. The old city, with its glorious cathedral, its remnants of middle

age life, and its industrial atmosphere, interested her but little. In

fact, she never had an opportunity to get very near to it. The first

year of her stay she was confined by the birth of her only child,

Eudora. Good disciple of Rousseau that she was, she concluded to nurse

her baby herself, in defiance of French custom, and naturally saw little

of Amiens society.

When she was able to go out, Roland’s work had become so heavy that she

had little time for anything but copying and proof-reading. He was

preparing a serious part of the famous _Encyclopédie méthodique_, the

continuation of the work of Diderot and D’Alembert. Of this great

undertaking four volumes—numbers 117–120—are devoted to manufactures,

arts, and trades; the first three of these are by Roland, and appeared

in 1784, 1785, and 1790.

The plan Roland followed in this work is an excellent example of the

methodic mind of the man, bent on analyzing the earth and its contents,

and putting into its proper place there each simplest operation, each

smallest article. He devised an ingenious diagram in which he classified

according to the historic, economic, or administrative side everything

he treated—one is obliged to master this system before he can find the

subject he wants to know about. A botanical analysis is play beside it.

Roland’s contributions to the _Encyclopédie méthodique_ are valuable no

doubt, but one needs a guide-book to find his way through them.

Roland’s attempt to run over everything which directly or indirectly

concerned his subject, and the enormous number of notes he made,

encumbered his work wofully. He could not resist the temptation to use

everything he had at hand, and as a result his articles are frequently

diffuse and badly arranged, though always full of instruction, even if

it is sometimes a little puerile. Neither could he resist the temptation

to condemn and to argue.

But though burdened with details sometimes irrelevant, not properly and

sufficiently digested, too personal, indulging in much criticism of his

authorities, not to say considerable carping, the volumes on

manufactures and arts are a colossal piece of work, most valuable in

their day, but which never had their full credit because of the stormy

times in which they appeared, and, perhaps, not a little too, because of

the chaotic series of encyclopedias to which they belonged; for

certainly there could with difficulty be a greater mass of information

published in a more inaccessible shape than that in the _Encyclopédie

méthodique_.

It was in arranging notes, copying, polishing, and reading proofs of

articles on soaps and oils, dyes and weaving, skins and tanning, that

Madame Roland spent most of her time from 1780 to 1784. A part of the

work which was more happy was the botanizing they did. During their four

years at Amiens, she made, in fact, a very respectable herbarium of

Picardy.

Of society she saw less than one would suppose, since the Cannets were

here, and since her husband occupied so prominent a place. She did, of

course, see Sophie and Henriette, but not often. Roland did not wish her

to be with them much, and she, obedient to his wishes, complied. They

had one intimate friend—a Dr. Lanthenas that Roland had met in Italy,

and who, since their marriage, had become a constant and welcome visitor

in their home. Then there were their acquaintances in the town—but for

them she cared but little.

Indeed, she was thoroughly submerged in domestic life. She seems to have

had no thought, no desire, no happiness outside of her husband and her

child. A great number of her letters written at this period to Roland,

who was frequently away from home, have been preserved; one searches

them in vain for any interest in affairs outside her house. She wrote

pages of her _bonnes_, of the difficulty of finding this or that in the

market, of the price of groceries, of the repairs to be made, above all,

of her own ills and of those of Eudora, and she counselled Roland as to

his plasters and potions. Her absorption in her family went so far that

public questions rather bored her than otherwise, as this remark in a

letter in 1781 shows:

“M. de Vin [one of their friends at Amiens] came to see me yesterday

expressly to tell me of our victory in America over Cornwallis. He

saluted me with this news on entering, and I was forced to carry on a

long political conversation—I cannot conceive the interest that a

private person, such as he is, has in these affairs of kings who are not

fighting for us.”

Her calm domestic life was broken in 1784. Roland was dissatisfied at

Amiens. His health was miserable. His salary was small. He was out of

patience with the men and circumstances which surrounded him. His idea

was to seek a title of nobility. Such a concession would give him the

rights of the privileged, freedom from taxes of all sorts, a certain

income, a position in society. He would be free to pursue his studies.

There were grounds on which to base his claim. His family was one of the

most ancient of Beaujolais. Then there were his services,—over thirty

years of hard work, long tedious travels, solely for the good of the

country.

It was decided, in the spring of 1784, that Madame Roland undertake the

delicate and intricate task of presenting the matter at Versailles. In

March she went to Paris, armed with the _mémoire_ which set forth

Roland’s claim. It is a collection of curious enough documents; showing

how one must go back to very ancient times to find the origin of the

Rolands in Beaujolais, how the name is “lost in the night of time, a

tradition placing it between the eleventh and twelfth centuries.”

The memoir which presents this family tree of Roland is further

strengthened by the names of the foremost of Beaujolais, testifying that

it is “_sincère et véritable_”; and by a row of big black seals. Of

actual connected genealogy the memoir goes no further than 1574. Roland,

however, took a lofty tone, and declared his services were a more solid

and real reason for granting his request. Evidently they had thoroughly

studied the situation, had gathered all the facts which would support

their case, and had enlisted all their relations of influence, so that

when Madame Roland began her diplomatic career she was furnished with

all the arms which reflection on a desired object give a woman of

imagination, eloquence, and beauty.

The daily letters which they exchanged in the period she was in Paris,

give a fresh and charming picture of favor-seeking in the eighteenth

century. They wrote to each other with frankness and good humor of

everything—rebuffs or advancement. They evidently had concluded to leave

nothing unturned to secure the reward which they were convinced they

deserved.

Madame Roland established herself, with her _bonne_, at the Hôtel de

Lyon, Rue Saint Jacques, then the Boulevard Saint Michel of the Left

Bank. Her brother-in-law, a prior in the Benedictine Order of the Cluny,

lived near by and helped her settle; brought her what she needed from

his own apartment; passed his evenings with her; did her errands, and

helped her generally. She seems not to have seen her father at all.

In order to secure the grant of nobility, a favorable recommendation to

the King from the Royal Counsel of Commerce, of which body the

_conseiller ordinaire_ was M. de Calonne, _Contrôleur-général des

finances_, was necessary. To obtain this all possible recommendations

must be brought to M. de Calonne’s attention; particularly was it

necessary to cultivate the directors of commerce, with whom the

Controller-general consulted freely, and on whom he depended for advice.

They had arranged, before she left Amiens, a list of the people upon

whom they could rely directly or indirectly for letters of introduction

and for other favors.

No sooner was she settled than she began the work of seeing them. At the

very commencement she encountered prejudice and irritation against

Roland. One of her friends, who evidently had been investigating affairs

ahead, assured her that Roland was viewed everywhere with

dissatisfaction, and that the common opinion was, though he did a great

deal of work, he did not know how to keep his place. One of the

directors told her: “Take care how you present him to us as a superior

man. It is his pretension, but we are far from judging him as such.”

“Pedantry, insupportable vanity, eagerness for glory, pretensions of all

sorts, obstinacy, perpetual contradiction, bad writer, bad politician,

determination to regulate everything, incapable of subordination,” were

among the criticisms upon her husband, to which Madame Roland had to

listen.

All of these complaints she faced squarely, writing them to Roland with

a frankness which is half-amusing, half-suspicious. One wonders if she

is not taking advantage of the situation to tell her husband some

wholesome truths about himself. She did not hesitate, in repeating these

criticisms, to add frequent counsels, which support the suspicion and

show how thoroughly she realized the danger of Roland’s fault-finding

irritation. “Above all, as I told you before my departure, do not get

angry in your letters, and let me see them before they are sent. You

must not irritate them any more. Your pride is well enough known, show

them your good nature now.”

The criticisms on Roland’s character did not disconcert her. She pressed

ahead, talked, reasoned, urged, obtained promises; in short, showed

herself an admirable intrigante. She was afraid of no one. “As for my

rôle, I know it so well that I could defend it before the King without

being embarrassed by his crown,” she wrote Roland. After she had secured

what she wanted from each person, she did her best to keep them

friendly; for she had decided to ask for a pension if she did not secure

the letters. She succeeded admirably, even M. de Tolozan, one of the

directors whom she called her “bear,” telling her one day: “You have

lost nothing by this trip, Madame. We all do honor to your honesty and

your intelligence, and I am very glad to have made your acquaintance.”

She seems not to have despised rather questionable methods even: “Did I

not let a certain person who was asking about my family, and who was

astonished that I should take so much trouble for a daughter, believe

that I expected an heir in a few months? That makes the business more

touching. They look at me walk and I laugh in my sleeve. I do not go so

far, though, as to tell a deliberate lie, but, like a good disciple of

Escobar, I give the impression without talking.”

Whenever she was successful she was frankly delighted, and she began to

think herself capable of great things in diplomacy: “If we were at Paris

with just fifteen thousand livres income, and I should devote myself to

business—I almost said intrigue—I should have no trouble in doing many

things.” Her friends at Paris had as good opinion of her ability as she

herself did. Bosc wrote Roland of her surprising _finesse_ in managing

difficult relations, in interesting people, and of turning even

objections to her own credit. “In fact, she is astonishing,” he says.

But it was not easy after all. There were delays which wore out her

spirit. And she experienced to the full the effects of the French vice

of doing nothing on time. The continual trips back and forth to

Versailles exasperated her. Then the business of each counsel was so

great that even after she had gotten to M. de Calonne she was obliged to

wait her turn. The money all this cost was, of course, a constant

annoyance. They were poor and could not afford the carriage hire, the

finery, and the presents that favor-seeking in the simplest way cost.

The business of solicitation in itself was much less rasping for her

than one would suspect. In fact, she seemed to enjoy it. Her successes

set her writing bubbling letters to Roland. She rarely showed

irritation, almost never impatience of the greatness of others, nor any

sign of feeling her position as a solicitor. It was only the failure to

see her cause advance rapidly that disheartened her.

The uncertainty lasted until the middle of May, when it became evident

all had been done that could be, and that the title was impossible. She

decided to retire to Amiens and to return later to seek a pension.

Suddenly she got a new bee in her bonnet. When making her farewell

calls, she heard a bit of news which persuaded her that changes were to

be made in the department of commerce by which Roland might be sent to

Lyons as inspector. It was a larger and more interesting city than

Amiens. It was near his home. The salary would be larger, the work

easier. There was no time to consult Roland. If done at all, it must be

done on the spot. She went to work and almost immediately secured her

request. The directors with whom she had been laboring so long to secure

the impossible, were glad enough to grant her what appeared to them

reasonable. At the same time that she received word of the appointment,

a letter came from Roland saying that the change to Lyons, of which she

had written him as soon as it came into her head, would suit him if it

would her.