4 o .'- o - -^o^ :^K^'- '^'^O* -''^M-. '^oV^ f'* nO :* ^ v^"* **. .■^'% "hV '^^O^ ^^^ o_ * ■^Q^ O^ V'S' .<=y"^^. V\^ v*^^ MANON PHLIPON ROLAND (EARLY YEARS) "En nous faisanl naitre a I'epoque de la liberie naissante, le sort nous a places comme les enfants perdus de VaTmee qui doit combattre pour elle, et la /aire triompher ; c^est a nous de bien faire notre tdche et preparer ainsi le bonheur des generations suivantes." — Madame Roland. "Non, la patrie n'est pas un mot; c^est un etre auquel on a fait des sacrifices, a qui Von s^ attache chaque jour par les sollicitudes qu'il cause, qu'on a cr'ee par de grands efforts, qui s^eleve au milieu des inquietudes et qu'on aime autant par ce qu'il coUte que par ce qu'on en espereJ' ,, „ ^ — Madame Roland. THE PORTRAIT OF MADAME ROLAND Supposed to be "Le Camee de Langlois" MANON PHLIPON ROLAND EARLY YEARS BY EVANGELINE WILBOUR BLASHFIELD AiriHOK or "portraits and backgrounds," "masques of CUPID," "ITALIAN cities" (WITH MR. BLASHIIELD), ETC. ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS AND VIEWS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1922 '^^^t>^ Copyright, 1922, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published Februaiy, 1922 MAR -/ 1922 CLA654843 CONTENTS PACK Introductory ix By Edwin Rowland Blashfield CHAPTER I. The Portrait of the Memoirs i II. Parentage and Childhood i6 III. Austerity and Frivolity 30 IV. Religious Doubts . . . 50 V. First Suitors 75 VI. Family and Social Relations 112 VII. Bereavement and New Friends 133 VIII. Roland de la Platiere 152 IX. Courtship and Marriage 182 X. DoMi Mansit — Eudora 206 XI. From Amiens to Lyons 223 XII. Le Clos, Villefranche, and Lyons 242 XIII. Rumblings before the Storm 270 XIV. "La Revolution Vint et Nous Enflamma" . . . 298 XV. Bancal des Issarts 311 Appendixes — I. The Portraits of Madame Roland .... 337 II. Madam Roland's Style 348 III. Madame Roland's Veracity 350 IV. Character of the Assembly 369 V. The Girondins 371 VI. The Methods of the Mountain 378 VII. The Salon of Madame Roland .381 V ILLUSTRATIONS The portrait of Madame Roland supposed to be "Le Camee de Langlois" Frontispiece FACING PAGE Gatien Phlipon, father of Madame Roland l8 Pastel by Latour, in the Museum of Lyons The Bonneville engraving of Madame Roland 34 House in which Madame Roland lived as a girl 50 On the Quai de rHorloge and the Pont Neuf La Place Dauphine in 1608, showing the Roland house at the left S2 From an old print Terminal bust called portrait of Madame Roland 80 Sculptured by Chinard and now in the Edmond Aynard Col- lection at Lyons Marie Marguerite Bimont, mother of Madame Roland ... 88 Pastel by Latour, in the Museum of Lyons J. M. Roland de la Platiere, inspector of manufactures at Lyons 154 Engraved by Lemoine in 1779 So-called physionotrace profile of Madame Roland .... 208 From a colored engraving lately acquired by the Musee Carnavalet Madame Roland 224 From a portrait drawing in the possession of her family L. A. G. Bosc 256 Taken from the volume, Le Naturaliste Bosc, by Auguste Rey Jean Marie Roland de la Platiere, Minister of the Interior . 268 From a portrait drawn and engraved by Nicolas Colbert vii viii ILLUSTRATIONS FAQNC PAGE Madame Roland 272 From a drawing by Danloux, in the National Library of Paris (Faugere Legacy) Portrait of Roland 280 Drawn by Gabriel in 1792 Statue of Madame Roland 302 From the study for the statue of Madame Roland which is now in a niche on the southern side of the exterior of the Hotel de Ville in Paris Portrait of Brissot 308 INTRODUCTORY If Mrs. Blashfield had lived she would have com- pleted her study of Madame Roland by the addition of another volume. She left a large quantity of notes but they are mainly memoranda and useless without her own interpretation and elaboration. Among them are the records of hundreds of facts with their dates, suggestions, juxtapositions, paradoxes, confrontations, rough sketches of programme, followed by more elabo- rated sketches. But even these last are still rough- hewn stones which need the thought with which she cemented her materials as she built her spaciously planned edifice. With a few exceptions, therefore, reproduced as Appendixes, it has been necessary to leave her text unsupplemented and as she left it. She had however carefully revised what she finished, and the fragment which technically this must be called stands as she would have had it. It also has a unity of its own, since it completes the early history of its heroine and leaves her on the threshold of her public career. As was to be expected, moreover, the public career of one of the most eminent of the women who have had one inevitably influences the account of her youth by any one who has made her maturity the subject of prolonged and elaborate study. The result of such study was to make of Mrs. Blashfield, at first no doubt somewhat romantically attached to so romantic X INTRODUCTORY a figure as the Egeria of the Gironde, a convinced partisan. She remained, however, a singularly open- minded, as well as, it may be added, an extremely well-armed one. She warmed to the defense of her heroine and states the case for her with the genuine polemic zest that not only disdains to suppress but dehghts to confute hostile criticism. She was quite ready to take up instances of underestimation or flip- pant or unjust censure of Madame Roland, It has been possible to save from her notes and cite in her own words one or two such instances, but in many, many cases in her talks with me she has referred to misinterpretations or lack of appreciation which she meant to touch upon but in relation to which she has set nothing down on paper. That she would have more elaborately controverted the severities of M. Aulard and others is certain. Many of the pages in her copies of Aulard's books are marked for reference almost from corner to corner. But criticism of Madame Roland is mainly, of course, concerned with her conduct and mental attitude in relation to events an account of which could find its place only in that second volume which the author was destined not to write. Her discussion of such criticism being thus in the main necessarily deferred is regrettably, and would have seemed to her griev- ously, incomplete. On the other hand, in Appendix V there is a hint of her sympathy with Aulard's and Louvet's strictures upon the oratory of the Girondins, and more than a hint that she should devote much attention to that detail of her subject. Dauban she followed attentively through many volumes, but among INTRODUCTORY xi writers upon her heroine, perhaps the attitude of Vatel is most nearly her own. And her own, after all, re- lied chiefly on an instinctive interpretation and argued analysis of the ultimate sources of her biography, viz., the Lettres and especially the Memoires de Madame Roland, with their various subdivisions of Memoires Particuliers, Portraits et Anecdotes, Notices Histo- riques, etc., of which she used many different edi- tions. The congeniaHty of her subject perhaps sharpened the curiosity and the conscientiousness with which she studied it on all sides, and investigated all sources of information that bore upon it. To most of the ma- terial vestiges, the backgrounds of plains and hills of brick and mortar which framed Madame Roland's life, Mrs. Blashfield paid personal visits. We went together to Amiens, Lyons, Villefranche, drove over the hills of the Beaujolais to the Clos de la Platiere, and in the forest of Montmorenci visited Sainte Rade- gonde where Madame Roland's manuscript for a time lay hidden. We followed her Girondist friends south- west, to that strange town, fascinating at once through its history and its picturesqueness. Saint Emilion, with its rock-cut church and houses, its mediaeval ramparts, its climbing, crooked streets. We looked down the famous dry well, went through the house where in the attics the men who had roused Paris and the provinces lay cramped and suffocated or frozen, fugitive victims of the license which was stifling the lately found liberty. In Paris itself the quarters in which the comings and goings of both Manon Phlipon and Madame Ro- xii INTRODUCTORY land de la Platiere were most frequent have changed greatly, have been opened up and are dotted with breathing spaces. Yet much remains of the revolu- tionary Paris and upon the very edge of the left bank of the Seine, the greatest breathing space of all, still stands the house that sheltered Manon's girlhood — a really handsome object full of style and character, built of the cream-colored stone which aids in making Paris so beautiful and which lends itself so delight- fully to the caress of time. Many years ago when we went to Vasse, on the Quai Malaquais, for a photo- graph of it he admitted that in his great collection not one reproduction of the house existed save in general views. His photographer went with us and made several negatives from different angles, one of which is used in this volume. Since then photographic reproductions have been published more than once, but at that time there were few, if any. In Lyons, negatives of the pastel portraits of the father and mother of Madame Roland were also made expressly for Mrs. Blashfield, and appear in this book. An effort has been made throughout the volume to select as illustrations such portraits as the author would have chosen from the large number of prints existing at the Musee Carnavalet, the BibHotheque Nationale, and elsewhere. The "Heinsius portrait" (so-called) in the Museum of Versailles, has been left out of the Hst partly because it has been so frequently published, partly because of Mrs. Blashfield's disUke of its com- monness. Descendants of Madame Roland have pro- tested against its attribution and Monsieur Pierre de INTRODUCTORY xiii Nolhac smilingly promised Mrs. Blashfield that in the forthcoming catalogue of the gallery, a question-mark should follow the title of the portrait. The famous **Buzot medallion" and the chalk drawing from the Chateau de la Rosiere (from which David d'Angers's profile in relief was evidently made) have been in- cluded on account of their importance and almost un- doubted authenticity. A special negative was made for the author from the rather recently acquired "Danloux portrait," in the Bibliotheque Nationale. As for the reproduction of the "physionotrace profile" its ugUness and hard- ness make it difficult to say whether Mrs. Blashfield would have admitted it to her book. In Paris, in the summer of 1921, the Musee Carnavalet had only a short time before received a copy of this rare print, which M. Boucher, the curator, kindly allowed me to photograph. The process of the physionotrace was popular in the years which immediately preceded and followed the birth of the nineteenth century, but it has been so forgotten that one of the leading photog- raphers of Paris questioned me with interest as to the little I had learned concerning it. The result obtain- able from it, as in the case of a silhouette made from an omhre portee is only nominally correct and would depend in part on the skill, light-handedness, and art- knowledge of the executant. It becomes easy unduly to emphasize the outlines, and in the case of the print at the Carnavalet the color which has been added to it tends to make the photograph harder and coarser. Madame Roland's fame easily accounts for the num- ber of prints or reliefs referring to her; nearly all are xiv INTRODUCTORY in profile and have among them pretty pieces of en- graving (those of Dien, Gaucher, etc.)- Some of these were perhaps drawn from nature, most of them were evidentl}'^ made one from another with occasional variations as to hair or head-dress. Several busts have been attributed as portraits but no mention exists of any of them in Madame Roland's writings. We went to Nevers to see the bust, brought to notice there by M. Louis Gonse. In the poor light of the over- full museum it was difficult to see it well; it seems too sharp-featured and hard to be convincing, and one notes that the attribution has been removed from the later printed reproductions of it. In the interest- ing bust by Morin published on page 407 of La Revo- lution Fran^aise, from the series of historical albums by M. Armand Dayot, Inspecteur General des Beaux Arts, the piquant upturned corner of the mouth, so typical of most of the portraits, is missing and the nose appears sharp, rather than broad at the end as Ma- dame Roland describes it. The smiHng mouth reap- pears in the handsome Pajou bust at Bagatelle lent from the collection of M. Lucien Kraemer, yet it is not wholly easy to accept it as a portrait. The terminal bust portrait in the Aynard collection at Lyons by Chinard is charming. Chinard was a friend of the Rolands, and deeply indebted to madame for her in- tervention in relation to his imprisonment for political reasons by the Pope, but the lovely head seems to be almost that of a little girl. The pretty curly-haired child sold on postal cards at the Carnavalet seems to me in its style too late to be convincing, but M. Boucher told me that certain INTRODUCTORY xv experts saw reasons for accepting it. The "Madame Roland seated on a sofa and with a little dog," shown in a retrospective exposition at Paris some years ago and chronicled in Les ArtSy I have not seen and it was not forthcoming as a reproduction after diligent search. As for the drawing in the Bibliotheque made by an unskilful hand and inscribed as "J. M. P. Ro- land, dessine a la conciergerie," it shows an exaggera- tion of the typical upturned mouth-corner and rather protuberant eyes with arched brows, but does not bear out the words of her fellow prisoners, Beugnot and others, as to her wearing the hair always loosely floating upon her shoulders. On the whole, though the acknowledged magic of her voice and constant play of expression are absent, we can from the written descriptions and the prints make up for ourselves a fair composite suggestion of the features of the most famous woman and one of the most famous figures of a tremendous drama. Edwin Howland Blashfield. January i, 1922. CHAPTER I THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS To write anew of one who has been so celebrated not only by her contemporaries but by their successors seems perhaps superfluous. She who has received the civic crown from Quinet, Michelet, Louis Blanc, and Carlyle, whose house bears a commemorative tablet, whose statue stands on the fa9ade of the town hall of Paris, may be considered so securely established in her niche in history that further criticism or comment is redundant. Time, however, has its revelations as well as its revenges. Following in the footsteps of the great har- vesters an aftermath may be gleaned. More than a century ago Louvet published the Appeal to Impartial Posterity of the Citoyenne Roland. Forty years have passed since Dauban and Faugere told the secret which had been so piously preserved by Madame Roland's family and friends. These forty years have been ex- tremely prolific in the discovery of historical data relating to the French Revolution. There have been changes in political opinion; families have died out, and consequently certain susceptibilities are no longer to be considered; private papers by gift or sale have become public property; and domestic records have attained the dignity of historical documents. Jour- nals, letters, and household chronicles, as well as secret archives, spies' reports, and diplomats' despatches are 2 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND now open to the curious. To-day no epoch can be studied more closely than that which Matthew Arnold discriminatingly termed the most animating in his- tory. It was indeed not only the most animating but a unique moment in the evolution of mankind, in which nothing happened as it had ever happened before. Only the unexpected occurred, the amazing became the normal, and the impossible was the order of the day. A year counted as a lustrum, so crowded was it with events. Speculation was instantly translated into action. Theory was precipitated into practice. The written word quickened into the spoken word, and the spoken word into the immediate deed. Life moved at a quickstep. An episode grew into a drama, and a drama into a tragedy; protagonist and chorus shifted roles with bewildering celerity; at a moment's notice the "super" of a first became the star of a second act. The butcher of yesterday played the victim of to-day. Princesses scrubbed floors, adventuresses trafficked in heads and fortunes, and great ladies trudged as camp-followers behind officers in wadded petticoats. Infantry captured fleets, and victory marched in the ranks of famished tatterdemalions. On the swift current of events we are swept from surprise to mystery, from mystery to enigma, drawn on by the lure of the unforeseen. Despite Taine's analyses of the Revolution's origins, notwithstanding Sorel's lucid and philosophical explanations of its im- mediate and remote causes, of its inevitability, in fine, and Jaures's insistence on its economic aspects, the great movement, eluding classification and arrange- THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS 3 ment, retains the fascination of the impenetrable. And the Revolution is not ended. It is not a past issue. We have not solved all its problems or answered its questions. The rights of man are still to define, the social contract is yet to be made. The sphinx of the Revolution crouches in our path. To-day its economic history is emerging through the publication of documents from municipal registers and provincial archives.* A new continent of special knowledge is open to the explorer, of measureless value to the historian of democracy. The Revolution's hoard of precious material for savant and student is inex- haustible. As the soil of Egypt after centuries of ex- cavation still yields riches to the treasure-seeker, each season welcomes the publication of some work based on documents from recently discovered stores. Modern research, though it has not radically changed our estimates of the prominent figures of the Revolu- tion, or invalidated the judgment of its famous his- torians, has often modified them. Naturally enough the importance of recent discoveries has been magnified owing to the present tendency to reverse the decrees of the past, to smirch quondam saints, and to bleach ci-devant sinners. But, though the minute investiga- tion of modern scholarship has resulted in no special transformation of opinion, it has profoundly altered the general attitude of mind towards all historical work, and has supplied a new modus and a new standard to the historian. A habit of cautious verification, un- hesitating rejection of statements unsupported by * Collection des documents inedits sur Vhistoire iconomique de la revolu' tion fran^aise. 4 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND documentary evidence, a disposition to lean more confidingly on a single fact than on a general belief, a growing distrust of the dramatic presentation of events, are gradually changing what was once litera- ture into science. Gradually only, however. The method is young. The destructive instinct of extreme youth is not en- tirely outgrown. The denials are less temperately phrased than the assertions. The significance of a small recent discovery is rated above that of the more important but familiar fact. The present levelling tendency is not sufficiently curbed. Style and elo- quence are regarded with suspicion, as though they were necessarily misleading. But these are the de- fects of qualities which further development will cor- rect. The scientific method has not yet discrowned the queen of the Gironde. The most distinguished living historian of the Revolution, M. Aulard, still considers her the Egeria of her political party, or rather a golden- voiced siren defied and punished by sage Ulysses-Dan- ton, who lured the wise and eloquent, as well as the young and enthusiastic, to shipwreck on the rocks of an impossible Utopia. To Morse Stephens Madame Roland is the am- bitious leader of a salon of the Opposition. To Mr. Belloc "Roland's wife is the one character which could have prevented Danton's ascendancy, and have met his ugly strength by a force as determined and more refined." Mr. Austin Dobson, who occasionally takes swallow-like dips into the waters of history, considers Madame Roland as **man by the head and THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS 5 woman by the heart," though he prefers Madame de Lamballe, as is natural to a poet who confesses himself *'not at ease with tragic and majestic figures," and in their presence longs "for the over-sexed woman of Rivarol." M. Perroud, the latest editor of the Roland memoirs and letters, refrains entirely from personal judgments and contents himself with ex- haustive annotation and careful emendation of his author's text. His researches have furnished the most valuable additions to our knowledge of Madame Roland since Dauban's work appeared in 1867. No writer unites more genuine enthusiasm for his subject with a more detached attitude towards it, and modern ob- jectivity finds no worthier expositor. Yet the impos- ing figure of the Girondin lady remains heroic in his documented pages. The popular M. Lenotre, who illustrates, pushed to its remotest limit, another modern tendency — devout contemplation of detail — has applied his microscope to Madame Roland, or rather to her furniture and her old clothes. To a list of the chairs and curtains in her apartment of the Rue de la Harpe, and of the worn garments left in the wardrobe when she was carried off to prison, he appends an appreciation of the owner's character and aims. This sketch, though scarcely more valuable than the discarded gowns it minutely describes, and curiously hostile in tone, does not deny to its subject the power and charm that im- pressed every one of her contemporaries who came within the magic circle of her influence. Courage, eloquence, elevated enthusiasm are accorded to her even by those who, through class prejudice or a kind 6 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND of belated snobbishness, are inclined to judge harshly "the ambitious bourgeoise," the commoner who aspired to play the aristocrat. Indeed, it almost seems as if the attraction that swayed the minds of men in her own day had en- dured, and that every writer who came near this puis- sant personality submitted to the spell of her grace, or the force of her spirit. Royalist, Montagnard, Ter- rorist, Reactionary, as divided in opinion among them- selves as they are from the Girondin leaders, subscribe grudgingly or cordially to the dictum of Antonelle, her political opponent: "(9 Roland, la plus seduisante des femmeSy le plus grand des homines^ The ^^ grand homme" is raised on a pedestal to be observed and judged by every one; the seduisante femme is less known. All the world has seen the palms laid at the feet of the heroine, few have noted the tender tributes of friends and comrades to the charm- ing woman. It is to the more intimate knowledge of her character rather than of her acts or her influence that the research of the last few years has contributed. M. Join-Lambert's publication of the correspondence of M. and Mme. Roland before their marriage, M. Perroud's discovery of the souvenirs of Madame Sophie Grandchamp, and his monumental editions of Madame Roland's letters are the most important of several publications that form a valuable commentary on her own Memoirs. As yet, however, in spite of new matter, Madame Roland remains her own best biographer, and any study of her Hfe and work, or of the national drama she helped to make will always return again and again THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS 7 to her Memoirs. Fresh material may supplement, it cannot supersede them. She speaks better for herself than any one can speak for her. She tried to plead her own cause before the Revolutionary Tribunal. She longed to justify her husband, to exonerate her friends. She was silenced, as were Vergniaud and all the golden tongues of her eloquent party, but, never losing faith in human justice, she spent the last months of her life in writing an appeal to a more august trib- unal — "the judgment," in her own words, "of Impar- tial Posterity." Memoirs were never composed under greater stress. They were written by stealth, in solitary confinement, under the eyes of a watchful guard, in a tiny, stifling cell, with the shadow of the guillotine falling across their pages. They cover quartos of coarse gray paper supplied by the jailer for the prisoners' correspondence. The sheets are closely written, for space was valuable as well as time, in an elegant, clear hand with hardly an erasure or a correction, though some of the lines are blotted with tear-stains. A biography of this manu- script would read like a romance of adventure. It was smuggled out of prison under a woman's neckerchief, dropped furtively into the court from a barred win- dow, and picked up by a devoted friend literally at the risk of his head. It was hidden for months in a deserted quarry, in the cleft of a rock in the forest of Montmorency, and in the hermitage of Sainte Rade- gonde. They carried death in their folds like the subtly poisoned billets of the Renaissance, those boldly written pages. Some of them were burned in a panic of fear after the arrest of the friend to whom they were con- 8 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND fided, and some of them were concealed within a few feet of the formidable Committee of Public Safety. When the scattered leaves were finally collected and published it was the house friends of Madame Roland, Bosc and Louvet, who gave them to the world. We owe the Memoirs of Madame Roland to her friends — it was their courage and devotion that pre- served and transmitted her Appeal; Champagneux, Bosc, Mentelle, Helena Williams, Sophie Grandchamp each took up the perilous task as suspicion or arrest fell upon one after another of the little group. The contemporaries of Madame Roland raised temples to friendship; the preservation of her papers is not one of the least of these monuments. The eighteenth century — analytical, self-conscious, curious of the things of the mind, deeply interested in defining the rights and the relations of the individual to the general scheme of existence — sought expression in memoirs. No age is as rich in the personal record of events and emotions. As art had turned to genre and portraiture, deserting Paradise and Olympus, literature, responding even more sensitively to the demands of new-born realism, was occupied with ac- tualities. The seventeenth century had busied itself with the study of divinity and the soul of man, the eighteenth century sought light in the study of hu- manity and the mind of man. BufFon succeeded to Fenelon, Rousseau's Confessions to the Pensees of Pascal; as spiritual guide the Enchiridion of Epictetus replaced the Philothee of Saint Francis de Sales, and while the Lives of Plutarch were diligently read, the dust gathered on the Lives of the Saints. THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS 9 If the study of man in general was interesting, the contemplation of the individual man was engrossing. That intimate homo that each one of us knows, or fancies he knows, best, became the object of earnest contem- plation and brilliant exposition, given the habit of writing and the perfected instrument of expression that the French language had become in the eighteenth century. To inventory one's own person, to take stock of one's capacities, to plumb the depths of the heart, to sound the shallows of the mind, to balance faults and weaknesses against virtues and excellences, to cast this self-knowledge in a pretty mould of exact terms and deftly turned, epigrammatic phrases, was an intellectual game constantly played in a society that, to the natural absence of reserve of the Latin, united a social instinct so highly developed that ret- icence was as irksome to it as soHtude. Thus the Portrait, a delicately worded, penetratingly observed study in analysis, was a favorite diversion and a lit- erary exercise in polite circles, and memoirs are but a further development of the full-length portrait with the addition of background and minor figures. Memoirs are valuable as revelations of character, as pictures of society, as contemporary records of events, and as expressions of the general spirit of their epoch. iEsthetic interest is superadded when they are written with style and grace. They gain in importance as the character of the author is remarkable, as the so- ciety depicted is unusual, as the events described are noteworthy. If a fine sense of form governs the ar- rangement of material they become belles lettres as well as documents. Weighed by any of these standards of lo MANON PHLIPON ROLAND value the Memoirs of Madame Roland are of capital importance, as precious to the psychologist as to the historian of manners, or events, or letters. No docu- ment affords a more intimate view of the Revolution, a more animated picture of the life of the bourgeoisie, or a more searching study of a unique personality — a personality of whom a contemporary, Lemontey, wrote: " ce n'etait pas seulement le caractere le plus j on, mais encore le plus vrai de notre revolution.*^ The carefully finished portrait of the author is only one of a series that covers the ample canvas of the Memoirs — portraits that are occasionally painted in lurid or dark colors, but how keen is the perception, how trenchant the characterization ! The men who made and unmade the Revolution have sat uncon- sciously for the clear-eyed artist. Dumouriez, Ver- gniaud, Condorcet, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, are sketched from life. To turn the leaves of the Portraits et Anecdotes is like passing from room to room, from case to case, of the Musee Carnavalet, though no piously guarded relics, no vestiges of the past care- fully arranged under glass, can compare as a means of evoking it with the narrative of an eye-witness. The force, the fire, the irresistible movement of the Revo- lution lives again in Madame Roland's pages. Memoirs written during the Terror are rare, those of Meillan, Brissot, Barbaroux, Buzot, Petion, Louvet, and Dumouriez make but a short list, and lack the color and impetus, as well as the literary flavor, of those of Madame Roland. Many of the so-called Revolu- tionary memoirs were composed after Thermidor and during the Empire. Lapses of memory, changes of THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS ii political opinion, the unpopularity of republican ideas, and the natural conservatism of age biassed the views and affected the veracity of their authors, so that their souvenirs are less trustworthy as well as less attractive than those hastily penned in the face of events. There is a peculiar charm in history that has been lived by the historian, and there is an intimate attrac- tion in following the evolution of the historian's mind and character under the influence of the events re- corded. When Madame Roland was first imprisoned hope was strong in her; her friends were free, raising the Provinces, gathering an army that she hoped to see enter Paris, re-establishing the rule of law and the rights of all Frenchmen against the despotism of a minority. Through June and July, sustained by letters from Buzot and by visits from her friends, she spent many hours in writing an apologia for her husband's policy as minister of the interior and an explanation of her share in his work. In August the news of the defeat of Wimpfen's army and the flight of the Girondin leaders bereft her of all hope. Her friends were "jmj- pects.^' Champagneux was arrested, and the greater part of the work she had confided to him was burned in a panic of terror. Bosc had resigned his position and could see her only rarely. Grandpre, watched and hounded, counted his visits. Her solitude was almost unbroken. She was alone with her disillusions and her sorrows, her lost dreams of a free and happy republican France, her dead faith in the noble aspira- tions and innate goodness of the people. Anguish far more intolerable even than the loss of belief in lofty ideals pressed on her heart — the thought of 12 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND her lover, a fugitive and an outlaw in hourly peril of his life. Madame Roland since her convent days had found her spiritual guide under the Porch, but stoicism, though it fortifies the mind, cannot steel the heart, and the lonely woman, wounded in all her affections, sought asylum from despair, not in the Gospels nor in the Discourses, but in the evocation of her own youth. She stopped her ears against the clamor of her unhappy time, and listened to the voice of mem- ory. As she listened the blood-stained walls of her fetid prison vanished and she was in the dewy for- est of Meudon gathering the first violets of the year, or walking in the Jardin du Roi between the glow- ing flowerbeds in a gay holiday throng, or in her own tiny room overlooking the Seine, among her books — young again, free from the chains of duty and the tyranny of circumstance. In the Memoires Particuliers present ills are ig- nored and public life almost forgotten, save only when the firmly woven thread of the narrative is broken by a wail of grief, or a cry of indignation at some new crime against liberty and justice. Once the paper is abruptly cut off, "for no one is sure of living twenty- four hours." Were it not for these crosses that mark the flowery path of the narrative of sunny early years it would be difficult to realize that it was the work of one about to die. The envoys of the Mountain howl "Mort d la fefnme Roland" under her windows, the hawkers of the Pere Duchesne shout their obscene calumnies with- in her hearing: insult and peril only speed her pen. THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS 13 and sweeten and strengthen the memory of her youth. And this record of youthful days has youth's own spon- taneous and irresistible charm. Here are no echoes of antiquity, no Roman matron's attitude; for the moment Plutarch is forgotten and Jean Jacques re- membered. The citoyenne, the austere republican, has dropped the stylus, and Manon Phlipon has taken up the facile quill of her countrywomen that in her hand becomes a wizard's rod calling up a vanished world. Gayety, tenderness, irony, frolic mirth, a frank abandonment to the young delight of being alive; an unusual capacity for realizing past moods of thought and phases of feeling, concise yet vivid bits of descrip- tion, penetrating appreciations of character, a style clear and sparkling as youthful eyes that have known neither tears nor vigils; a sureness of touch and light- ness of hand that, in spite of a didactic tone (common to most of the late eighteenth-century memoirs), al- ways saves the every-day from becoming the common- place; by such means is the narrative of the retired, uneventful life of a little Parisian bourgeoise endued with significance and distinction. How true is her picture } Did she add to the de- lineation of the girl that she had been, the portrait of the woman she desired to be, or the woman she had become ? Did not the amplitude of a matured style, the reflections of a riper experience enrich the records of her obscure youth ? Undoubtedly. In persons gifted with an abundant inner Hfe the imagina- tion is such a formative factor, such a reality in fine, that it is impossible sharply to divide it from the other reality of fact. There is also in every highly difFerenti- 14 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ated human creature an ego that observes and criticises, as well as an ego that feels and acts. This dualism of the personality inevitably affects the integrity of a retrospective narrative by unconsciously imparting to the primitive ego the larger views and saner judg- ments of a further stage of mental evolution. Nor can an autobiographer escape a tendency to mould his substance into a fixed form. An author generally possesses an ideal of art even when his life is void of one. Every one has his conventions even when re- volting against convention. To be comprehensible we are forced to employ accepted forms; and this obliga- tory formality dominates the matter it fashions. With these reservations Madame Roland's account of her life may be taken with less than the proverbial grain of salt. When she wrote — "The daughter of an artist, born in an obscure station but of respectable parents, I spent my youth in the bosom of the fine arts, nourished by the delights of study, ignorant of all superiority but that of merit, of all greatness but that of virtue" — Dauban observes that she sees her childhood as a mirage. But while the style is romantic the statements are indisputable. She did spend her childhood in the studio of her father, a master engraver on metal (graveur de Monsieur le comte d'Artois was his official title), an artist, as he was called in an age that defined the word, "Vouvrier qui travaille avec grand art et avec facilite.*^ There was no chasm then between the industrial and the fine arts. The engraver who decorated snuff-boxes and watch-cases was pre- pared for his task by an apprenticeship in drawing from the antique and in study of the best models. THE PORTRAIT OF THE MEMOIRS 15 Pretty things were not made by the gross then, and each one, if not a separate invention of the maker, was the product of patient, often of enthusiastic, ef- fort, and sometimes was a masterpiece executed under high pressure of fervor and deHght. With less knowl- edge, perhaps there was more feeling than we possess, — ^'Uouvrier nait au XVI IT siecle et la machine au xirr In her father's ateHer the small Manon Phlipon drew from the antique and learned to handle the burin. She had half a dozen masters for dancing, singing, the guitar, the clavecin^ the violin. She did pass her youth in study, reading voraciously and indiscrimi- nately, but usually taking notes and analyzing her reading. If she devoured Candide to-day, to-morrow found her working out algebraic formulae, or filling a letter to Sophie with an abstract of Leibnitz's theory of sensations. If her girlhood was saddened by a knowledge of her father's dissipation and her mother's anxieties, if in her own home she saw how helpless is goodness to command happiness, such experience does not dis- prove her words — indeed, the assertion that she was "ignorant of all superiority but that of merit" is a frank admission of the humbleness of her position. Even the least and poorest of nobles was hampered by a thousand different superiorities and greatnesses in the social hierarchy from which the petite bourgeoisie was happily free. CHAPTER II PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD One curious characteristic of these Memoirs, written literally in a race with death, is their air of leisure. The writer begins her story with her own birth and with the portraits of her parents. M. and Mme. Phlipon were painted also by La Tour, and it is interesting to note how these pastels, now in the museum at Lyons, illustrate the pen sketches by their daughter. Gatien Phlipon, in his best coat and lace cravat, in spite of his fine eyes and artist's mouth, is a little vulgar-looking — less so, however, than the por- traits of the dukes of Choiseul and Lauzun. M. Phlipon was "strong and healthy, active and vain." ** Without learning he had that degree of taste and knowledge, which the fine arts give superficially, in whatever branch they are practised." "He could not be said to be a virtuous man, but he had a great deal of what is called honor. He would have no ob- jection to receiving more than it was worth for a thing, but he would have killed himself rather than not pay the price of what he had purchased," Thus Madame Roland with much detachment, and La Tour seems to confirm her judgment. M. Phlipon's position was financially and socially an agreeable one. Though he kept a shop where he sold his own and his pupils' work, and occasionally dealt in jewels on commission, he was enough of an i6 PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 17 artist in sentiment and knowledge to consort with more gifted confreres. His family and that of his wife, though plebeian, were in no sense peuple. His forebears had always owned their own shops and been their own masters. His father, Gatien Phlipon, was a wine-merchant. His mother, Marie Genevieve Ro- tisset, who had relations among la grande bourgeoisie, opposed her sister's marriage to the well-to-do intendant of a fermier general as a derogation from the family dignity. M. Phlipon himself married a dowerless girl, Marie Marguerite Bimont, the daughter of a mercer, who became the mother of Madame Roland on March 18, 1754. Madame Roland's ancestry was made the subject of a careful study based on public documents, by M. Jal in the Dictionnaire critique de biographic et d'his- toire, article "Roland." It is therefore surprising that M. Lenotre in his Salon de Madame Roland (Paris Revolutionnaire, p. 172, ed. 1906) should have com- menced his sketch by the utterly unfounded state- ments that Madame Roland's grandfather Rotisset was the head cook of the Marquis de Crequy, that he mar- ried the chambermaid of the marquise, and that their daughter, Fanchon Rotisset, became the wife of Gatien Phlipon and the mother of his illustrious daughter. M. Lenotre does not give his authority for these misstatements. It is not far to seek, however. The Crequys' apocryphal cook and chambermaid are only two of the fictitious characters invented by the pam- phleteer Causen de Courchamps in his spurious Sou- venirs de la Marquise de Crequy (VII, p. 192, ed. of 1840). It was Causen's fabrications of this kind that i8 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND betrayed the counterfeit character of these cleverly forged memoirs. Though they have recently been abbreviated, translated into English, and presented to the American public as a genuine eighteenth-cen- tury production, they were discredited shortly after their appearance in 1840. M. Lenotre's repetition of Causen's fiction is the more incomprehensible because M. Lenotre acknowl- edges his indebtedness to M. Perroud for all the ma- terial of his Mort de Roland. Now M. Perroud pub- lished (in his Lettres de Madame Roland, 1902) an abstract of M. Jal's genealogical study of the Rolands, and a correction of M. Lenotre's careless repetition of Causen's invention. A mere glance at these notes would have prevented M. Lenotre from prematurely despising Madame Roland as the upstart offspring of a couple of servants, and viewing her career with consequent severity. A sufficient acquaintance with the documents in the case to prove that Manon's grand- parents were well-to-do bourgeois connected with la haute finance would not only have mitigated the as- perity of M. Lenotre's judgment, but would have im- posed fewer reserves on our future enjoyment of his entertaining glimpses of history. Madame PhHpon's portrait forms a sharp contrast to that of her rather positive, blunt-featured husband; in her face there is no lack of delicate edge, of a certain pensiveness refining its evident amiability; she also is in gala dress, and wears her furs and laces with fine unconsciousness. She is a thoughtful and dignified person quite worthy of a place among La Tour's fine ladies. Of the deep love and veneration she inspired GATIEN PHLIPOX— FATHER OF MADAME ROLAND Pastel by Latour in the Museum of Lyons PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 19 in her discriminating daughter the Memoirs bear con- stant witness. It was to this mother of "the heavenly mind and the charming face" that Madame Roland not only owed the sense of duty which proved a sanc- tuary to her ardent temperament, but a youth exempt from those household cares that devour time and strength. A large leisure for study, a serene and cheer- ful home life, which soothed the nerves and modified an excess of sensibility, were the gifts of this wise parent to a highly strung, precocious child. And the child of the bourgeoise was fortunate when her mother was judicious as well as tender, for mother and daughter were literally inseparable in the families of the Third Estate, and though the little Manon Phlipon, born before Rousseau's gospel had literally laid the baby on its mother's breast, was put out to nurse in the country, she passed her girlhood, with the exception of a year in a convent, under the maternal wing. The care of her daughter was the occupation and the diver- sion of the austerely bred bourgeoise; to this one little subject of her kingdom Madame Phlipon relaxed the discipline that often narrowed and alienated filial ten- derness by imposing on it a specific character that distinguished it from the other free and natural affec- tions, but this amiable mamma's frown or the sub- stitution of "Mademoiselle" for " ma filler" wsls more effective than M. Phlipon's birch rod. Discipline of a more spiritual sort Maman Phlipon was not chary of, and her daughter's education was a practical preparation for the duties of life as well as its op- portunities. The training of heart and mind began when the little Manon was sent home to Paris (1756) 20 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND from her nurse's farm near Arpajon, where she had spent the first two years of her life. She was a rosy peasant baby, with the manners of a rustic but docile and affectionate; extremely obstinate when neither her reason nor her feelings were appealed to, and al- ready inclined to resist what appeared to her the dic- tates of caprice or the arbitrary exercise of authority. The child's education was a compromise between that of a grande bourgeoisey like Madame de Pompadour, and that of a housewife of the Third Estate, for the petite bourgeoise was a kind of social mermaid; of the people through her position, of the aristocracy through her accomplishments. Household tasks were famihar to her, she was expert in needlework, she went to market and learned to cook daintily and economically, as only the French middle class practise this most subtle of the domestic arts. She combined the practical train- ing of Moliere's charming Henriette of the Femmes Savantes with the studies of her learned sister Ar- mande. The artistic tastes and acquirements of Monsieur Phlipon influenced his daughter's studies also, and the teaching of Grandmamma Phlipon, a poor relation of great folk, who had spent much of her life in their households and had acquired the tone of la parfaite- ment bonne compagnie, were factors in Manon's breed- ing that curiously united simplicity of habits with complexity of interests. And these interests were complex indeed. Encyclopaedic information was ac- quired by some ambitious girls and sought by many, inspired by the master spirit of this century of inquiry, Voltaire, who handled all the things of the mind with PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 21 so light yet so sure a touch. To know something of everything was the ideal of studious youth, and several individuals came perilously near to attaining it, nota- bly the fifteen-year-old Laurette de Malboissiere, who mentions casually in one of her letters: **To-day, after reading Locke and Spinoza, and doing my Spanish theme and my Italian exercise, I took my lessons in mathematics and dancing. At five o'clock my little drawing-master came, who remained with me an hour and a quarter. After he left I read twelve chapters of Epictetus in Greek and the last part of Timon of Athens." The accomplished Laurette died at nine- teen, probably after having exhausted the sum of human knowledge or her capacity for acquiring it. Madame de Genlis, who was of tougher fibre, is an- other typical product of the higher culture. She preached, taught, wrote novels, played the harp, bled and bhstered, acted, danced, sang, composed, and learned half a dozen trades. The Phlipon family were on a lower social plane than the ladies just quoted, but the ideals of the petite bourgeoisie fluctuated between those of the people and the nobility, and the education of its daughters was a compromise that included many sage incon- gruities. "This little girl," Madame Roland writes of herself, "who read serious books, could explain the courses of the celestial spheres, handle the crayon and the graver, and at the age of eight was the best dancer of a number of young people older than her- self assembled at a family merrymaking, was often called to the kitchen to make an omelet, pick vege- tables, or skim the pot. In no occupation am I at a 22 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND loss. I can prepare my own dinner as handily as Phi- lopoemen cut his wood." The studies of the little Phlipon began at what we should now consider a very early age; at four she knew how to read, and, as she was naturally studious, all that was necessary to continue her education was to provide her with books; they were her toys, and noth- ing but the sight of a flower could divert her attention from them. "Under the tranquil shelter of the pater- nal roof, I was happy from my infancy with books and flowers; in the narrow confines of a prison, in the bonds imposed by a most revolting tyranny, I have the same feeling, and I forget the injustice of men, their follies, and my misfortunes, with flowers and books.'* It was not to books alone that Manon's time was given; besides, lessons in writing, geography, and his- tory, dancing and music, formed an important part of her curriculum; she had masters for the guitar, the violin, and for singing; she drew from her father's collection of casts and began to engrave under his supervision. Miscellaneous reading ran an even course with study. The small house library was soon ex- hausted, a folio Bible, the Lives of the Saints, the Civil Wars of Appian, The G)mic Romance of Scar- ron, and a couple of volumes of memoirs, those of the romantic De Pontis and of the gallant jrondeuse Mademoiselle de Montpensier, were read and reread again and again. So insatiable was Manon's intel- lectual curiosity that, having unearthed an old tome on the art of heraldry, she studied it to such purpose that she surprised her father by a criticism on a seal composed against the rules of that art, and soon be- PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 23 came his oracle in such matters — a responsible posi- tion when letters were habitually closed with the blazon of the writer and such seals formed part of an engraver's work. A happy discovery soon furnished Manon with more nourishing fare for a growing intelligence. In rum- maging her father's studio she found a store of books belonging to one of his pupils, from which she furtively carried off a volume now and then to devour in her own den. One day she saw a work she had just finished in her mother's hands and, feeling assured that the discreet lady shared her discovery, Manon assumed the air of merely following the parental example and continued to borrow without scruple. The art student possessed sound literary taste — travels, plays, Vol- taire's Candide, a French translation of Tasso, Tele- maque, and Dacier's Plutarch formed his small col- lection. Manon's susceptible little heart and ardent imagination were touched and fired by the heroes of Fenelon and the Gerusalemme. It seems curious to-day that the course of young blood should have been quickened by the didactic Telemaque, or the operatic paladins of Tasso, yet Madame Roland was so moved by them that she would have plucked out her tongue "rather than have read aloud the episodes of the island of Calypso and a number of passages in Tasso; my breath grew short, a sudden blush covered my face, and my altered voice would have betrayed my agitation. With Telemachus I was Eucharis, and Herminia with Tancred. . . . I was these very charac- ters, and I saw only the objects that existed for them." The keen-edged mockery and positive good sense of 24 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Voltaire were excellent correctives for such excess of sensibility. Plutarch, however, proved the true patria for a proud yet impassioned spirit; henceforth it dwelt in his divine company of heroes and sages. The large and virile accents of the brave and wise of the antique world vibrating across the ages, made noble music in an ardent young heart. "Plutarch caused the French Revolution," Brunetiere somewhat arbitrarily asserted; it would have been truer perhaps to say that the antique biographer made many revolutionists. Madame Ro- land became the soul-child of the sage and tender old Greek. "Plutarch seemed to be exactly the nourish- ment that suited my mind. I shall never forget the Lent of 1763, at which time I was nine years old, when I carried it to church instead of my prayer-book. From that time I date the impressions and ideas that made me a repubhcan, though then I did not dream that I should ever become one." Many years afterwards, when she was first imprisoned, among the few books that she sent for was the Lives, "the Bible of the strong," as Michelet called them. No work exercised so deep and permanent an influence on Madame Ro- land's conduct and her mode of thought as this heroic symphony of literature. She wept that she was not bom in Athens or Sparta, and long afterwards, in her studies of philosophy, though she became "Jansenist, Cartesian, Stoic," and sceptic in turn, she ended by giving the palm to the Stoics, whom she early had learned to revere. Even in yielding to the enchant- ments of Rousseau she still preserved the virile tem- per which had been nourished and fortified by the love of Plutarch. PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 25 Among the authors who direct us, who guide us, who move us, who transport us to the starry realm of the imagination, there are those who above all others speak to our souls, who seem our very selves made wise and strong and eloquent, who address our spirit in a tongue that sounds strangely familiar, who ex- press the thoughts that in some groping, stumbling way we ourselves have conceived dimly, who endow with form, substance, and radiant reality ideas that were to us but vague and amorphous notions, mere shimmers and gleams of apprehension. There are in our literary pantheon some altars more richly crowned than others, some writers to whom we yield a more complete inner acquiescence, whom we elect for lead- ers, masters and lords of our spirit. In spite of her admiration for Plutarch's heroic pa- gans, however, Manon was a most devout Christian and a student of the Word; it is true that learning the Athanasian creed was rewarded by hearing the fairy-tale of Tangier of the Long Nose, a kind of mythic Cyrano de Bergerac, and that at first her unusual ac- tivity of mind was applied to the mysteries of her faith in a somewhat secular spirit. Madame Phlipon's younger brother was an ecclesiastic. This "dear little uncle," the Abbe Bimont, "handsome, benevolent, and gay," of whom Madame Roland tells us she "could never think without emotion," took a personal in- terest in his niece's religious education. Her presence at the catechism classes in the parish church, where her remarkable memory easily won her the first place, was a source of pride to the amiable abbe as well as to her parents. "Madame Phlipon was pious with- 26 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND out being a devotee; she was, or endeavored to be, a believer, and she conformed to the rules of the church with the humility and regularity of one whose heart, having need of the support of its main principles, troubles itself but little with its details." The rever- ence with which she approached religious subjects deeply impressed a sensitive child. Madame Phlipon's devotion to duty was early felt and shared by her daughter. The family piety, so characteristic of the older races, demands many small sacrifices of women; among those of Manon's mother was a weekly visit to Grandmamma Bimont, a palsied and imbecile old lady. It was a severe penance for an active child to sit quiet for two hours while Madame Phlipon listened complaisantly to the gabble of Marie, the old lady's attendant. There were no books, only the Psalter, which palled after the French had been read and the Latin chanted some scores of times. The grandmamma's dotage was of a perverse and painful character. When Manon was gay the old lady wept; "if I fell down or hurt myself she would burst out laughing. ... I could have borne with her laughing at me; but her tears were always accompanied by pitiable and idiotic outbursts that shocked me inex- pressibly and filled me with terror." One day the child cried for vexation, and begged to go away; her mamma, to exercise the little one's patience, stayed the whole evening. "Nor did she fail at a more favorable time to explain that these wearisome visits were a sacred obligation, which it was an honor for me to share. I do not know how she managed it, but the lesson touched my heart," wrote Madame Roland years afterwards. If she was a Puritan in her respect for duty, Madame PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 27 Phlipon was a Parisienne in her devotion to dress. She was a true descendant of those mediaeval bur- gesses of Paris whose gorgeous gowns so surprised Isabeau de Baviere. "I thought I was the only queen; they are all queens here," petulantly exclaimed the royal bride. Madame Phlipon's passion was a vicarious one. Simple as one of Chardin's housewives in her own attire, all her frills and frivolity were lavished on her girl, who was her doll and her toy. From her infancy Madame Roland was dressed with a degree of elegance and even richness superior to her social station. "The fashionable gowns for young girls in those days were cut all in one piece, with a close-fitting bodice; they were made like the court dresses, very tight in the waist, which they showed to advantage, very ample below, with a long sweeping train trimmed according to the taste of the wearer or the fashion of the season. Mine were of fine silk of some simple pat- tern and quiet color, but in price and quality as rich as the best holiday costumes of my mother." Truly an appropriate and hygienic dress for a child ! Some- thing of this childish coquetry remained with Madame Roland through life. Though simple, almost Spartan in her tastes, she was constantly well dressed, and her beautiful and abundant hair was always becomingly arranged. Dumouriez, who feared and resisted her influence, wrote of her during the busiest period of her life that she was "toujours mise elegamment." The position of puppet for the display of fine clothes was almost as trying as that of visitor to a weak-minded grandmother. Rousseau had not yet struck the fetters from the poor little prisoner of the old regime. Chil- dren were still in the bondage of stiff stays and farthin- 28 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND gales, the gyves of trains and high heels, the restraints of frizzed and powdered coiffures. The tiny, demure gentlemen and ladies in manner and dress were their elders seen through a diminishing glass. The dainty doll who curtsies so gravely in Cazot's "Dancing Les- son," the little dunce standing primly erect in Char- din's "Bonne Education," or the miniature coquette, who is squired by an equally diminutive cavalier in Moreau's "Petits Parrains " — all these exquisite, wee creatures are Lilliputians, not denizens of Childland. Madame Roland confides to us the tortures of elaborate toilettes, of lacing and hair-dressing, always accom- panied by gasps and tears, which preceded a promenade or a visit. Fortunately on ordinary days her finery was laid aside and she went to early mass with her mother, or alone to the nearest greengrocer's to buy the parsley or salad which the maid had forgotten, dressed in a simple linen frock. Her dress presented the same contrasts as did her education. Meanwhile, under this outward diversity of tastes and habits, her inner life was a harmonious and con- sistent one. From her childhood (if we may trust her memory of it) the future heroine of the Republic pos- sessed the faculty, as invaluable to a student as to a diplomatist, of living in the present, of absorption in the interest of the moment. A fervid imagination, furnished by good reading with pure and noble images, realized vividly the motives and acts of the knights and heroes who formed her mental society. Cato or Godfrey was to her as real as and more compre- hensible than the haggling herb-seller round the cor- ner or the children she met at the catechism class. PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 29 The lack of playmates of her own age fostered Ma- rion's introspective life. From the time she learned to read, her highest delights and tenderest sorrows had been found between the covers of her books. In them she had early discovered the open sesame to a wonder world of unfading joys, a region of marvels wherein a poor little girl in her coarse-stufF gown, shivering beside a drafty window, was transformed into a princess, a paladin, a patriot, or a martyr. Manon, it will be observed, always appropriated the leading roles — nothing short of the part of the grande amoureuse or that of the hero himself satisfied her as- pirations. Nor was she content to shut away all her state and splendor in some dingy volume when the magic hour was over and she was called to her needle or her lessons. Manon was the very reverse of antinomian; her pre- occupation, as soon as she began to reflect, was to live her thoughts, to translate into action her loved hero's deeds and high emprises. Was there no place left for Brutus's virtue and Tancred's courage in her daily existence ? Were noble lives and great examples to be admired coldly, disinterestedly, merely as one did the antique busts and statues in her father's studio ? Even those material images she copied; why not the grander human examples of a glorious past } She felt within herself the flutter of newly fledged pinions, a potentiality for sacrifice, a goading desire to do as well as to dream — to be an actor, not a spectator only, in the mystery of life. CHAPTER III AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY Confirmation, a solemn ceremony to the impres- sionable child of a pious mother, precipitated these vague outreachings into a definite aspiration. The thought of her first communion penetrated Manon with religious awe. Even her simple, quiet existence appeared to her far too worldly to admit of proper preparation for it. The Philothee of Saint Francis de Sales, most amiable of saints, became the livre de chevet of the little pagan who three years before had carried her Plutarch to mass, and who now laid aside her poets and historians to study the dogmas of her faith. The words she had formerly learned so lightly grew weighty with spiritual meaning. She followed with increasing love and reverence the holy offices of her church, deeply moved by her new comprehension of the divine mysteries embodied in their gorgeous ceremonial. All the time she could save from her daily tasks was given to prayer, meditation, and books of devotion. Bible-reading as usual suggested doubts of the divine goodness. The transformation of the devil into a serpent and the apparent cruelty of the Supreme Being in permitting this metamorphosis caused her first stumble in the path of behef, but grad- ually the constant contemplation of the grand central motive of her religion effaced all the neophyte's doubts 30 AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 31 and "the reign of sentiment in her heart began with the love of God." To love, with this intense child, was to give herself unreservedly to the loved. How could she serve her Lord ? — for in service only is love made visible. She practised secret austerities; fasted, surreptitiously sprinkled her beefsteak with ashes, and said long prayers kneeling on the bare floor on bitter winter nights. She again sighed for the vanished days of Greece and Rome, but for the sake of the tortures and persecutions that would have won her a martyr's crown. The lives of the saints, the heroic who were also the holy, thrilled her with admiration. Alas, pincers and racks, tigers and arenas were hopelessly out of reach ! Martyrdom in France (except for a Protestant or a sceptic like the Chevalier de la Barre) was obsolete, but self-immolation in another form was to be had for the asking. In the solitude of the cloister sanctity could be sought; there one could die to the world more slowly but not less truly than under the axe or among the beasts at Ephesus. For some time the thought of leaving her mother sent Manon's thoughts shuddering away from the idea of a convent. But what costlier sacrifice could she offer the Lord than this unique love of her heart ? Practical always in the application of the ideal to daily life, her resolution swiftly grew into action, and one evening, after supper, the Phlipons were startled by seeing their daughter fall at their feet and with floods of tears implore their consent to enter a convent. The convent, not the veil, Manon pleaded for, as the first station in the thorny path of renunciation. 32 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND She besought a pious retreat in which fittingly to pre- pare herself to receive the greatest of Christian privi- leges. Madame Phlipon, touched by her daughter's desire and the suffering it had evidently cost the child, yielded a reluctant, her father a more cordial, consent. Manon's music-master recommended a religious house where he visited some titled pupils, and after the pre- liminary inquiries a convent of the Sisterhood of the Congregation was chosen (May 7, 1765). This build- ing, once in the rue Saint Etienne, Faubourg Saint Marcel, has been long since swept away by the rising tide of business needs. A few such houses still remain like tranquil islands of gray rock and green grass and venerable trees, midstream of the rush and whirl of modern Paris. The dusky, fragrant chapel, the long, bare corridors, the beamed refectory with its sculp- tured wall-fountain and lofty reading-desk, the deep garden, bird-haunted, with its mossy statues of virgin saints and its lichen-covered benches, formed a back- ground as harmonious for a young devotee as that which glows dimly behind the glimmering halo of a holy maiden in some warm-hued, mediaeval panel. Could piety, at once fervent and romantic, discover a more congenial retreat ^ The peace of the cloister and the industry of the world were united within these walls. The nuns of the Congregation taught poor children in a free day-school, and received a certain number of young girls of the petite noblesse and the bourgeoisie as boarding-scholars, for girls, when not en- tirely cloister-bred, generally passed a few years at least in a convent. The discipline and comparative isolation of these AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 33 modest religious houses were more salutary than severe. They were far removed from the magnificent world- liness of the abbey of Fontevrault, where royal prin- cesses were sent to hold miniature courts and to give laws to their instructors. They bore not the faintest resemblance to the aristocratic chapter of Chelles, where baby patricians were drilled in social obser- vances, and etiquette and genealogy were first in the short list of studies. The more humble convent of the rue Saint Etienne was to the religious world what the bourgeois household represented in the social hier- archy. Few girls are not the better for the mild rigors of a conventual rule. Especially is it valuable for intensely individual natures, impatient of restraint and recal- citrant to command. The pervasive discipline that seems less the exercise of individual authority than the impersonal sway of law, the universal subjection to duty, the prompt, silent, military obedience im- partially exacted from all, impress and subdue the most insubordinate, while the low voices and gentle manners of the nuns soften the austerity of their rule. It makes for more disinterested aims in after life when for a time the young are brought into contact with those who have elected self-abnegation as an ideal, in theory at least. The monastic cultus of purity and sacrifice remains in certain natures long after the piety that first inspired them has faded away, to chasten the imagination and strengthen the will. Madame Roland is herself an example of the persistence of these benign influences. There is no sweeter picture of con- vent life than that of this child of Plutarch, and if 34 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND the nunneries of the eighteenth century were often centres of vanity and frivoHty, where all the artificial distinctions of social life were observed as strictly be- fore the altar as before the throne, if they were some- times dark places of cruelty and crime, they were often nurseries of the amiable virtues. The obscure con- vent of Madame Roland's Memoirs is as typical as that of Diderot's Religieuse, or the lax retreat at Montfleury where Madame de Tencin began her tem- pestuous career. Manon found in the ladies of the Congregation kind and well-bred if not very learned teachers. The pre- cocious child was already familiar with most of their subjects of study, and her quickness, diligence, and pretty, sedate manners soon endeared her to the sisters. Two of them, of widely differing types, she sketched in her Memoirs. Mother Sainte Sophie had become a nun at fifty and brought with her to the cloister the high breeding and varied accomplishments of a woman of the world. Would you know what they were, these accomplishments that made their possessor the envy of the less gifted? "She wrote a fine hand, embroi- dered with elegance, was versed in orthography and not unacquainted with history." "Knowledge puffeth up " — no wonder the Mother Sainte Sophie was slightly pedantic and that the other sisters looked with green eyes upon her superiority. This erudite person soon became attached to the studious and demure little Phlipon, gave her private instruction and lessons in reading aloud, an acquirement much valued when, modern conditions being reversed, readers were many and books were few. Mother Sainte Sophie was too ^^^,.^^/.^"^- /' ) / i ■ / / • y y /^^ ■ / ^ ^ THE BOXXEVILLE ENGRAVING OF MADAME ROLAND AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 35 imposing, too superior, to be loved by her disciple; it was another, humbler sister who won Manon's heart and kept it all her life. This was Angelique Boufflers, a dowerless girl, who had renounced the world that had abandoned her at the age of seventeen. "Nature had formed her of sulphur and saltpetre; her repressed energy exalted to the highest degree the tenderness of her heart and the vivacity of her mind. Her lack of fortune had caused her to be placed among the lay sisters with whom she had nothing in common except their rude tasks. There are minds that have no need of cultivation. Sainte Agathe [the religious name of this nun], without the help of education, was superior not only to her companions but to most of the Sisters of the Choir." This young woman was the convent drudge; her duty was to wait on the boarders, and, as she was amiable and willing, she was always overloaded with work. Nevertheless, she made time to serve Manon with special care, petted her, gave her the key to her own cell where the Httle girl found a small library of mystical works, and "a. charming canary tame and caressing, which she [Angelique] had taught to speak." This seems surprising, but the eighteenth was a century of talkers, and the known loquacity of nuns may have proved contagious. "Cette colomhe gemissantej" as Agathe is often called in the IVlemoirs, was swept out of her dove-cote by the whirlwind of the Revolution (October, 1792). Vegetating on a scanty pension, she was living near Sainte Pelagic when Madame Roland was confined there, and sweet- ened by her visits and her sympathy her old pupil's captivity. 36 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Manon's dutiful affection for the nuns was soon succeeded by a first passion for a girl of fourteen — I write passion advisedly, for no milder word could ex- press the emotion that for many years tinged the whole texture of Manon's inner life. A clearer, purer flame was never kindled on the altar of friendship — a flame that consumed the thought of self in its votary, that was guarded with jealous care, and nurtured with daily offerings. Sophie Cannet, the lady paramount of Manon's affections, was a native of Amiens where her parents belonged to the rich bourgeoisie. She was her mother's favorite, and, to soften her exile from home, her elder sister Henriette, who had already made her social debut, was bundled off to school with her. Henriette considered, not unreasonably, that she had been sacri- ficed to her sister, but her mother had another motive in cloistering her. This brilliant, handsome girl was in much need of a wholesome restraint that neither Madame Cannet nor the gay, frivolous little world of Amiens could furnish — hence Henriette's return to a convent for a brief season. These sisters possessed no trait in common but their attachment to Manon. "Henriette was frank, even brusque, impatient to irascibility, gay, often a madcap; she was subject to outbreaks of temper which were always followed by most affectionate atonements. You could not help loving even while you scolded her, yet it was difficult to live with her on pleasant and impossible on reason- able terms, for she was as volatile and flighty as she was witty and vivacious." Sophie was the Penserosa of this Allegra. **The AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 37 sobriety of premature reason characterized her; she did not feel deeply because her head was cool. She loved to reflect and to argue. She was a pitiless reasoner; she wished to analyze, to know, and to dis- cuss everything. I talked much less than she did, and did not lay stress on anything but results. She en- joyed conversing with me, for I was a good listener, and when I did not think as she did my opposition was so gentle for fear of offending her that in spite of all our differences of opinion we have never quarrelled. Three years older than I, and a little less humble, Sophie possessed an external advantage which I did not envy her; she talked prettily whereas I could only answer." Sophie, as one sees her in Madame Roland's letters as well as in the calmer, more detached estimate of the Memoirs, was a somewhat cold, quiet girl, an in- dustrious student, fond of reading, rather self-centred, and lacking interest in others. But she possessed a good mind, and if she never offered help or sympathy she never refused it. A more vivid contrast to her expansive, imaginative admirer cannot be imagined. It was love at first sight with Manon, a real coup de foudre. Sophie appeared in the convent garden, deeply affected by parting from her mother. Her white gauze veil could not hide the tears that bathed her sweet face, and Manon was very naturally impressed, in- terested, and touched. At supper the Cannet sisters were placed at her table, and Sophie's lack of appetite and silent grief was a mute but potent appeal to an affectionate and imaginative child. "Her sorrow had moved me, her manner pleased me, I felt that in her I had found a friend, and we became inseparable. I 38 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND grew fond of her with the self-abandonment which flows from the need of loving at the sight of an object made to satisfy that need. Her company was infinitely dear to me because I needed to confide to some one who understood the sentiments I felt, and which seemed to increase by being shared." Here speaks the offspring of a Latin race, and a social people. To us it seems that an emotion shut deep down in the heart gains in intensity like the close-stopped vial of precious perfume that when unsealed loses its rare potency of fragrance. Henceforth Manon's solitude was a deux. "Work, reading, and walks were all shared with Sophie"; and even in their prayers they were not divided, for Sophie's devotion, though less tender and effusive than that of her little friend, was equally ab- sorbing. Together they sought counsels of perfection. Untried and innocent creatures, to them a life of re- nunciation seemed as easy as it was noble, and they both looked forward to consecrating their young maidenhood to the service of religion. These pious aspirations were constantly stimulated by their environment. All the observances of monas- tic life converge upon one central idea, — Eternity. Towards a realization of this grand abstraction all daily rites and pious practices, prayers and meditations, direct the mind, while the significance and beauty of imposing ceremonies penetrate the heart and caress the eye. "Women understand wonderfully well how to set off these services, to accompany these ceremonies with everything that can lend them charm or splendor, and nuns excel in this art. A novice took the veil soon after my arrival at the convent. The church and the AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 39 altar were decorated with flowers, with bright cande- labra, silk curtains, and magnificent hangings. The large gathering, which filled the outer church, was cheerful as a family appears at the wedding of one of its members. Gorgeously dressed and with a trium- phant air, the young victim appeared at the grating in much pomp, which she presently laid aside to re- appear covered with a white veil and crowned with roses. I still feel the nervous agitation that her slightly tremulous voice gave me when she chanted melodiously the customary verse: Elegit, etc. — *In this place have I chosen my abode and will establish it forever.* [Here the vivid picture fades from the prisoner's mental retina, and the lonely captive cries aloud:] I have not forgotten the notes of this little anthem; I can repeat them as exactly as if I had heard them but yes- terday. I would I could sing them in America. Great God ! With what accents would I chant them to-day ! [Then Memory flashes the vanished vision back again.] When the novice had pronounced her vows, as she lay on the ground, she was covered with a pall, under which one would have thought she was to be buried. I shuddered with terror. She was an image of the absolute rupture of every earthly tie, and the renun- ciation of all that was most dear to her. I was no longer myself. I was she. I thought they were tearing me away from my mother, and I shed floods of tears." Naturally enough, to a creature of such lively sensi- bilities, her own first communion was an intense emo- tional experience. "Prepared by all the means cus- tomary in convents, by retreats, long prayers, silence, and meditation, it was considered by me as a solemn 40 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND covenant and the pledge of immortal happiness. It fired my imagination and touched my heart to such a degree that, bathed in tears and transported with divine love, I was incapable of walking to the altar without the aid of a nun, who, supporting me under the arms helped me to the Holy Table." These crises of religious feeling left no fugitive im- pression on Manon's nature. "Philosophy has dissi- pated the illusions of a vain belief, but it has not anni- hilated the effect of certain objects on my senses, or their associations with the ideas that they used to quicken. I can still attend divine service with pleasure if it be performed with solemnity. I forget the char- latanism of priests, their ridiculous fables, and absurd mysteries, and I see only a group of weak men im- ploring the help of a Supreme Being. The wretched- ness of mankind, and the consoling hope of an omnip- otent Judge fill my thoughts. Light fancies fade away, the passions are calmed, the love of my duties is revived; if music form a part of the ceremony I find myself transported to another world, and I come away a better woman from a place where the fool- ish and thoughtless crowd resort to, bow before a bit of bread." Alas ! That so fine a page should be coarsened with contempt. She continues: "It is with religion as with many other human institutions: it does not change the disposition of the individual, but is as- similated by his nature, and is exalted or debased with it. The mass of mankind thinks little, believes blindly, and acts by instinct so that there exists a perpetual contradiction between the principles it professes and the conduct it pursues. Strong characters act differ- AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 41 ently, they demand consistency, and with them action is a faithful translation of belief. In my infancy I naturally received the creed that was offered to me. It was mine until I was sufficiently enlightened to examine it, but until then all my acts confonned to it. I was astonished at the levity of those who, pro- fessing a similar faith acted in contradiction to it, as I now am indignant at the cowardice of men who, de- sirous of possessing a fatherland, value their lives when they are to be risked in its service." Thus the Spartan citoyenne; little Manon was still in the idyllic age of faith when the year of convent life which her parents had granted her drew to its close (1766). It was with a strangely heavy heart that the child bade good-by to all her haunts: the long cloisters where from the walls the epitaphs of nuns long dead pointed out the way to paradise; the chapel where so many blissful hours consecrated to meditation had been passed; and kind Sister Agathe's austerely dainty cell. There were affecting farewells and promises to return soon and often, and to write constantly; there were keepsakes given and portraits exchanged, all the poor little devices by vhich young affection seeks to render enduring the essentially transitory. At last, however, the many farewells were said, and Manon quitted the house of the Lord "regretted, esteemed, and em- braced by the whole sisterhood, and bedewed by the tears of Sophie and Agathe." To leave them was not, however, to return to her mother, for it had been decided in family conclave that Manon was to pass a year with her grandmamma PhHpon on the island of Saint Louis before returning 42 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND home. " Bonne-maman " Phlipon was one of those captivating old ladies who seem the special fruit of the ancient regime in France, mellow fruit delicately preserved, sometimes in the spice of wit, sometimes confites en devotion. * Bonne-maman's " husband had died during the first year of her marriage, and Ma- non's father was her only child. Poverty obliged her to accept the assistance of some rich relatives, the de Boismorel, who employed her as governess to their two children. A heritage rendered her independent in her later years, and she occupied an apartment on the island of Saint Louis with her maiden sister Made- moiselle Rotisset, appropriately named Angelique. "This worthy maiden, asthmatic and devout, pure as an angel and simple as a child, was the very humble servant of her elder sister." She became Manon's gouvernantey while Grandmother Phlipon continued the child's education. Bonne-maman was an engaging person, still young in heart and spirits. Madame Roland's sketch of her evokes from the silvery dust of the pastel the image of one of La Tour's amiable and witty old ladies. "She was a gracious and sweet-tempered little woman, whose agreeable manners, polished language, winning smile, and sprightly glances still hinted at some pre- tensions to please, or at least to remind us that she had once pleased. She was sixty-five or -six years old [seventy in 1766], took pains with her dress, which, however, was appropriate to her age, for she prided herself above all things on the knowledge and obser- vance of decorum. As she was very plump, light of foot, extremely erect, with pretty little hands which AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 43 she used gracefully, and a touch of sentiment in her conversation qualified, however, with gay but always delicate pleasantry, the traces of age in her were al- most imperceptible. She was very fond of young people whose society pleased her, and by whom she was rather proud of being sought." With this wise worldling and her saintly sister Manon passed her thirteenth year very pleasantly. She had secretly resolved to enter the religious life, and already looked upon the nuns of the Visitation, the daughters of Saint Francis de Sales, as her future sisters. The quiet days with the two old ladies began with early mass as the principal event of the day, an occasional visit to the convent, a letter to Sophie, and plenty of time for reading from Saint Augustine's Manual, and her favorite Philothee, better known to EngHsh readers as The Introduction to a Devout Life. No works were more suited to foster a religious temper and to create an atmosphere of celestial illusion in an innocent and ardent soul. Bossuet's controversial writings opened new vistas of thought. ** Favorable as they were to the cause they defended, they sometimes stated the arguments against it, and thus set me to weighing my belief." This was Manon's first hesitat- ing step into the dark intricate maze of religious doubt. Meanwhile the letters of Madame de Sevigne fixed her taste and a store of works on mythology awakened her imagination. Occasionally the pleasant monotony of her seclusion was broken by a cere- monious visit, with its irksome preparations, hair- dressing, and an elaborate toilette. A morning call on Madame de Boismorel, the rich connection of 44 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Grandmamma Phlipon, is at once so vivid a genre picture, and has been so often quoted as determining the nature of Madame Roland's political opinions that it merits citation, Madame de Boismorel's singularities had been some- times the subject of "bonne-maman's" animated talks. This lady, whose children had been educated by Ma- dame Phlipon, was in reality only a rich bourgeoises but she possessed the manners and habits of the noble society in which she moved. She received her con- fessor, and other less ascetic male visitors in bed and during her morning toilette, and showed no more hesi- tation in changing her chemise before them than did Madame du Chatelet in bidding a footman add hot water to the tub in which she was bathing. On one occasion when grandmamma begged Madame de Bois- morel to control her extravagance for her children's sake, she coolly replied that they were but "secondary considerations." These revelations afforded material for reflection to the admirer of Plutarch's republicans, and naturally led her to make certain comparisons. Documents are apt to dispel the theory that polished manners and stately courtesies were essentially at- tributes of the aristocracy, nor were they as diffused as the artists who have preserved only the externals of a society which had refined the forms of politeness into a delicate art, unwittingly persuade us. An in- stance of the insolence with which even a noble of liberal opinions, and the comrade-in-arms and admirer of American republicans, addressed a bourgeois minister of state, is afforded by a recently published letter of Lafayette's. In it he apologized ( .'' ) for the rudeness AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 45 of his aide-de-camp to one of Roland's clerks, and the original offense is crushed into insignificance by the intolerable haughtiness of the excuse. The same caste feeling was more genially exhibited by Mirabeau, who, on reaching home after the memorable night of the 4th of August, when the nobility renounced titles and privileges, seized his sleepy varlet by the ear and shouted: " Tu sais, drole, pour toi je suis toujours Mon- sieur le Marquis."" The wealthy roturiers whose golden keys unlocked the portals of the patriciate found this tone of impertinent condescension only too easy to acquire, and Madame de Boismorel represents a type of which playwright and noveHst have made effective use. *'We arrived," writes Madame Roland, **at the Rue Saint Louis, in the Marais, about noon. As we entered the house, all the servants, beginning with the porter, saluted Madame Phlipon with respect and affection, and she answered cordially and with dignity. So far so good. But then her little grand- daughter was noticed, pointed out, and complimented. I began to feel a kind of uneasiness, difficult to explain, but I felt that servants might look at me, but that it was not proper for them to pay me compliments. We go on, a tall lackey calls out our names, and we enter a salon where Madame de Boismorel is gravely work- ing on some tapestry, seated, with her lap-dog beside her, on what was called then not an ottoman but a canape. Madame de Boismorel was about the age, height, and figure of my grandmamma, but her dress showed less good taste than a desire to advertise her wealth and social position, and her face, far from ex- 46 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND pressing a desire to please, plainly demanded con- sideration and expressed her consciousness of deserv- ing it. A bit of rich lace puckered into the shape of a small cap with broad wings, pointed at the ends like a hare's ears, perched on her head, showing hair that possibly was false, arranged with the coquettish sever- ity becoming her sixty-odd years; double layers of rouge lent to her expressionless eyes a boldness that was more than sufficient to make me lower mine. "*Ah, good morning. Mademoiselle Rotisset,' Ma- dame de Boismorel called out in a loud, hard voice as she rose to meet us. (Mademoiselle ! What, my grandmother is Mademoiselle in this house !) * Really, I am very glad to see you. And this fine child, your grandchild, of course ? She promises well. Come here, sweetheart, and sit down beside me. She is timid. How old is she, your grandchild. Mademoiselle Rotis- set ? She is rather dark, but her skin is fine; it will clear soon. She has a good figure. You ought to have a lucky hand, my little friend. Have you ever bought a lottery-ticket ?' "'Never, madame; I do not like games of chance.' "*I believe you — at your age one fancies that one has a sure game. What a voice, sweet and full, but how grave she is ! Are you not rather pious ?' "*I know my duties, and I try to perform them.' "'Good, good; you wish to become a nun, do you not?' "'I do not know my future, so I do not try to settle it!' "'How sententious she is; your granddaughter is fond of reading. Mademoiselle Rotisset V AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 47 "*It is her greatest pleasure. She spends half the day in reading.' " *0h, I can see that. Take care she does not become a bluestocking, that would be a pity!' "The conversation then turned upon the family and friends of the mistress of the house. My grandmother asked for news of the uncle and the cousin, the daughter- in-law and the friend, for Abbe Langlois, the Marquise de Levi, Councillor Brion, and Monsieur Parent, the cure. They talked of the health of all these people, their pedigrees and their eccentricities — for example, of Madame Roude, who, in spite of her great age, was proud of her neck, and always exposed it except when she got in and out of her carriage; then she covered it with a large handkerchief which she always carried in her pocket for these emergencies, because, as she observed, 'such things were not made to be shown to lackeys.' "During this dialogue, Madame de Boismorel took a few stitches in her work, petted her little dog, and often stared at me. I took care not to meet her eyes, because I disliked them; but I looked around at the furniture and the decorations of the apartment, which were more pleasing than the lady. My blood ran faster, I felt my color rise, my heart beat quickly, and my breath came short. I did not ask myself then why my grandmamma did not sit on the sofa, or why Ma- dame de Boismorel always called her 'Mademoiselle Rotisset,' but I had the feeling that leads to such ques- tions, and I looked upon the end of the visit as a re- prieve from punishment. " *Ah, by the way, do not forget to buy me a lottery- 48 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ticket, and have your granddaughter choose the num- ber, do you hear. Mademoiselle Rotisset ? I want it from her hand. Kiss me, and you, my little sweet- heart; don't cast down your eyes so much. They are good to look at, those eyes, and no confessor will for- bid you to open them. Ah, Mademoiselle Rotisset ! You will have many bows, I promise you, and that before long. Good day, ladies!' And Madame de Boismorel rang her bell, ordered Lafleur to call in two days' time at Mademoiselle Rotisset's for the lottery- ticket she was to send her, quieted her barking dog, and was already back on her sofa before we had fairly left the room." Madame de Boismorel's compliments were no more grateful to Manon than those of her servants, and the intelligent and gently bred child shrank instinc- tively from what she felt to be the coarse flattery and insolent patronage of this would-be fine lady, who called her dignified grandmamma "Mademoiselle," and treated a reserved and rather priggish person of twelve as though she were another lap-dog. Some writers — Taine, for instance — have given great importance to this visit, gravely quoting it as a proof of the future Girondine's envy of the aristocracy, of its fine manners and many privileges, forgetting that Madame de Bois- morel was a connection of her critic's and a bourgeoise, not a noble. This pretentious and vulgar woman had a delicate- minded and considerate son, who soon came to return Madame Phlipon's visit. His deferential affection for her, the tactful manner in which he recalled his rela- tionship and his obligations to his former governess, AUSTERITY AND FRIVOLITY 49 would have contented the most exacting of grand- daughters, while his wide reading and philosophical views, disapproved of by his mother and sister, and by their frivolous and bigoted circle of friends and parasites, awakened Manon's respect and interest. In time he became as warm a friend as a married man, moving in another social circle, could be to a lonely girl with whom he had many intellectual sympathies. CHAPTER IV RELIGIOUS DOUBTS Meantime Manon's year of probation had worn to its close (May, 1767), To return to her home on the busy Quai de I'Horloge after the sleepy quiet of the He Saint Louis, was like re-entering the world. The Pont Neuf and its adjoining quais were in the eighteenth century one of the whirling centres of Pari- sian activity. They were originally the goldsmith's quarter, even before King Henry IV filled up the west- ern end of the island, which now cuts sharply into the river like the prow of a galley, and built the fine lines of houses of which only two remain unspoiled by re- construction. They recall, in their peaked roofs and pleasant autumnal coloring of warm-toned red brick and russet stone, their contemporary, the historic square of the Place Roy ale. It was in the second of these two houses which have fortunately remained almost unaltered, the one at the corner of the Place Dauphine and the Quai de I'Horloge that Gatien Phlipon set up his shop and his household gods. His ambitions had grown since his daughter's birth in the sad little Rue de la Lanterne. The returns from his own art, engraving, were too slow for a vain man who was fond of fine things; and enamelling, in which he was an expert, had slightly injured his eyes. Selling jewelry on commission and trading in diamonds was an easier and faster way to luxurious living, and no so RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 51 artistic objections to commerce trammelled him. Nat- urally location on the Pont Neuf bettered his chances for business. There truly were possible customers of all kinds. All Paris crossed the bridge, lounged on the quais, and strolled in the Place Dauphine. For two centuries, from Chicot's time to Beaumarchais's day, the Pont Neuf had been a try sting-place for Pari- sians. Amid the press of painted coaches and gilded sedan- chairs the files of donkeys laden with green stuff, the cavaliers who pushed their way through a yielding but expostulating crowd, the heavy drays loaded with wine or oil or wheat, the mountebanks set up plat- forms where they juggled and danced in the midst of the vortex. Here a charlatan was selling an elixir; there an ambulant dentist was pulling a tooth. A powdered fop, seeking a jewelled frame for a beauty's miniature, was jostled by a barefooted friar on his way to Notre Dame. The painted lady of quality rubbed elbows with the high-rouged woman of pleasure, and the gold-laced lackey, hurrying by with a billet- doux, pushed aside the trim housewife on her way to market. A populous place indeed was the neigh- borhood of the Pont Neuf, if we may trust garrulous Mercier and the old engravings. The noise and bustle must have reached the second story of the house on the Quai de I'Horloge (now No. 41). A plan of the PhHpons' apartment was made by the architect Duflocq for Dauban after tracing the original walls and partitions under the changes of the last hundred and fifty years. It is a fairly typical bourgeois domicile, consisting of a kitchen, a large 52 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND bedroom, a studio containing the engraver's etabliy working-materials, and many pieces of sculpture, and a pleasant room, neatly furnished, decorated with mirrors and several pictures, which to-day would be called a salon, and which modest Madame Phlipon termed a salle. In one corner of this salon a cabinet or a niche had been made by partitioning off the ob- long space between the large chimneypiece and the house wall that fronted the Quai de I'Horloge. This tiny cell was lighted by a small window now walled up, probably directly under the commemorative in- scription which tells the passer-by that Madame Roland Nee a Paris Le i8 Mars 1754 Fut elevee dans cette maison. The cabinet, or as an English contemporary would have called it, the closet, was just large enough to contain a bed, a chair, a writing-table, and some book- shelves. Eighteenth-century folk cherished these re- treats, cosey refuges from the cold and noise and publicity of large and lofty rooms. The tendency to build a snug nest in the midst of surrounding spaciousness grew constantly with the advance of comfort from Madame de Maintenon's portable niche of crimson brocade wherein she "tented out" in the frigid splendor of Versailles to the exquisite petit-s appartements of Marie Antoinette. In a less humble home than the Phlipons' the closet would have been a boudoir with its elegant couch, its inlaid embroidery- 1 RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 53 frame, and writing-desk; engravings and miniatures on the walls, porcelains and enamels on the shelves, a harp in the corner, and a lap-dog on a cushion. But Manon's closet was as simple as a nun's except for the guitar on the bed and the flowers that for three seasons of the year bloomed on the window-ledge. Beyond the embowered casement lay the long silvery lines of the quays, the shining reaches of the river, the tender, dove-tinted sky of Paris, and the serene sense of space and air. Manon was truly "a child of the Seine." She had now exchanged the monastic quiet of Saint Louis's isle, her walks with Xante Angelique along its borders, for a magnificent spectacle from her northern window. At the close of a fair day her eyes embraced the vast curve of the celestial vault from the cool, bluish eastern sky far beyond the Pont au Change to the fires of the western heavens flaming behind the dark trees of the Cours la Reine, and outlining in blackest silhouette the peaked roofs and towering chimneys of the village of Chaillot. Here often, after an afternoon of writing or study, Manon leaned out to enjoy the enchanted hour of sunset; the noblest passages in her letters were written in its rosy glamour. Something of her sanity, her health of spirit and body, her deep love of nature, was owing to this constant contemplation of larger horizons than are accorded to most town- dwellers. Her early writings, long before she had read Rousseau, prove how sensitive were eye and heart to the beauties of sky and river, to changing lights and delicate gradations of color. Is it fantastic to believe that if, instead of a "magic casement opening on the 54 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND foam/' Manon's only window had admitted the dim light of a courtyard or the echoing clamor of a dusky, narrow street, she would have lacked something of her high enthusiasm and serene poise ? Her books would have been all to her, nature and beauty less vital and significant. A volume, a theory of life, a system of philosophy, a creed seem small things, variable, un- substantial, read under the great plain of the sky, or beside the perpetual movement of a mighty stream. Manon was as fortunate in the possession of privacy as she was in the view from her window, for bourgeois life was generally huddled and gregarious. A single living-room, a single fire, and often a single light was the rule. The chimney-place was truly the domestic altar of the French household. President Grosley recalled how his father, when the cold drove him out of his own cabinet, continued his studies in jurispru- dence by the kitchen-fire, undisturbed by the yells of a pack of noisy children and the gabble of servants and nurses. Around the hearth of Marmontel's father were gathered his great-grandparents, a grandmother, three grandaunts, and a sister of the house-mother, as well as six children. Filial piety has seldom found fuller opportunity for exercise. The Phlipons and Besnards, however, were well-to-do folk, who pre- ferred living apart to crowding together under one roof-tree; so Manon's closet, filled with books and flowers, was her own kingdom. Here she spent most of her time reading, writing, and studying. " Cella continuata dulcescit" to the student as well as to the monk. "The mornings slip away somehow in reading and working. After dinner I go into my little study, RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 55 overlooking the Seine; I take a pen, dream, think, and write." "My violin, my guitar, and my pen are three parts of my life," she wrote Sophie Cannet, who soon after Manon left the convent returned to Amiens. Letters to Sophie filled a third part of Manon's existence, one thinks in turning the pages of a long correspondence in which her girlhood is reflected like a spring landscape in a still lake. " Un ami est un second logis pour Vdmey^ Manon believed, and her fancies and thoughts constantly winged their way to this other nesting-place. For many years Manon found in Sophie a mother-confessor. "I am a woman, noth- ing human is alien to me," might have been the de- vice of this sympathetic recipient of varied con- fidences. Manon's letters were infinitely precious to her less expansive friend. The tiniest note was cherished like a relic. Few love-letters have been so reverently preserved. Marriage ended these effusions, and poor Friendship, shouldered aside by Love, and finally turned out-of-doors by Hymen, became mute. Roland disapproved of intimate relations between his wife and other women — he was a jealous god, and discouraged goddess-worship. "He was wrong," wrote Madame Roland, many years later. "Marriage is grave and solemn; if you take away from an affec- tionate woman the sweets of friendship with persons of her own sex, you deprive her heart of a necessary aliment, and you expose her to danger." These letters, given by Sophie's eldest son, the Chevalier de Gomiecourt, to Auguste Breuil, and pub- lished in 1 841, furnish a valuable commentary to the first part of the private Memoirs. They provide the 56 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND "deadly parallel column" by which accuracy, if not veracity, may be tested. They present in a series of delicate vignettes the story of a girl's life in the Paris of Voltaire and Necker, of Crebillon fils and Lavoisier. They form a study of the efflorescence of what Hugo called **a soul of purple fire," and the expansion of a mind so penetrating and so active that it invests every object presented to it with a kind of luminous clearness and relief. Thoughts, emotions, experiences, are noted and analyzed, as they rise in mind or heart, or enter from without with the happenings of daily life. The irruption of novel ideas, the modifications of accepted theories, the flowering of sentiment are seized in their inception, captured on the wing, and sent like a votive offering of young doves to Sophie. For though the letters form a journal of the inner life of a girl from the age of sixteen to twenty-five, they are also acts of devotion to a friendship that is marvellously akin to love. The pages glow with loving terms: "/^ vais quitter la plume mais non ta chere image"; "Regois ce baiser defeu"; and (surely fresh from some old Latin's love-poem) "Adieu, divine, aie soin de toi pour nous." Intelligence is companioned by affection. Tenderness underlies the description of Systemes, accompanies a summary of Delolme's History of England, a criticism of Pope's optimism, or a lesson in physical geography. Every object the young enthusiast touches glows lambently, made living by the warmth of an imagina- tion as brilliant as it is healthy. All Manon's acquisitions are instantly shared with her friend. A description of every day's work and play is faithfully rendered "to my queen, to whom I RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 57 must account for what is hers." A narrative of the events of the outer, as well as the reflections and ex- periences of the inner, life is set down that the friend in Amiens may have her part in Manon's daily exist- ence. Few lovers have been so assiduous — none so copious. Nor does the abundance of the material les- sen the vivacity of its manner. ^' Elle etait nee scribe ^^ pronounced Michelet. Her letters possess a quality which it is difficult to express; perhaps because in them the defects of the witty, artificial century find no place. These reflections and descriptions are free from the frivolity and the spiritual dryness that were per- haps the inevitable accompaniments of overrefinement and the spread of a positive philosophy. There is a delicate enjoyment, like breathing sweet air or tast- ing pure, cool water, in the perusal of these chronicles of an outwardly simple life. The good humor of per- fect health, the contentment born of simple habits and temperate pleasures, soften even the "violent delights" of new discoveries in books and humanity. The tranquillity of a studious existence, unfretted by material cares, and free from social obligations, rises like a faint fragrance from these records. The seclusion of the girl's life and her lack of social dissipation enabled her to give not only her time to study and reflection but her young vitality as well. It was her habit to read and write not only the greater part of the day but half the night. There was a certain quench- less force in her that seemed inexhaustible, a youthful elasticity that remained with her always, that lent her an "air of freshness and adolescence" even in her prime, and that grief and anxiety could not subdue. 58 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND *' J'etMdie parce que j'ai hesoin d^Hudier comme de man' gery Study is her hygiene of the soul. It was material for thought that she sought, ob- jects to occupy an active intellect and a vivid imag- ination, not a. collection of antiquities, nor a set of showy acquirements for her mental furniture; as matter for reflection was her quest, she read, she did not "read up." Notes were taken, abstracts and extracts made of her daily reading, and the essence of it sent to Sophie, who, poor dear, had no time for books, as her empty hours were passed at cards, at routs, and in conferences with her dressmaker. The social life of a small but gay town left her no leisure for study, and Manon's letters were thus doubly dear to her. For some time the girls were one in thought, then the inevitable occurred, where one friend reads, ex- amines, and reflects, and the other does not. Through study and inquiry, Manon, the impassioned mystic, was growing into a reasonable and intelligent young woman. Not long after she left the convent she heard the whispers of religious doubt, and felt the necessity of rationalizing her faith (1772). The first dogma of her creed to which her heart as well as her reason refused assent was, of course, the damnation of all those who had not known or accepted it. Disbelief in infallibility followed the rejection of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. She was evidently deceived, or misunderstood some articles of her religion; it was therefore a duty to examine them all. "From the moment a Catholic has arrived at this point the Church may regard him as lost. What then remains that is true .^" Manon asked herself, and her reading, RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 59 which had been miscellaneous for several years, was directed to an active and anxious search after truth. Hitherto her attention had been drawn to many sub- jects. She had fed on the books in the library of her uncle's vicar, where she was left to browse on Sundays and feast-days while her mother and Mademoiselle d'Hannaches played backgammon with the two priests. There was provender for the devout; the works of the Fathers of the Church, and the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, Bossuet's Universal History, and the Letters of Saint Jerome. In the thick of the cowls shone the helmet of Mambrino, and Manon found the dear knight of La Mancha wedged between Jesuit scholars and holy hermits. The vicar's books devoured, Manon went to the lending libraries for fresh forage. There she found fare for all palates. She chose first translations of the historians of antiquity, followed them with Mon- tesquieu, Locke, and Burlamaqui, and continued rather frivolously with French plays. She had no plans for consecutive reading. She wished to know for the sake of knowledge, and to exercise a keen and active intel- ligence. She desired happiness like all healthy young creatures, and she sought it in the full development of her faculties. 'T know nothing comparable to the fulness of life, of peace, of contentment, of this happy time of innocence and study," she wrote many years afterwards. To breathe the air of Paris, electrical with intel- ligence, pollent with ideas; to love study, to possess books and leisure, to be in life's morning, free from cares and insistent duties; with the memory a fair 6o MANON PHLIPON ROLAND tablet, the brain unwearied, the mind not yet a palimp- sest of accumulated thoughts; while the bitter fruits of the Tree are still the golden apples of the Hesperides is surely to know pure delight. How could Manon escape happiness ? Desultory reading now converged towards a focal point. How much of that faith which had been at once a rule of life and her highest source of happiness would remain to her after such research and examina- tion as were in her power to give to it ^. It was with an unquiet mind and a heavy heart that the girl began the old torturing quest, "Given self, to find God." Manon was no smug, priggish doubter. Her affec- tions and her memories were intertwined with the forms and objects of her religion. To renounce it was to go out naked and alone into a dark, desolate place. Much of the poetry of her outwardly narrow life she owed to the ceremonies, the color and music and emo- tion made visible, of an elaborate ritual. She clung to the dear familiar forms as the newly made Chris- tian might to the beautiful household gods and the genial observances of pagan worship. And yet that persistent voice of reason would make itself heard, questioning and comparing, above the Latin prayers and the solemn chants. Manon carried her doubts to her confessor, who immediately equipped her with the works of the de- fenders of her wavering faith. She read, marked, and annotated these authorities. She made marginal com- ments in the books themselves which astonished her confessor, and which may still be read by the curious in such matters. She found the justification of her RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 6i incredulity and the replies to her queries in the perusal of these controversial works, however, for they sup- plied her with the titles of the books they endeavored to refute. Resolved to subject all the articles of her creed to the test of reason, Manon obtained the pro- hibited volumes. They offered the touchstone she Sought. Thus D'Holbach's Bon Sens, Maupertuis's Systeme de la Nature, Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs and Dictionnaire Philosophique. D'Argen's Lettres Juives, the De I'Esprit of Helvetius, the works of Di- derot, D'Alembert, and the Abbe Raynal were read, criticised, and analyzed. In her cell at Sainte Pelagie, long afterwards, Ma- dame Roland compressed into a few sentences the essence of several years of meditation and study, *'In the midst of doubts, uncertainties, and inquiries rela- tive to these great subjects, I concluded, without hesi- tation, that the unity of the individual, if I may thus express myself, the most complete harmony, that is to say, between his opinions and actions, was neces- sary to his personal happiness. Accordingly, we must examine carefully what is right, and when we have found it, practise it rigorously. There is a kind of justice to be observed to oneself even if one lived alone in the world. One should govern all his feelings and habits in order not to be enslaved by any one of them. A being is good in itself when all its parts concur to its preservation, its maintenance, or its perfection; this is not less true in the moral than in the physical world. A well-balanced organization, an equilibrium of humors constitute health; wholesome food and 62 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND moderate exercise preserve it. The concord of our desires and the harmony of the passions form the moral constitution of which wisdom alone can secure the excellence and duration. These first principles are based on self-interest, and in this respect it may be truly said that virtue is only soundness of judgment applied to morals. But virtue, properly so called, is born from the relations of a being with his fellow beings; justice to ourselves is wisdom; justice to others is virtue. **In society all is relative; there is no independent happiness. We are obliged to sacrifice a part of what we might enjoy in order not to lose the whole, and to secure a portion against all attacks. Even here the balance is in favor of reason. However laborious may be the life of the honest, that of the vicious is more so. He who puts himself in opposition to the interests of the greatest number is seldom at peace. It is impos- sible for him to hide from himself that he is surrounded by enemies, or by those who are ready to become so, and such a situation is always painful, however splen- did it may appear. Add to these considerations the sublime instinct [of rectitude] which corruption may lead astray, but which no false philosophy can ever annihilate, which impels us to admire and love wisdom and generous actions as we do grandeur and beauty in nature and the arts — and we shall have the source of human virtue, independent of every religious sys- tem, of the mazes of metaphysics, and the impostures of priests. . . . The beautiful idea of a Divine Creator, whose providence watches over the world; the spir- itual nature of the soul, and, lastly, its immortality. 1 RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 63 that consolation of persecuted and suffering virtue — are these nothing more than lovely and splendid il- lusions ? Yet what clouds envelop these difficult prob- lems ! What multiplied objections rise if we try to treat them with mathematical exactness ! But no, the human mind is not fitted ever to see them in the light of perfected evidence. What does it matter to the sensitive soul that it cannot prove them ? Is it not enough for it to feel them. . . . The atheist is not, in my eyes, a man of bad faith; I can live with him as well as — even better than — with the devotee, for he reasons more, but he is deficient in a certain sense. . . . He is cold before a ravishingly beauti- ful spectacle, and he hunts for a syllogism where I offer a thankgiving." Investigation, then, though it dispelled the super- stitions of the girl's religion, left its spirit and its pure and tender personal ideal untouched. Tomes of de- structive criticism only enlarged Manon's elevated conceptions of God and of duty. She was still in the age of faith compared to the modern seeker after things divine, for only duty remained to George Eliot, as she sorrowfully confessed to Frederick Myers. Manon, convinced of the reality of these fundamental beliefs, with her moral code firmly established on a rational basis, kept her scepticism to herself and her director. She daily attended mass with her mother, "for the edification of her neighbor," and she confessed to the priest to whom she had confided her loss of faith. She conformed outwardly, Hke a patriotic old pagan, who identified the practice of his national religion with his loyalty to his country. To have done other- 64 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND wise would have deeply shocked and grieved her parents and scandalized her friends. Manon was no "come- outer," no Protestant. If the spiritual must be ma- terialized for the mass of mankind, there were no grander or lovelier forms than those of her own church. As with Manon freer thinking implied in its increased sense of individual responsibility strict rules of living, perhaps her religious life was even more intense than in her convent days. She held that those who cast aside conventional religious restraints were committed to the severest self-control in conduct lest it be sus- pected that they sought freedom of thought for license in behavior. " Une dme droite portee au scepticisme se sent obligee a une vertu exacte et severe. Sans la pratique de la plus grande justice^ elle craindroit de n avoir secoue le joug que par un desir coupahle de se livrer a ses penchants^ sans gene. Faire supple er les ceuvres a la foi, me par ait le seul moyen d'eviter les remords." (June 9, 1776.) The strictness of her moral code never relaxed. She dis- covered early in her researches that righteous living is not dependent on orthodox opinions of the nature of the Trinity. There was another reason for her outward conform- ity, a powerful one with a proud and sensitive girl. The ewe-lamb who deserted the fold was generally classed with the goats by a cynical public, whose judg- ment was often confirmed by the caprioles of the emancipated lamb. Naturally enough when an ethical code rests on a basis of theological teaching, it loses its authority when its foundation crumbles. "La religion est notre etiquette de sages se.'* "Religion is our RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 65 label of virtue" in the eyes of the world, Manon thought, and the wise virgin was careful to keep her certificate of merit in evidence. Manon's scepticism, then, was a secret to every one except her director until she received a letter from Sophie confessing that her own faith was troubled. The tone of the age affected the most devout as climate affects the most robust. Manon, deeply touched and somewhat reproached by this confidence, so much greater than her own had been, opened her heart and mind at once to her friend. Her doubts and criticisms, inquiries and convictions, were described to Sophie. Manon's letters were always placed on her mother's work-table, that she might look them over before they were posted; she must therefore have known of her daughter's increasing unbelief. The discreet parent never mentioned the subject, however. Manon's reti- cence may have been an inheritance, or reading the letters may have bored Madame Phlipon. She com- bated Sophie's opinions, and was sometimes a little unreasonable in her censures of her friend's indepen- dence of spirit and lack of deference for authority. Still, this controversial correspondence (for Sophie's letters may be inferred from Manon's replies to them) denotes a high degree of intellectual and social culture and an amiable openness of mind hard to parallel in most religious discussions. Each girl is sincere, even impassioned, and desirous of convincing her friend, and yet their mutual affection remains undiminished by their radical differences. ^' Au milieu de tout cela il est hien doux de pouvoir se dire impunementy je ne pense pas comme toi, mais je ne t'en aime pas moins.^' 66 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND These letters contain Manon's profession of faith. When a few weeks before her death, in the soHtude of her cell, she wrote the credo of her riper years, it was but a summary of her girlish convictions. ** Enlarge your God," Diderot said to his followers, and long before man was emancipated, the idea of deity was freed from the fetters of creed, and also from the limitations of definition. Manon's conception of the Supreme Being pales and brightens with her studies and meditations. "It is only credulity that is always the same, because it no longer reasons on subjects that it has once decided to accept," she ex- plains, to justify her mutations. Sometimes hers was the God that Voltaire discovered at the end of a chain of argument, that moral necessity that should be in- vented if it did not already exist. Then the rather detached "Father of All" of Pope's "Universal Prayer" received her homage. Rousseau's JEltre Supremey who had inherited something of the tenderness of the Good Shepherd of her childhood's orisons, won her allegiance. For though justice seems to Manon the most godlike of attributes, it is the thought of the Divine Love that appeals irresistibly to her. On one page she assures Sophie that the existence of God is self-evident; the order and harmony of the universe bear witness to the operation of a Supreme Intelligence. A little later she confesses: "I believe a Being necessary, but I do not know what He is, and I do not try to define Him. It is impossible for men to have exact ideas. I refuse the definitions that are given me because they seem contradictory to me. We do not know enough about the essence of things to RELIGIOUS DOUBTS dy assign to matter all the properties which it is or is not susceptible of possessing. Spiritual substance seems to me either a confused assemblage of negations or only vague, undetermined notions. I know nothing about it and I do not complain; it is the destiny of my nature, which was not made to reason about things that I cannot understand. The science of living is the only one that is within my power, and it is in- dependent of chimerical speculations; examination of them has left me unaffected. "What an inconceivable being we have made of the Divinity ! Men have lent God their passions, and judge Him by themselves. Infinite wisdom united to supreme power is necessarily benevolent, it per- fects or it annihilates." It is only in the study that she doubts; when her heart speaks, she loves and prays as in her childhood: "V esprit a heau s^avancery il ne va jamais aussi loin que le cceury "Every time that I walk in quiet meditation with peace in my soul, through a smiling landscape whose every charm I feel, it is a delicious thought that I owe these blessings to a Divine Intelligence. I love and long to believe. It is only in my dusty study, poring over my books, or in the giddy crowds of the world, that sentiment withers away, and reason looms darkly behind clouds of doubt and the poisonous exhalations of unbelief." Beauty to Manon is the sacrament of heaven. Under the dome of the firmament, or in the vast aisles of the forest, she is filled with an ecstasy of joy and gratitude, akin in degree though not in kind to that of the saintly visionary. Leaning out of her lattice into the ineffable glories of the sunset, she wrote: "O Thou, whose exist- 68 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ence my reason almost denies, but whom my heart yearns for, and burns to adore, First Intelligence, Supreme Ordainer, all good and powerful God who I love to believe art the creator of everything that is grateful to me, receive my worship, and if Thou art but an illusion, be Thou mine forever." Was not this longing its own fulfilment ? Her petition was an- swered. The chimere divine remained with her when all her earthly illusions had vanished. '*Just God re- ceive me," she prayed before she went to death as to a triumph. If Manon's conceptions of the inconceivable fluc- tuated, her ideas of duty suffered no change. The humanitarian movement of the age found a vibrating response in her generous mind. Not only to love your neighbor but to serve him was the new gospel. Not new either, but a beautiful old one with a novel mo- tive power. To a Latin, society and the individuates relations to it were of primary importance. The stoics ceased to influence Manon because she could not follow counsels of perfection that isolated the individual and suppressed the aff'ections. "My passion, or my present illusion, if one may call it so, has for its object the gen- eral good. The vocation of man is sociability, his first duty is to be useful. In my eyes the chief and finest of virtues consists in the love of the public good, in that of the unfortunate, and in the wish to help them." Manon's benevolence was not limited to a mere wish to aid the unfortunate. She found ample exercise for beneficence near at hand, and her charities were her only extravagance. / There was always some one RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 69 who needed her money more than she did, and her dress allowance generally clothed somebody else (January 13, 1776); poverty irked her only when it restricted her generosity. Occasionally she appealed to Sophie for help, which was always bountifully be- stowed. Two of her proteges were always with her. One was *'le gentilhomme malheureux," a M. de Chalms, an impoverished nobleman and his wife. These people, who were as accomplished as they were unfortunate, desired to open a school, and Manon borrowed of Sophie the money which they were obliged to deposit before doing so. A year or so afterwards, knowing that they were still embarrassed, Manon repaid it herself. ''La Petite Leveilly" the daughter of a boon companion of M. Phlipon, was cared for by Manon for several years. {Vide the Cannet Letters from October 31, I775> to May 29, 1778.) ''She is a poor little creature, very unhappy, whose lot is to weep and to work," Her father was idle and dissipated, and her guardian, a man of some position, offered to buy his daughter of him. Manon rescued the girl, who was hardly more than a child, and found her lodgings, clothes, and work. La Petite, who painted fans, could by toiling from five o'clock in the morning until midnight earn enough to keep alive. Manon, who mothered her, petted her occasionally, took her to the Luxemburg gardens, to church, and to visit her friends. She was so tender of the Petite's self-respect that she learned fan-painting of her that the child might not feel that the obliga- tion was all on one side. Manon objected to M. Phlipon's inviting her to the family dinner on New 70 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Year's day, because it seemed like advertising her own beneficence, "like exhibiting her in my livery." "Send her a message; she is as sensitive as we are," Manon wrote Sophie, who had given her money for the Petitis necessities. While always guarding the girl's dignity, Manon ventured to advise and warn her. "She has sworn to me, many times, with her hands in mine, that she will always be faithful to virtue . . . and if she should cease to be virtuous, I shall admire her for having long remained so." Doubting Manon encouraged her protegee's pious practices, for the sceptic was convinced "of the sweet- ness and strength of religious ideas to charm away the evils of life, while philosophy only lays upon us the yoke of inevitable necessity." (April 25, 1778.) The poor little Leveilly was in need of all the conso- lation her faith could bestow. She was dogged by misfortune. Her good-for-nothing father shared her tiny earnings, ill-treated her when she refused to help him, and prevented her from taking the situations that Manon and Sister Agathe found for her. Work failed, and in her absence the lock of her chamber door was forced and her small possessions stolen. The lot of une petite ouvriere en chamhre was as hard in the eighteenth century as it is in the twentieth, and after Manon left Paris the girl lost heart; she had no one to protect her against her father and her guardian. Manon finally was obliged to limit her admiration to the poor girl's past as she had promised herself she should do if it became impossible to esteem her present. Among the last words that Madame Roland RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 71 wrote before her execution were a few brief lines of regret for her lost Petite. Desire of service, a new form of self-dedication to an ideal of sacrifice, had heightened Manon's interest in public affairs and widened her mental horizon. Even her benevolence was generalized: "Although the obscurity of my birth, name, and position seem to preclude me from taking any interest in the govern- ment, yet I feel that the common weal touches me in spite of it. My country is something to me, and the love I bear it is most unquestionable. How could it be otherwise, since nothing in the world is indifferent to me .? I am something of a cosmopolitan, and a love of humanity unites me to everything that breathes. A Carib interests me; the fate of a KafEr goes to my heart. Alexander wished for more worlds to conquer. I could wish for others to love." This latitude of mind proved as consoling as it was stimulating, and minimized the increasing personal privations of Manon's life. "I heard this evening of the resignation of M. Turgot. It vexed and stunned me. One of his financial measures has acted hurt- fully on my father's affairs, and therefore on mine also. But it is not by private interests that I judge him." (May 17, 1776.) Fine sentiments are surely of practical utility when they reconcile the taxpayer to a flattened purse. Let the egotist complain of his curtailed income ! Is there not solace for the larger- hearted, broader-minded in the thought: *'Quand on nest pas habitue a identifier son interet et sa gloire avec le Men et la splendeur du ghieral, on va toujours petite- ment, se recherchant soi-meme^ et perdant le but auquel on doit tendre " ? 72 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Not very novel to-day this view of public affairs, which is stuff of the conscience to many of us, but it is owing to the innovators of the Revolution that such ideas have now become usual, almost commonplace. It was this conviction that drove famished recruits against the veteran armies of Europe, and sent the Republic's ideals with her victories- on their triumphal march over the continent. Manon's preoccupation with general ideas did not crowd out a lively interest in herself, an interest that might have grown morbid if her intellectual curiosity had not been exercised on many objects. Le moi in- terieuTy though kept under close observation, was only one of her subjects of thought. It is rather surprising to discover in the notes of this little Parisienne, so long before Goethe, sentences like these: "The knowledge of ourselves is no doubt the most useful of the sciences. Everything tends to turn towards that object the desire to know which is born in us, a desire we try to satisfy by acquainting our- selves with the histories of all past nations. This is by no means a useless habit if we know how to avail ourselves of it. My views in reading are already very different from those I entertained a few years ago; for I am less anxious to know facts than men; in the history of nations and empires I look for the human heart, and I think that I discover it too. Man is the epitome of the universe; the revolutions in the world without are an image of those which take place in his own soul." The soul ! That was the only element possessed of absolute and ultimate value in the whole universe. RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 73 Manon, like poor Malvolio, thought ''nobly of the soul." It stood for personality, for character, for con- science, and was identical with free will. Self-com- mand and self-study purified and strengthened it. "Let us endeavor to know ourselves; let us not be that factitious thing which can only exist by the help of others. Soyons nous!" Manon wrote, the social in- stinct momentarily in abeyance to the need of self- expression. But a mind developed by study, ripened by reflection, does not manifest itself in pure self- assertion. Manon's aim was not to express her per- sonality but to understand it. Her endeavor was to render her ego intelligible to herself, not audible to others. Spiritual as well as mental cultivation was in- cluded in her scheme of living. "She was prodigiously industrious in the economy of her life," said her ear- liest biographer, Dauban, and no one has said better. Naturally avid of admiration, her habitual self- scrutiny preserved her from the form of vanity pecuHar to her sex. A woman without a positive sense of value sets no store by herself per se. She tries to acquire worth in others' estimation by exciting their admira- tion, or at least attracting their attention. Self-respect is based on the consciousness of an innate sense of value, on the constancy and freedom of the character and the will — in a word, the personality. Self-respect, therefore, cannot be acquired through the considera- tion of others, no matter how admiring or worshipful their attitude may be. Women in the eighteenth cen- tury were generally not only in functional dependence on men, but were often moral parasites with no vigorous structural existence of their own. Manon, by sheer 74 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND force of character and mental industry, unconsciously achieved a spiritual independence inestimably precious when she became the cynosure of a group of eloquent and brilliant young men. CHAPTER V FIRST SUITORS Meanwhile Manon had, instinctively following Lady Montagu's advice to studious ladies, concealed her acquirements as though they had been deformities. During these years of solitary thought and reading, she was leading the simple, wholesome life of the young girls of her class. She shared her parents' gayeties and contributed to them. These were often family festivities, birthdays and anniversaries where chil- dren were expected to entertain their elders. A sur- prise was always counted on at these parties. Some- times it was a copy of congratulatory verses, written out laboriously in the young poet's best calligraphy, or a comphment neatly engraved, and bordered with billing doves and beribboned wreaths. Occasionally Flora or Pomona in an eclectic classic costume would present flowers, or offer fruit to the company. Fre- quently there was more ambitious mumming, and a quartet of shepherds and shepherdesses of the Dres- den-china variety would make music, for every young person played at least one instrument "indifferent well," or a rustic ballet was danced by unnaturally tidy peasants who were apt to lose their wooden shoes. All France loved acting and masking. Opportunities were not lacking even among shopkeepers for the dis- play of "talents de societey" and Manon danced and 75 76 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND fiddled, and rhymed and engraved, to her heart's and her parents' content. There were also the public exhibitions of fine and industrial art, and the antiquities and curiosities that Paris has always offered her spoiled children. Holi- days came often, and the Phlipons observed them de- voutly. Public promenades, palace-gardens, and the noble forests that still encircle the city with a royal girdle were visited in turn. "'Where shall we go to- morrow if the weather be fine?' said my father on Saturday evenings in summer, looking at me with a smile. 'Shall we go to Saint Cloud? The fountains are to play; there will be a crowd of people.' "*Ah, papa, I should like it far better if you would go to Meudon.' " So to Meudon they went often — Manon in a simple, fresh muslin gown with a gauze veil and a nosegay for all ornament, and for baggage a poetry book. They embarked at Port Royal in a small boat which landed them on the shores of Belleville, then steep paths and a stiff climb led them to the Avenue of Meudon. The Phlipons strolled in the park, explored the forest, gathered spotted ferns and woodbine, watched the deer, and napped at noon on beds of leaves in the clear- ings. They dined with one of the Swiss foresters, and supped on warm milk in some rustic dairy. One day they made a discovery that charmed Manon and served to illustrate for her the pastoral idyls of her revered ancients. In an unfrequented part of the wood the little party came upon a pretty, snug cottage; two children were playing at the door, "who had none of those signs of poverty so common in the country," FIRST SUITORS 77 Manon noted significantly. Their grandfather was at work in a well-kept kitchen-garden, was a robust and cheerful old man, who reminded the reader of Vir- gil of his rustic on the banks of the Galesus. If she had been familiar with Longus or Tatius, the square potager with its mingling of utile et duke, of vegetables and flowers, its central basin and shady arbor, would have recalled the gardens of Greek romances. The Phlipons dined al fresco under a honeysuckle on fresh eggs, vegetables, and salad, played with the children, chatted with the old man, and promised to return some day for a longer stay. Our true posses- sions are in our minds; Horace was not more content in the ownership of his "little Sabine farm" than Manon with this glimpse of rural life. They were good days, those passed in the forests of Meudon, Montmorenci, or Vincennes. They left bright memo- ries, illuminated pages rich with the gold of sunshine filtering through leaves, the green of deep verdure, and the brilliant flower-tints of gathered blossoms, in Madame Roland's records. The sense that Sainte-Beuve has delicately char- acterized as **/f sentiment du verf^ was instinctive in this town-bred girl. From her childhood, in her holi- day rambles in woods and fields, she had felt the mys- terious allurement of the great earth-mother. It was not alone the relaxation of nervous tension, nor the expansion of the senses, the elation of renewed vision, of mere delight in bodily functions, respiration, for instance, which are Nature's gifts to man when he returns to primitive conditions and lays his head on her breast, that Manon felt in her returns to Nature. 78 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND It was exaltation, a swift tenderness, an upwelling of grateful adoration to the Author of Beaut}^ that dilated the heart of a girl. Alone in the deep glades of the forest while her parents slept, she sought to lighten her spirit, burdened with an excess of emotion, by seeking beyond all this visible loveliness a crea- tive and responsive intelligence to receive her homage. Naturally enough, the public promenades were less pleasing to a young devotee who was fast becoming a philosopher. Those coups de chapeau that Madame de Boismorel had predicted began to appear, accom- panied by glances that even the most modest of maidens could not fail to understand. Admiration and the expression of it is not stinted to pretty girls in Latin countries, and in the Jardin du Roi (now des Plantes), in the gardens of the Arsenal and the Luxembourg, they ran a gauntlet of appraising looks and approv- ing whispers. Sensitive and always desirous of pleas- ing, Manon returned from her walks in a flutter of excitement, but her good sense soon humbled her girlish vanity. Pride, too, that powerful factor in the shaping of her character and career, suggested that the praise of a crowd, composed of individuals who were prob- ably unworthy of regard, should be indifferent to a young person of serious views. In her own room she blushed as deeply for her silly agitation as she had at the flattering murmurs of those strange young men. How inept it was for a reasoning being to waste time in trying to attract the ignorant and frivolous. Those foolish little thrills of vanity, which she had felt under the rather insolent homage of glowing eyes, were un- worthy of one whp \yas called to noble duties and sweet FIRST SUITORS 79 tasks. Curiously enough, the appearance of those coups de chapeau was synchronous with Manon's change of view in regard to her own destiny, her substitute of the domestic for the monastic ideal. Decline of faith in dogma had led (the girl, clear-headed as she was, and devoted to analysis, could hardly explain how) to a secularization of her aspirations. She now in the light of awakened reason dedicated herself anew to a holy estate — that of matrimony. It was indeed holy in Manon's fancy, "all made of faith and service, all adoration, duty, and observance." In her reflections on marriage Manon was so occupied with the obligations of the wife that she overlooked the duties of the wife's husband. He was only a misty figure as yet, but an awesome being girt with awful power, philosophic in his opinions, extremely learned, and very exacting. Nevertheless, Manon fully expected, by diligently cultivating her mind and sub- duing her temper, to become an unfailing source of felicity to this arbitrary lord, who would reward her virtues by giving her dear little children whom she could bring up according to the theories of Locke and Fenelon (she had not yet read Emile), and teach (blissful thought !) all the delightful things she was herself learning. Her mission was to fit herself for this career by diligent study instead of planning pretty gowns and bewitching caps for the subjugation of peripatetic males. Marriage, then, its sacrifices, its abnegations, and its great recompense, maternity, for the loss of liberty, and increase of care, she now decided was her true vocation. The nubile youths of her neighborhood were also 8o MANON PHLIPON ROLAND of her opinion, and a procession of suitors began, as many and varied as that of a princess in Perrault's fairy-tales. An only daughter, the sole heiress of an apparently prosperous engraver and of childless rela- tives with comfortable incomes, was, of course, a de- sirable parti. When the young person added to her expectations an arch, fresh face, all lilies and roses, smiles and dimples, a rounded, graceful figure, and a reputation for wit and cleverness, the levee en masse of the men of her quarter is easily accounted for. Manon experienced no personal elation, and found all this courtship quite the natural order of things. She observed philosophically that ''from the moment that a young girl reaches maturity a swarm of lovers hovers around her like bees about a newly opened flower." Among these bees were two poor grasshoppers: Mig- nard, Manon's violin master, a colossal, bearded Span- iard, whose name contrasted piquantly with his ap- pearance, and Mozon, her dancing teacher. The family butcher, in the splendors of a Sunday toilet, '^hel habit noir et fine dentelle,'' laid his heart and his fifty thousand ecus at her feet. Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief, set up their candidatures, one after another or several at a time. Owing to the gradual infiltration of art through all classes of society, its practitioners were social hybrids. They touched the people with one hand, the aristocracy and the court with the other. Gatien Phlipon's daughter, with a handsome dowry, might, through marriage, enter a higher circle, that of the De Boismorels, for instance, for though an emi- nent scientist, a painter of distinction, a celebrated writer might not have the grandes entrees^ a side-door TERMINAL BUST CALLED PORTRAIT OF MADAME ROLAND Sculptured by Chinard and now in the Edmond Aynard Collection at Lyons FIRST SUITORS 8i was open to them into the great world. But it was not this consideration that influenced Manon in her un- hesitating rejection of tradesmen. She had an ideal, a rather stern and austere ideal for an enthusiastic and affectionate girl. The lover of her choice must be a philosopher. At fourteen she had admired a man of the world; at sixteen a wit; but at eighteen her taste was formed, and she never afterwards wavered from her preference for a philosopher. Commerce Manon would have none of; "it was incompatible with delicate sentiments and elevated ideas." The rich jeweller or cloth-dealer was as small-minded as the petty mercer. In greed and ruse and obsequiousness one equalled the other. M. Phlipon was pained to hear such opinions; he had mildly approved his daughter's prompt rejection of small or poor tradesmen, but a master jeweller with a fine shop and aristocratic customers — pray what would suit her t ''Only a man to whom I can communicate my thoughts, and who shares my feelings," replied the idealist. "And such a man is not to be found among merchants ?" queried the disappointed parent. *^ TeneZy Papa: I have observed too often that suc- cess in trade depends on selling dear what one has bought cheap, by a good deal of lying, and oppression of the poor working man. Never could I countenance such practices, and never could I respect the man who from morning until night devotes his time to them. I wish to be a good wife, and how could I be faithful to a man who had no place in my esteem, even ad- mitting the possibility of my marrying such a one .? To me it seems that selling diamonds and selling pastry 82 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND are very much the same thing, except that the latter has a fixed price, requires less deceit, but soils the hands more. I do not like one better than the other." "Do you believe then that there are no honest people in trade ?" "I will not say that absolutely, but I am persuaded that there are hardly any; and let them be ever so honest, they have not what I require in a husband." ''You are difficult to please. Supposing you do not find your ideal ?" "Then I will die an old maid." "That may be a harder fate than you imagine. Be- sides, you will have time enough to think it over. But remember, ennui will come some day, the crowd will have gone, and you know the fable." "Oh, I will revenge myself on the injustice that denies me happiness by taking pains to deserve it." "Ah ! there you are in the clouds. It may be pleasant to soar to such heights but difficult, I fear, to remain there. Remember, too, that I should like to have grandchildren before I am too old." Poor M. Phlipon ! He was puzzled and annoyed. Here then was the sad result of too much reading and reflection. Plutarch was an evil counsellor for a fille a marier, and a course of ethical philosophy was but a poor preparation for practical life. The engraver, in spite of his opposition, was a singularly indulgent father, he never attempted to use his author- ity in forcing a favorable decision, and Manon was allowed to write refusal after refusal. M. Phlipon at first derived an attenuated pleasure from copying and signing these elegant compositions, but as time FIRST SUITORS 83 went on and his daughter continued to read, make music, and write to Sophie, with apparently no thought of the morrow of celibacy, his patience wore thin. Even Mama PhHpon, who had with a tact and for- bearance truly exceptional in a managing French mother, refrained from giving advice or reproof, was impelled to remonstrate with her exacting daughter. Her own health had been failing for some time, her husband had become less industrious, more fond of pleasure in growing older, and she was doubly desirous of seeing her only child happy in a home of her own. Manon's childish reverence for her mother had deep- ened with time. She saw that the harmony of the little household, the peace that may survive happiness, which had enveloped her own young life like a balmy atmosphere, was entirely owing to her mother. The girl noticed, too, with a weight at her heart, her father's frequent absences from home, his diminishing custom, his neglect of his workmen, and the falling off of his own work. She could not fail to perceive that while his eye and hand lost their sureness and steadiness, his irritability and dictatorial humor increased. The se- ductions of the tavern and the lottery were naturally more powerful than the sober charm of an evening at home with madame reading Delolme's English His- tory aloud, while Manon knotted fringe or mended napkins. A family party of old relatives playing pi- quet for gros sous naturally seemed insipid to a man familiar with the fiercer delights of a gaming-table. Madame PhHpon's gentle remonstrances were laughed at, or met with real or assumed anger. When she failed to change her husband's actions or opinions, she ap- 84 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND peared to abandon her own views and silently con- sumed her worries and forebodings. M. Phlipon still loved his wife and daughter tenderly, but he loved other things also, things which they could not appre- ciate, which, indeed, he would have been much cha- grined to have them appreciate. Yet the narrowness of their comprehension rasped him, and a sense of their blind injustice in desiring to deprive him of what they could not enjoy kept him in a continual state of smothered exasperation. Manon was more aggres- sively irritating than his self-efFacing wife. She had constituted herself her mother's watch-dog, and would not suffer her to be teased or worried. She also often interfered with her father's plans for private recrea- tion by proposing walks and excursions with him which were difficult to avoid. Even when he man- aged by shortening the promenade or the visit to es- cape, his own diversions were naturally curtailed. Sometimes when after saying before supper that he would run out for a moment only, he returned home very late, he found his womankind sitting up for him, red-eyed and anxious. Occasionally Manon was in- considerate enough to mention how distressed they had been by his absence, and did not consider a pleasantry, or a sulky and silent retreat, an adequate apology or explanation. When left alone again, the women would weep to- gether, but they never discussed his faults. "For her sake," wrote Madame Roland of her mother, "I would combat even her husband, but afterwards this hus- band became my father, of whom neither of us ever spoke but in praise." No outsider would have seen FIRST SUITORS 85 that happiness, that shyest and fleetest of mortal visi- tants, had flown from the little household, but every outsider of the Phlipons' practical-minded social circle would have sympathized with madame's desire to see her daughter settled in life. One day she, with unusual earnestness, pressed the suit of a young jeweller, who was the latest aspirant. To a list of his moral qualities and his worldly pos- sessions she added: "He is acquainted with your sin- gular way of thinking, professes great esteem for you, will be proud to follow your advice, and has already said that he has no objection to his wife becoming the nurse of his children. You will rule him." "But, mama, I don't want a man that I can rule. He would be like a grown-up child." "You are certainly an odd girl, for you don't want a master either." "Let us understand each other, dear mama. I would not at all wish a man to dictate to me, for he would only teach me to resist, nor should I wish to order my husband about. If I am not much mistaken, these tall, bearded creatures seldom fail to feel that they are the stronger sex. Now the good man who should think proper to remind me of this superiority would provoke me; and I should blush for him, on the contrary, if he allowed me to rule." "I understand. You prefer to rule a man who while he beheves he is having his own way is obeying you," retorted mama, making a fairly successful eflPort to define the black swan of her daughter's theories. "Not exactly that. I hate servitude, but I am not made to rule; it would be a burden to me. My reason 86 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND finds enough to do in governing myself. I would win the tenderness of some one worthy of my esteem; one whom I could honor myself by obeying; who, guided by reason and affection, would find his own happiness in promoting mine." "Happiness, my child, is not always the result of the perfect congeniality that you imagine. ... A good and worthy man offers you his hand; you are over twenty, and can no longer expect as many lovers as you have had in the last five years. . . . Do not reject a husband who has not, it is true, the delicacy to which you aifix such value (a very rare quality even among those who pretend to it), but who will love you tenderly, and with whom you may be happy." "Yes, dear mama," Manon exclaimed with a deep sigh, "happy as you are." Madame Phlipon started, grew silent, and never again pleaded for a mariage de raison. Manon enjoyed unusual liberty in her choice of a husband, but in general the young girl of the petite bourgeoisie was allowed to consult her own inclinations far more freely than was the noble demoiselle. It was an arduous life, dignified by labor, sobered by respon- sibility, that the bourgeoise faced in marriage, which to her was a compact instead of an emancipation. It bestowed few rights and many duties. It closed the door upon social pleasures, instead of opening it wide. In the married life of the Third Estate the husband was to be reckoned with. He had not abdicated his authority as had the patrician, and left the command of the household to his wife. He still occupied the dominant position of the primitive male. He disposed FIRST SUITORS 87 not only of his wife's happiness but of her money as well. She had not a possession or a pleasure of which he might not deprive her. Not only her welfare but that of her children was in his hands. Hence the im- portance of wisely choosing such an absolute monarch. Husband and wife lived very closely together in the bourgeoisie^ and marriage was without mitigating cir- cumstances. It lacked the larger means, the ampler quarters, and the individual liberty that padded the conjugal yoke of the higher classes. It was not an association of two fortunes and two indifferences, but an indissoluble union of interests, if not of affections. Much was required of the wife. To her, duty was something more than a word. In an age of brilliant, phosphorescent corruption, of witty mockery of all things, the fireside of the Third Estate was the sanc- tuary of the household virtues and the domestic pieties, and the priestess of that hearth-fire was the hourgeoise. Habituated to self-sacrifice, and inured to labor, she looked at life with a certain austerity. The right to happiness that her contemporaries believed in, and preached so ardently, she did not quite accept, and substituted for it the right to make others happy. She possessed the dignity of one who asks little, who renounces without complaint — a dignity equal to the unconscious majesty of the noble lady to whom all was accorded. Without the character and virtues of the bourgeoisie, the Revolution would have been but a revolt. From these quiet homes issued the soldiers of the Republic. By the daily abnegations of these modest households the servants of the new state had been trained in habits of self-command, of industry 88 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND and frugality. From these obscure treasures of moral energy immense reserves of fortitude and tenacity were drawn for the service of the fatherland. It was the moral vigor and the homely virtues of the bour- geoisie that preserved France during the convulsions of the Terror, and upheld the national honor when the artificial structure of her brilliant and superficial society crumbled away. A keen sense of these responsibilities was naturally felt by a stern young moralist like Manon, who in her mother had always before her a very model of wifely conduct. Not that Madame Phlipon was a Patient Griselda. Indeed, no Frenchwoman, that es- sentially sensible and reasonable being, could ever attain such a heroic height of insensibility as that Italian paragon of wives, who allowed her children to be carried off to be murdered without an expostula- tion. Long-suffering and high-minded as was her mother, Manon soon perceived that the moral in- equality between her parents made for unhappiness, and, resolute to escape shipwreck on that particular rock, continued to refuse mediocrity even when it was golden. ''Mere force of intellect was not a sufficient quali- fication in a husband unless there were also superiority of judgment and those indefinable but palpable quali- ties of soul the lack of which nothing can supply." A philosopher, who was also a man of sentiment and a scholar, remained Manon's ideal — no matter how aged and damaged, how harsh-featured or ill-favored he might be. The beauties of mind, the charms of char- acter alone, were sought by this young enthusiast. MARIE MARGUKRITt: BIMONT— MOTHER OF MADAME ROLAND Pastel by Latour, in the Museum of Lyons FIRST SUITORS 89 She would have considered Romeo a love-sick boy, Lovelace a stereotyped lady-killer, as tiresome as he was impudent, and the Chevalier Faublas she would have laughed at — before she boxed his ears. The man of her heart, or, more truly, of her fancy, was a less re- signed Marcus Aurelius, or a more energetic Vicar of Wakefield. To her notion, even when she had ceased, as a good Cartesian, to deify the intellect, a lover, like a man, to be worthy of his name, should think. Think- ing, the act of it (one not so easy to perform, by the way) alone opened the portals of the mind to divine messengers, to truth and justice. From straight think- ing sprang righteous action (Manon did not take antinomianism into account); impartiahty, considera- tion for the rights of others, respect for their opinions through comprehension of differing standards and points of view — in fine, a mental attitude, " avec laquelle une femme qui pense pouvait vivre." Alas ! in an age of such general diffusion of intel- ligence, why was there, in the Phlipons' social circle at least, such a dearth of philosophers — under sixty and unappropriated ? Were the fruits of wisdom ripened solely by a declining sun ? Or gathered only in the shadow of oncoming night ? "When miracles are expected, they happen," said a devout friend of mine, lamenting the sterilizing effect of general scepticism. Manon searching with her little lantern of enthusiasm for a philosopher was fated to find one. Intellect is inimical to beauty, as it de- stroys that balance in the distribution of vital force that makes for comeliness; naturally enough, Manon's sage was small, plain, and insignificant. The lady of 90 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Toboso was but an uncouth country wench to eyes untouched by the fire divine. Madame Roland's un- attractive portrait of Pahin de la Blancherie, drawn years afterwards, is very different from the contem- porary sketches from life that she sent to Sophie. Her imagination was kindled by the apparent delicacy and respectful regard of an ambitious young man of letters, with whom she had so much more in common than with the goldsmith of the Pont Neuf or the rich silk merchant. Manon met D. L. B., as she calls him in her letters to her confidante, at Madame L'Epine's concerts. He had already prepared himself for the bar, travelled in America, and written a book; he had studied the philosophers, knew his Rousseau by heart, and wrote verses. This was enough, and more than enough, to attract Manon, and she tells Sophie of her father's rejection of D. L. B.'s suit, which soon followed, with a touch of real though resigned regret. **He seemed to me to have a good heart, much love for literature and science, art and knowledge. In fact, if he had an established position, were older, possessed a cooler head, a little more solidity, he would not have displeased me. Now he has gone and doubtless thinks as little of me as I do about him.*' It was La Blancherie's lack of an established posi- tion that obliged M. Phlipon to decline his offer rather reluctantly. "I wish he were less of a gentleman, and had an income of a few more thousand crowns," papa admitted to his daughter. "Let him buy a place in the magistracy or open a law office firsts and then think about marriage." Manon did not find D. L. B. less interesting because he had been attracted by her, and FIRST SUITORS 91 had privately decided to "study" him more closely, when he was called away to Orleans, and remained there for two years. On his return (October 31, 1775) he found Manon lonely, troubled, and depressed. Her mother had died in June, and her father's idleness and dissipation had increased since she had last seen ** the man of Or- leans," as she called La Blancherie in her letters. She was alone when he reappeared, pale and worn, appar- ently by care and anxiety. His cordial greeting, his undisguised joy at seeing her again, and his quick sym- pathy touched the bereaved girl's heart. At first their conversation was "of few words and many sighs"; later D. L. B. asked for the details of her mother's ill- ness and death, and Manon derived a pensive pleasure from living her sorrows over again with a friend who mourned with her. A little rainbow must have shone in the midst of their tears when she confided to him that she had spoken of him with her mother on their last day together under the honeysuckles at Meudon. At this moment M. Phlipon with a friend broke in upon the tete-a-tete. D. L. B., still weeping, fell upon his neck, and there followed a moment of general at- tendrissement that Greuze might have painted or Rous- seau described. When they had dried their tears, D. L. B. adroitly profited by an instant when the elders were occupied to confess that he too had lost his mother, though not by death, through differences of opinion, and that his book was published. Indeed, he left the corrected proofs of it for her to read later in secret and in haste, for the Orleans printer was importunate. Manon 92 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND discovered in this work her own principles, her whole soul. **I do not dare to judge this young man; he re- sembles me too closely. I can only say of him what I said to M. Greuze about his picture: 'If I did not love virtue already, this would give me the taste for it.' " "Oh, Rousseau, Rousseau, it was all thy fault!" Manon had been rereading La Nouvelle Heloise; her fancy was fired by its glowing pictures of mutual love and sacrifice; unconsciously she was looking for a Saint- Prieux as well as a philosopher, and D. L. B., with his literary taste and knowledge, and his evident admira- tion of and sympathy with her, filled the role fairly well. The man who sorrows with a woman is far more dangerous than he who laughs with her. Manon was evidently disposed to play Julie, but a Julie who was strong and pure. She who had avoided reading tragedy because its fictitious woes affected her too deeply, and disturbed the philosophic calm she sought, who had found in the study of geometry and physics fetters for a roving fancy which strained towards the blue coun- try of romance and sentiment, she at last let herself go — on paper, and to Sophie. "Never was such prompt disemburdening." She was so proud of her emotions, so convinced of their purity and elevation, that she delighted in indulging and describing them, and she unhesitatingly ascribes to D. L. B. all her own delicacy and disinterestedness. Crystallization had been almost instantaneous; crystallization, as Sten- dhal called it, and no one has invented a happier term for that mysterious operation by which the imagina- tion, stimulated by love, transforms the ordinary mor- tal into a hero or a genius as the dead bough dropped FIRST SUITORS 93 into the alum-mines at Salzburg is changed to a fairy- wand of brilliants. Meanwhile La Blancherie, who though not a withered branch was a forced fruit of the tree of knowl- edge, called again and again, bringing books to lend Manon. Papa Phlipon, who was not deceived by this innocent and venerable subterfuge, finally returned the last loan himself, dryly remarking that his daughter already had books enough to occupy and amuse her. D. L. B., however, only appeared flattered by this visit, and soon returned it. Papa, whose sole idea of his duty to his child was to mount guard over her, again stated his objections to Pahin's assiduity, and his intention to ask him to discontinue his calls, Manon assenting with apparent docility and inward despair. Mignonne, the lively little maid, who adored her mis- tress, and consequently loved every one who admired her, suggested in true soubrette fashion that she should soften the blow to D. L. B. "When I see him out, mademoiselle, I will warn him to come less often." Mademoiselle was but too pleased with this gentle envoy. But unfortunately it is only in comedies that the maid can quite success- fully double the mistress's role. Mignonne bungled her message and told D. L. B. that it was mademoiselle herself who begged him to cease visiting her. At which D. L. B., "pale as death," promised to respect her wishes. Of course Manon had counted on Mignonne's giving this advice as coming from herself (Mignonne) spontaneously. Alas, for the indirect method ! Manon went supperless to her room and poured out her lamen- tations to the receptive Sophie (November 18, 1775). 94 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND "My dear, you cannot imagine how much I have suf- fered since this accursed instant. What will he think of me ? It is despairing to think of! How far beneath the rectitude we both profess and the delicacy which has won his esteem is this act of mine, having him spoken to secretly by a servant ! But he will see the motive that made me act; this motive will serve as my excuse. He will understand that my love tried to preserve for him the right to continue to come here by warning him to come seldom. . . . Perhaps he will think that I am playing with him — but no, I am too well known to him for him to be so atrociously unjust to me; his heart answers to him for mine. Mean- time I have sent him away. . . . He knows that my father does not look kindly upon him, and it is through me that he learns it. He will come back perhaps, but trembling and disconcerted, instead of which he en- joyed such a sweet confidence. This confidence was noble, it was founded on the purity of our sentiments. Never have we said that we loved each other, but our eyes have told each other so a thousand times in the presence of my father, in that expressive language w^hich we deny ourselves when we are alone. Per- haps the warning he has received has dangerously affected his health; he had begun to improve since his return to Paris. ... I am wounding a heart whose happiness I would buy at the price of my own. If my imprudent step cures him of his love I shall only have to weep for myself; he will be tranquil. . . . Was I not forced to warn him ? My father would have soon obliged him to discontinue his visits by his manner of receiving them. Such an order coming FIRST SUITORS 95 from any one but myself would have been too painful for him. Seeing him only occasionally my father will see him willingly; he is really fond of him after all. . . . He lacks only a fortune. O, Heavens ! How I suffer. Why should I fear to let my father suspect the existence of a sentiment that I confess without blushing to God." Manon desires to write to D. L. B. to explain the hard necessity she is under, to let him know that it is her father, not herself, who finds his visits importunate. "A thousand times I was ready to take my pen, a thousand times I hesitated. I was not restrained by the fear that prudence suggests under such circumstances; I have confidence in him, a con- fidence which I believe his principles justify, and I am proud of his virtues, but / respected my image in his heart. I feared to take from it something of its noble beauty. My first step can be in some sense reconciled with my duty, since it sends D. L. B. away from me, but he might disapprove of my action in writing to him. ... I count on time, on time that devours all things; it alone can perhaps restore to me the calm- ness that I have lost. . . . Adieu, then, my friend, my refuge and my stay, adieu." It is only in the springtime of life that one is happy enough to be so unhappy. Three weeks later Manon writes (December 5, 1775): "The violent emotion that I described to you has gradually calmed down; this benefit is the result of the step that caused it. I have gathered the fruit of that cruel order that made me shed so many tears. But if tranquillity has re- turned to me, my love has not left me, only this senti- ment has become so naturalized in my heart that it 96 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND causes no more trouble there than does fihal love; it is a deep river that has hollowed out its bed and flows silently. I am happy and I love; I unite these two opposed feelings with an ease which I could not imagine myself possessing. Submitting to the laws of a neces- sity which parts us, I find that it does not separate us, and that is enough. *He loves me,' I say to myself, *he is working to deserve me.' We seek reciprocally to please each other by becoming better, and in this sweet emulation our virtues thrive and hope remains with us. If he finds a good act to perform, I am sure that he brings to the doing of it more ardor in think- ing that it is the sweetest and the only homage he can offer me. On my side I find my being doubled. If it becomes necessary to make any sacrifices of any kind, I shall have more strength than ever. I am more severe to myself and I should forgive myself less easily for the slightest weakness; it seems as though there would be another witness to it, and added reproaches for it. I am no longer anxious, nor agitated, as you feared I would be; inquietude and remorse are strangers to me. I enjoy the advantage of a cceur fixe. I am more gay and more free in society. I seek nothing there. I know that after the first shock D. L. B. is himself again and certainly acts as I do. I judge him by my heart; nothing resembles him more. We do not see each other, but we know that we love each other without ever having told each other so." Meanwhile the evicted lover had given no sign. He was evidently pursuing his career of virtue and self-sacrifice in silence. Manon took a good deal for granted; the crystals were forming fast on the bough. FIRST SUITORS 97 Foolish M. Phlipon ! Would you teach a generous and imaginative young enthusiast to love, separate her from the man she fancies. Seen too near, he would himself often disenchant her. The mediocre lover has a permanent rival in the ideal which every high- minded girl carries in her heart, and which is at once a touchstone and a tahsman. In D. L. B.'s case, ab- sence, pity, loneliness, and imagination, which in Ma- non always masked her preferences as admirations, were at work, transforming an able but rather flighty young opportunist into a moral hero, and a lofty- souled lover. But Manon was not only imaginative and senti- mental, she was intelligent, and she found in her mind a corrective and a cure for the warmth of her imagina- tion and her lack of social experience. // she had not been in an unwonted melting mood when D. L. B. returned, if he had not brought with him the tender souvenir of the mother who had known and liked him, if M. Phlipon had not frowned upon him, and if she had seen him more often, Manon's coup de foudre would have been but a slight shock, and she would have missed a valuable emotional experience. As it was, with all the elements of a romance, the cruel father, the complaisant maid, the indigent, unselfish, and chivalrous lover, how could a bereaved and lonely girl resist the situation ? She lent herself to it with hearty good-will; she took D. L. B. on faith, and his virtues for granted, as trustingly as any little milliner in her quarter would have done, who had never dis- ciplined her mind with algebra, or skipped the love- scenes in tragedies. 98 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND The original dry stick had utterly disappeared under a gleaming, dazzling mass of crystals. She made little daily mental offerings to D. L. B.'s enshrined image, as her dear Saint Francis de Sales had recommended to the devout lover of God. She gathered spiritual nosegays for him of sweet thoughts and aspirations. She bade Sophie keep her letters, so that one day, perhaps (oh, transport!), they might read them to- gether; Manon's charmed fancy could picture no closer intimacy of the heart. She had the advantage of organizing and presenting and managing her drama of sentiment quite alone, entirely to her taste, and of speaking both parts in the love-dialogue. She felt and wrote for D. L. B., and supplied him with lofty aims and tender thoughts. The real D. L. B. had obeyed her literally, and was making his visits rare, indeed; so Manon had a freer stage for manoeuvring her own D. L. B. — a kind of Grandison-Cato, brain-born, and fancy-nourished, undisturbed by the claims and contradictions of an insistent, human, mascuHne per- sonality, which would have fitted very ill into the heroic part provided for him. There were times, however, when her affection waned a little even for this segment of perfection. Always frank to excess, she confesses as much to Sophie. "When I am fairly busy with science or study, good- by to love; my cheerfulness, my strength, my ac- tivity return to me, but a little letting myself go — if a certain visit — my heart goes pitapat, and my im- agination torments me. When I am on philosophical heights, I find D. L. B. rather small, but turn the glass the other way, and I am mad again." Still she FIRST SUITORS 99 had intervals of lucidity in which to read the Abbe Raynal and to write long extracts from an excellent compte rendu of his Histoire Philosophique (the livre de chevet of Charlotte Corday), in which she notes "C^ livre est propre a hater la revolution qui s'opere dans les esprits'' (a good prophecy before the event), to give a little dinner and to make verses with Le Sage. Then after nearly a month D. L, B. reappeared, and adieu raison — vive la folie! D. L. B. was pale, thinner, more wan than before — he could not sleep, could not regain his health. Anxiety, grief, and emo- tion were wearing on him; he was sadly changed, and Manon's tumultuous heart told her why. For before he received that fatal order from stupid Mignonne, he was improving — ^was almost himself again, and now he might be going to die. What could be done ^ Tiresome Cousin Trude was calling at the same time, and a comforting word in private to D. L. B. was out of the question. The formal visit was soon in- terrupted by the return of M. Phlipon. D. L. B. rose, saluted him, and took leave, broken-hearted. Only Manon understood the cause of his sadness, and she was obliged to appear gay. "He does not know what he makes me feel," she wails to Sophie this same afternoon; "my apparent serenity doubles his tortures. ... A single word from my lips can call him back to hfe, to health. I believe it, I feel it, and why should I not speak .^ He keeps silence, and in doing so only interests me the more, because in acting thus he shows himself true to his principles, and ever worthy of my esteem." Manon, all her scruples of delicacy, all her rigid loo MANON PHLIPON ROLAND maiden pride swept away by a rising flood of tender- ness, writes to D. L. B. She has ceased to care about any possible tarnishing of that immensely proper image of herself in his breast, and is possessed by one in- tolerable conviction: that the man she loves is suffer- ing, and that she is the cause of his pain; a conviction that had led generous natures into far greater folly than Manon's innocent imprudence. This letter, of which no copy remains, was to assure D. L. B. of her eternal friendship and unalterable respect, and to explain that it is papa, and not herself, who desires him to space his visits. Sophie is besought to receive this letter, to read it, judge of it, and if she considers it convenahle, to send it to La Blancherie. In any case she is not to burn it. He will see it later, perhaps ! "(7, Sophie, Sophie, mon amie ! sans toi je suis perdue; je suis dans la crise la plus violente; dans le combat le plus cruel avec moi-meme; je nai de force que pour me Jeter dans les bras de Vamitie. (9, Dieul que je souffre ! " The arms of friendship were evidently open, the eyes of friendship read the explanatory letter, judged it convenable, and the hand of friendship posted it to La Blancherie. Peace once more folded her dove's wings and made her nest in Manon's breast, for a week later (January 23, 1776) she writes to Sophie that she has again recovered her calmness, and though there is a certain greffier de bdtiments, who is paying his court through Sister Sainte Agathe, she, Manon, considers herself bound to D. L. B.; her reason is a pretty bit of heart-casuistry: '^ Car lorsqu'on laisse voir a un homme quon Vaime, on a beau lui montrer FIRST SUITORS loi une vertu capable de dompter le sentiment, il se repose toujours sur la recommandation secrete du cceur: tout en croyant a Vhero'isme il espere en la nature. Me livrer a un autre serait done trahir un espoir que faurais donne moi-meme." This conclusion established, Manon is placidly happy in spite of the unwelcome suit of not only the grefier but a protege of Abbe Legrand, whose quiet persis- tency causes some anxiety. She is occupied, too, in theological discussions with Sophie, discussions en- tirely free from theological rancor, in which she de- fines and justifies her own beliefs. She reads Homer (in translation, of course), and is enchanted. She throws herself *'up to the collar" into the study of the antique poets. Still D. L. B. is always in the foreground of her views of life and conduct. She sends his book and her own criticism of it to Sophie, and his presence at the me- morial mass for her mother disturbs her tranquillity. D. L. B. absent is a source of strength and consolation, a kind of tutelary genius, but actually seen and heard he troubles the pure fountain of her fancy and dims the noble image mirrored there; it is almost obliterated when one day, walking with Mademoiselle Hangard in the Luxembourg garden, she meets him with a feather in his hat ! He, the Spartan, the philosophical, the lover of the simple life, tricked out with a macaroni plume like a frivolous follower of Richelieu, or a foppish imitator of De Tilly ! Manon cannot reconcile the presence of this futile ornament with her idea of D. L. B., and, to excuse her preoccupation with an ap- parent trifle, notes how the smallest details acquire 102 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND importance when they pertain to a beloved object, and appear to be betrayals of character. While she was tormented with her first doubts of D. L. B.'s impeccabihty, Mademoiselle Hangard gave another turn to the screw by remarking that La Blancherie had been forbidden a friend's house be- cause he boasted that he was about to marry one of the daughters, and that as he was constantly offering his empty hand to rich young ladies he was known as the lover of the eleven thousand virgins ! Was there ever a ruder awakening from a dream ! Manon gasped, blushed, doubted, and then began to reason over her infatuation. Even making allow- ances for prejudice and exaggeration, D. L. B. in the light of these discoveries, instead of the devoted and disinterested paragon she had fancied him, seemed but a fortune-hunter who had sought her because she was an only daughter, and presumably the heiress of her family. And she had admired him, believed in him, and had written him an enthusiastic, almost tender, letter that was an indirect avowal of affection ! Manon, when her first burning sense of maidenly shame cooled, tried to be just to D. L. B., though she was more vexed with him than with herself, which was hardly fair. She admitted that she had considered him more estimable than he really was, that a pre- conceived idea confuses one's impressions of realities, and that he may have owed most of his good qualities to her idealization of him; in a word, she began to strip the crystals off the bough. It is always a sad process, the eviction of a bankrupt tenant from a young heart, and for several days Manon was really ill. Then she FIRST SUITORS 103 sought comfort in the thought that she would belong only to some one who really was what she had believed La Blancherie to be, and D. L. B. would always pos- sess the advantage of having first resembled her ideal, which was more subtle than tender. "I hope that he will prove to be what I thought he was, but I have no longer the invincible belief that was so sweet. My reason profits by the suffering of my heart, and the worship of Minerva is no longer interrupted by that of loving hope. D. L. B. has become matter for grave reflection as well as tender sentiments." (June 25, 1776.) Manon took her bitter drug without grimac- ing — at least in public — and the bitterness seems to have soon been modified by the sweets of philosophy. "I have beaten down my hopes. I have used to cure the wound in my heart all the means that a healthy mind can furnish. I am at present convalescing hap- pily." "Oh ! D. L. B.," she writes, after telling Sophie of the refusal of a new off'er, **it is not to thee that I devote myself, but to the prototype, to the model which I thought thou resembledst, I deceived my- self, and I mourn my error more for thee than for my- self. / still possess my object, but thou art nothing." Then she adds, with that irrepressible frankness that always ballasts her flights to the empyrean of senti- ment: "/'<2z pourtant bien de la peine a le croireT Bien de la peine? At times, perhaps; for it is difficult to dislodge an illusion even when pride lends a hand to the process, and if the wound in her heart was healing fast her self-love was still bleeding, and slow of cure. Perhaps Sophie was not surprised when she received an agitated letter from Manon announcing that D. I04 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND L. B. had sought and obtained an interview and was coming to explain himself! He came (December 21, 1776), and Manon's in- ward perturbation was manifested only by an access of dignity. To D. L. B.'s protestations of gratitude for this favor she answered coldly that she had, im- pelled by feeling, written him a letter that expressed the sentiments she then felt, and of which she was not ashamed; "one may weep over one's mistakes, but to deceive oneself is not a crime. What do you wish of me?" He replied, chilled by her frigid attitude, that he had long desired to express his grati- tude for her letter and the high esteem it had inspired in him, but he had been prevented first by her own commands, and then by his illness, his failure to estab- lish himself, the indifference of his mother towards him, and checks and disappointments of all kinds. To these confidences Manon listened judicially, leaning back in her bergere, her cheek resting on her hand. When the list of misfortunes was complete, she answered icily that really all this was "a useless side-issue." D. L. B. was inexperienced enough in the ways of women to be disconcerted instead of encouraged by her elaborate coldness. He persisted in his explana- tions, however, and begged her to define what she meant by mistakes. She returned, always in the same detached tone, that some special remarks had caused her to reflect on the mistakes one can make in judging by appearances, and that she had profited by them, while feeling at the same time all the mortification they caused. Expressions of astonishment and regret FIRST SUITORS 105 on the part of D. L. B. were immediately followed by a well-pleaded justification. Manon then con- fessed with her usual sans gene^ that after having dis- tinguished him from most young men by placing him far above them, she thought herself obliged to class him with them. D. L. B. very naturally grew warm, saying that she had only heard one side, and therefore should not judge him. This gave her an opportunity, which she was ungenerous enough to use, to freeze the current of his awakening geniahty by congratulating him on remaining worthy of her esteem, an esteem now quite cleared of the vapors of enthusiasm. This barbed remark added a new smart to his various disappoint- ments: in his career at court, and in literature, for his book had not proved successful, and perhaps pre- cipitated his resolution to turn his back on the world and bury himself in the country. They discussed this and kindred subjects for some four hours. Manon^ thawed by his evident distress, endeavored to console him by the heart-warming as- surance that as long as he was faithful to his principles she should never consider him unhappy, and that to deserve one's own self-respect was the greatest of bless- ings, and an equivalent for the loss of everything else. Perhaps La Blancherie found her confidences in regard to her own situation more comforting than these gelid maxims. Manon confessed that fortune had deserted her also; that she should have to depend upon herself; that she was seeking the means of Hving in liberty; that under certain circumstances she might sacrifice this coveted liberty, but that she would have to re- io6 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND spect a man much more than herself in order to be willing to owe him everything. La Blancherie, more encouraged by her admissions than dashed by her reflections, begged for a correspondence, the permission to see her, or at least to send her news of him, to which she opposed a resolute refusal. Disappointed in these demands, D. L. B., ever fertile in projects, proposed that Manon should write some articles for a journal that he hoped to publish (pre- sumably before his renunciation of the world). This paper, an imitation of the English Spectator, was to be devoted to essays in the form of letters, on literature, criticism, manners, and morals. Manon proved as reluctant to write letters for his journal as she was to correspond with D. L. B. in a private capacity. For the moment she was out of love with letters, though I do not believe her refusal to collaborate with D. L. B. was as high and stately as she represents it in her Memoires. The letter written to her other self, Sophie, in which she sets down this interview immediately after it happened, is much kinder and more natural in tone than the abstract of it she wrote years after- wards when the frivolity and restlessness of D. L. B. had been amply proved. The long tete-a-tete was finally interrupted by the visit of jealous Cousin Trude, and Manon, the austere and frank, let him in through one door while the amour eux transi disappeared through the other. "I put on a roguish air to cover my desire to laugh at the little trick which I did fairly well; my poor cousin thought it was in his honor, and was overjoyed. In truth, I feel, through the uneasiness that the least con- FIRST SUITORS 107 cealment gives me, how ill my directness would agree with an intrigue, no matter how creditable it was (if in any case there are creditable ones), but at the same time I acknowledge that the cunning of women is very apt at carrying them off." Thus Manon's tragedy of disappointed affection ended with a touch of farce, "The mask, or rather my veil, has fallen . . . admiration is silent, illusion is destroyed, in fine, love exists no more." She is en- tirely free from self-reproach, and manages to extract honey from what to most women would be a bundle of very bitter herbs. She magnanimously forgives D. L. B. in her thoughts for not being what she imag- ined he was, but in the flesh she punishes him for falling short of her ideal of him. Once thoroughly disillu- sioned, she is clear-sighted and just in regard to him, but too self-complacent in judging her own attitude. She flatters herself, perhaps, in believing that "her image graven in his memory will often serve as an object for comparisons by which it will lose nothing; that as long as he preserves the taste for fine and good things he will be obliged to associate them with her in his mind, and herein will be her triumph and her pride"; ergo she has only gained in this first skirmish of the heart. She has made a mistake, she has de- ceived herself, but her self-deception has been a stimu- lus to acts of kindness, and to sweet and elevated thought. She has fashioned an idol for herself, but has worshipped with a blameless heart and pure sacri- fices. With the same philosophic resignation with which she renounced her faith when it proved rebel- lious to the dictates of reason, as soon as the rain- io8 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND bow mist of illusion melted away she tumbled down her poor pinchbeck god from his altar. So ended the maiden adventure of Manon's heart, its first quest for the "inexpressive He." Poor La Blancherie was but the peg on which she hung a robe of golden and purple tissue, fancy spun, and she was too sane-minded, too healthy-hearted, above all too clear-eyed, not to recognize and confess her error. But recognition and confession do not forestall repeti- tion. Manon all her life was too apt to disguise her preferences as admirations. They were, however, never again as unjustifiable as her idealization of La Blancherie. Mammes Claude Pahin de la Blancherie was a type of the notionologue of his century, who was to find a freer scope for his mental uneasiness during the Revo- lution. There were many individuals of his genus, professional men with refined and expensive tastes and small means, educated beyond their capacity, and consequently discontented with the only positions they were able to fill. In the conservative past, except in the privileged classes, much was required for the building of a career. The individual was born predestined to a certain place, to a distinct future; the boundary-lines of accomplish- ment were fixed, the course of the life race measured and marked. There were no free passes to mental or social distinction. The world's fair was open to few. Life was coherent, its long perspective ordered like a formal garden, prizes were distributed accord- ing to certain regulations, and the places at the world's banquet were given by rule. If men were more con- tent than now in the station of life to which it had FIRST SUITORS 109 pleased God to call them, discontent had to be asso- ciated with unusual capacity to change that station. Mere pretensions received less consideration than they do in our optimistic society. A desire to fly the track was not in itself considered an evidence of superiority. The ideal of the mid-eighteenth century was to subdue circumstances rather than to defy them, and the barriers by which society was divided and defended were more often overleaped by the able than undermined by the envious, or shattered by the merely rebellious. The bloody but unbowed pate was less reverenced than the head unbruised by butting against conventions, willing to bend to established usage and reserve its powers for more subtle struggles. Men of unusual ability accepted the conditions of life as a working hypothesis and wasted little force in opposing them. The social reformer, therefore, the "come- outer," was not the commonplace individual that he has since become, and had not yet been classified and labelled. Therefore a young, briefless lawyer, with a fair education, a stock of notions, and a facility in writing, was a more striking figure in Manon's formal social landscape than he would have been a decade or two later. Pahin de la Blancherie was not the literary adven- turer he has been called. It would be more just to describe him as a journalist without a job. His was the sensational modern-newspaper man's temperament: audacious, sensational, superficial, possessed of literary talent and a passion for novelties, wanting in taste, a stranger to delicacy. An unabashed opportunist, he was born too soon in a world too young. His first book, a novel with a purpose, was a close no MANON PHLIPON ROLAND study of the errors and vices of very young men, and of their lamentable results. It was written "to en- lighten and assist parents in the education of their sons," a laudable intention not too diffidently expressed by the youthful author. Only the aloofness of a colorless, scientific style could invest so repulsive a subject with dignity. Nothing in La Blancherie's handling of his impos- sible theme justifies him in touching it at all. He was, nevertheless, in his way an innovator and a forerunner of the modern school of realistic fiction which occupies itself with questions economic and social, with medical and pathological studies, as often as with the mysteries of the heart or the problems of the mind. But La Blancherie was too early a laborer in this field of naturalistic fiction; his contemporaries, like Manon in her high-minded and penetratingly analyzed criti- cism of his work, found it lacking in seriousness. La Blancherie was even in his debut always sensational. He interspersed his distressing narrative with senti- mental appeals and plaintive lamentations, and smoth- ered his grim moral in the flowers of rhetoric. Parents were deaf to his warnings, and apparently refused enlightenment and assistance, for the book fell flat. His next move was to dub himself general agent for scientific and artistic correspondence, to open a hall in Paris for exhibitions of pictures and lectures on scientific and artistic subjects. In connection with this enterprise De la Blancherie published from 1779 to 1787 a review called News of the Republic of Arts and Letters and a catalogue of French artists. His ventures were fairly successful; Roland went to some FIRST SUITORS iii of the lectures and found them well attended and interesting. The news and the catalogue are still help- ful to students of the art of the eighteenth century. In 1788 political affairs absorbed public attention, and La Blancherie's audiences diminished. He aban- doned the review, closed his hall, and went to London, where he happened to occupy Newton's old house. Feeling that the great astronomer was not sufficiently honored by his own country, he proposed that in dat- ing all public documents, after the words "year of grace," "and of Newton" should be added. He sug- gested also that the name of Newton should be given alternately with that of George to the kings of Eng- land. Albion was as indifferent to these reforms as the parents of Orleans had been to those contained in La Blancherie's book. Its author drifted about, tirelessly inventive, always busy with some new proj- ect. A literary free-lance, he had many adventures, and one most curious experience. He watched the little hourgeoise whose hand he had asked become the most powerful woman in France. He saw the girl who had once sent him a tender letter, writing to the King, the people, and the people's leaders, changing the course of European events, and sending an ulti- matum to the prince bishop of Rome. After that astounding transformation all the swift changes of roles, all the history that he saw made afterwards, for he lived until 181 1, must have seemed usual and ex- pected. CHAPTER VI FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS Manon's views of people who made no romantic appeal to her were free from any tinge of rose-color. In spite of her retirement she had occasional glimpses of artistic and literary circles, of the court and of the -petite noblesse. Mingled with her accounts of walks and studies, and the little, carefully finished, Dutch pictures of homely life, are cleanly outlined silhouettes of the actors in such scenes of the social comedy as her half-bourgeois, half-artistic environment afforded her. She had always been easily first in her small world; she now occasionally entered spheres in which she did not count at all — a salutary, perhaps, if not a delect- able experience. She was shocked and mortified that the Abbe Bimont's housekeeper, "a big, lean, yellow hackney, harsh-voiced, proud of her nobihty, boring everybody with her domestic talents, and her parch- ments," who could not write a decently spelled letter, and whose speech defied grammar, should be treated with consideration everywhere on account of her an- cestry, Manon drew large conclusions from the respect shown to an ignorant old maid's genealogical tree, and decided ''that the world was very unjust, and social institutions very absurd." Sophie's relatives in Paris, who were of the petite noblesse, did little to render their order more respect- 112 FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 113 worthy. These were an ignorant and tyrannical old uncle, whom Manon nicknamed "The Commandant," and the demoiselles de Lamotte, who prided themselves greatly on their birth, and reverently preserved, while not daring to use it, their mother's sac. This relic was a bag, embroidered with the family arms, used to hold books of devotion, and which it was the privilege of the nobility to carry, or have carried by page or lackey, to church. The de Lamottes' intimate circle was com- posed of various specimens of the ancient regime, withering away in a closed retort of bigotry and prej- udice, carefully guarded by all sorts of mental screens from the live issues and thought-currents of their time. There was M. de Vouglans, a learned but fa- natical magistrate, who had tried to refute Beccaria in a sanguinary defense of legal torture. There was the Chevalier des Salles, who had served and been seriously wounded in Louisiana — "more gravely wounded in the service of Venus than that of Mars," Manon mischie- vously remarks to Sophie — and who was affronting further dangers by playing cards and lover at once with the coquettish old Marquise de Caillavelle. Letters were represented by the de Lamottes' con- fessor, who wrote verses comparing Voltaire to Satan, and haute finance by a Cannet millionaire, who said regretfully, after calculating the royalties on a suc- cessful play: "Why did not my father have me taught to write tragedies .? I could have done them on Sundays." These people, keenly conscious of their small quantum of noble blood, and of Manon's lack of it, gave her a kind of brevet rank for Sophie's sake, and also because her musical accomplishments, her 114 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND supposed expectations, and her winning presence add- ed a warm touch of life to their genteel petrifaction. But their condescension did little to increase the young republican's esteem for them or their order. She could not help making comparisons. They were so decidedly inferior in manners and culture to the painters and sculptors who came to her father's house; "that an ignorant millionaire or an impertinent offi- cer could enjoy privileges refused to real merit and talent" (to a Falconet, for instance) appeared to her as comical as it was unjust. Further experiences confirmed this growing con- viction of the absurdity of social conventions. Grand- mama Phlipon's sister had married a certain M. Besnard, an intendafit of the Jermier general Haudry. This was considered a mesalliance by bonne-maman, whose family pride, her granddaughter remarks, was *'deplace." M. Besnard proved to be the most ten- der and devoted of husbands. He and his wife were still living when Madame Roland wrote her Memoirs, and she always mentions them with affection. "I am proud of belonging to them, and with their char- acter and virtues I should be so even if M. Besnard had been a footman." Haudry, the employer of M. Besnard, was a type of the financier who, as Montes- quieu says, sustains the state as la corde soutient le pendu. A shrewd, close-fisted peasant, he had found his way to Paris, where he became one of those Jer- miers generaux who precipitated the ruin of France. He made an immense fortune at the expense of the pubHc, chose husbands for his granddaughters among the nobiHty, and left his son the means of playing FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 115 the gentleman. This son, having purchased the do- main of Soucy, promptly dubbed himself Haudry de Soucy, and assumed a patrician manner of Hving. Among his possessions was also the old chateau of Fontenay, where the Besnards spent the summer, and where their grandniece made a yearly visit. Every Sunday there was a ball on the lawns, a kind of decorous saturnalia where financiers, nobles, and peasants danced together, and Lubin and Annette were as welcome as Madame la Presidente or Monsieur le Baron. Near Fontenay was the cottage of Manon's nurse, and Fon- tenay itself was in the midst of ''charming woods, beautiful meadows, and cool valleys." A visit to the Haudry family was a necessary cour- tesy, which was promptly returned. An invitation to dinner at Soucy followed and was accepted by Ma- dame Besnard. To Manon's surprise it was not with their hostess, but at the second table with monsieur's gentlemen and madame's ladies-in-waiting, in a word a V office, that they dined. The girl's sense of humor salved her momentary mortification. Here was a novel vista of social life to be observed and noted. "It was a new spectacle for me, that of these second- class deities. I never imagined how ladies' maids could play at being grand folk. They were ready to receive us, and really made good understudies; dress, carriage, little airs, nothing was forgotten. The fresh spoils of their mistresses lent to their toilets a richness that a self-respecting bourgeoisie denied itself. The caricature of hon ton was added to a kind of elegance as far removed from the sobriety of the bourgeois as it was from the good taste of the artist. Nevertheless, ii6 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND the general tone of the chat would have deceived coun- try folk. It was worse with the men. The sword of monsieur the head butler, the attentions of monsieur the cook, the brilliant liveries of the footmen, could not redeem the awkwardness of their manners, their stilted speech, when they wished to appear dis- tinguished, or the commonness of their language, when they ceased to watch themselves. The conversation was filled with marquises, counts, and financiers, whose titles, fortunes, and marriages appeared to be the grandeur, the riches, and the business of those who talked of them. The superfluities of the first table overflowed on to this second one with an order, a neat- ness, that preserved their pristine appearance, and an abundance, which would be passed on to the third table, that of the servants, for those who sat at the second were styled officers. Gaming followed the meal, with high stakes, the ordinary amusement of these ladies, who played every day. A new world was opened to me, in which I found an imitation of the prejudices, the vices, or the follies of a world that ap- peared a little better but was hardly worth more." A visit to Versailles to see the court served to con- firm these impressions (September, 1774). The Abbe Bimont, the noble Mademoiselle d'Hannaches, Manon, and her mother occupied a little apartment lent them by one of Marie Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting. Thanks to her protection and the persistence of Mademoiselle d'Hannaches, they "saw everything," all the endless and empty ceremonies of the court. For a week they watched the large and small dinners of the royal family, the masses in the chapel, the gam- FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 117 ing, the promenades, all the complicated and weari- some formalities of palace life. It was not surprising that Manon preferred to look at the statues in the gardens rather than the people in the chateau. She longed to leave the three stuffy, dark rooms in the attic where they were lodged, next to the Archbishop of Paris, who occupied an equally small and airless apartment, and from whom they were separated by so thin a partition that they could not speak without being overheard. A glance at the old plans of the palace of Versailles proves in what evil-smelling rook- eries and rat-holes dukes and prelates were pleased to lodge, "pour etre plus a portee de tamper au lever des MajesteSy^ wrote the Spartan Manon. She was sensi- tive to the picturesqueness of ceremonious obser- vances, but their absurdity and the reverence and awe with which they surrounded, like a kind of special atmosphere, a group of individuals already too power- ful and in no way remarkable in themselves aroused her indignation. **Why, what have these people done to you?" said her mother, who accepted the adoration of royalty as she did rheumatism or the salt tax, without reason- ing or rebellion. "They have made me feel injustice and contemplate absurdity," retorted the admirer of antique republics. "I sighed while thinking of Athens, where I could have admired the fine arts without being wounded by the sight of despotism; in spirit I wan- dered through Greece, I was a spectator of the Olympian games, and I was annoyed that I was a Frenchwoman. Thus, impressed with all that the happy days of re- publics offered me, I passed over lightly the storms ii8 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND with which they were agitated. I forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of Aristides, the condemnation of Phocion. I did not know that Heaven reserved me to be a witness of errors Hke those of which they were the victims." Was Manon in 1774 already so ardent a republican ? Did she not in her Memoirs record the sentiments of the woman rather than those of the girl nineteen years younger ? It is easy to test the accuracy of her memory of that Versailles visit, for she wrote an account of it to Sophie on her return to Paris (October 4, 1774). "... I was much amused during my sojourn at Versailles. It was a journey undertaken for pleasure and curiosity, and for my part I found what I sought. . . . With a little imagination and taste it is impos- sible to see masterpieces of art with indifference, and if one is concerned with the general welfare, one is nec- essarily interested in the people who have so much influence on it. . . . But let us go back to Versailles. I cannot tell you how much what I observed there has made me prize my own situation, and bless Heaven that I was born to an obscure position. You will be- heve, perhaps, that this sentiment is founded on the slight value which I attach to opinion, and on the real- ity of the penalties of greatness. Not at all. It is founded on the knowledge which I have of my own character, which would be most harmful to myself and to the state were I placed at a certain distance from the throne, for I should be greatly shocked at the extreme inequality caused by rank between several millions of men and a single individual of the same kind. In my position I love the King because I hardly FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 119 feel my dependence on him. If I were too near him I should hate his grandeur. Such a disposition is not desirable in a monarchy; when it is found in a person possessing rank and power it is dangerous. With me it does not matter, for my education has taught me what I owe to the powers that be, and has caused me to respect and cherish through reflection and a sense of duty what I should not naturally have loved. Thus I believe, were it required of me, I could serve my King as ardently as the most zealous of Frenchmen, though I have not the blind partiality for his master with which he is born. A good king seems to me an almost adorable being. Still, if before coming into the world I had had my choice of a government, I should have chosen a republic. It is true that I should have wished it constituted differently from any in Europe to-day." These passages in the Memoirs and the letters have been cited at length because bits of them have been often adduced as proof of Manon's early hatred and envy of royalty. The enthusiasm of a young creature longing for a more equal distribution of opportunities for human happiness, dreaming of a Utopian republic, was devoid of bitterness and envy. Manon's con- demnation of the manifestly unjust and absurd was never unreasonable, though sometimes impatient. Like most educated persons of the Third Estate, she was justly intolerant of privileges that had no reason for being, either in the capacity of the noble or the in- capacity of the bourgeois. With every thinker she was opposed to the artificial distinctions which consigned the whole middle class to subaltern employments, and I20 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND in every career subjected it to the precedence of so- called superiors, who were often its inferiors in ability and achievement. But her iconoclasm was tempered by taste, and she was as ready to smile at the pre- tensions of a poetaster or the pose of a philosopher as at Mademoiselle d'Hannaches's six centuries of noble blood. Manon had ample opportunities to discover that snobbishness and adulation flourish as luxuriantly in literary as in aristocratic circles. At the musicales of the Abbe Jeauket, who had been court musician at Vienna, and had given lessons to Marie Antoinette, Manon met her first bluestocking. This was Madame de Puisieux, a friend of Diderot, and the writer of Les Caracteres, a moral work. An authoress was then something of a rarity, and presumably a person of unusual intelligence and dignity. Manon was shocked and disappointed at Madame de Puisieux's silliness, her childish affectations and coquetries, hardly par- donable in a young person, and curiously out of place in a toothless and bent old lady of over fifty. Manon concluded that the men who ridiculed women who wrote were wrong only in attributing exclusively to them the defects that they shared with them. Another authoress, whom the girl met at the con- certs of Madame de I'Epine, clinched this opinion. The sculptor L'Epine, a pupil of Pigalle, who was an old friend of M. Phlipon, had married an ex-cantatrice in Rome. This lady on her return to Paris gave weekly musicales y to which only ''bonne compagnie" was ad- mitted, and where good music was well played and sung. There Manon and her mother heard several FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 121 celebrated musicanti, and made some desirable ac- quaintances, among the '^ insolentes baronnesy les jolis abbes, les vieux chevaliers, et les jeunes plumets." Through Madame I'Epine also the Phlipons were bidden to an assembly that met every Wednesday at M. Vasse's apartment, near the barriere du Temple, and was devoted to letters. The kindly cantatrice assured them that the reunions there were "delicious," and persuaded them to accept an invitation. Manon's picture of it suggests one of Ollivier's clear, delicately bright interiors with their minutely drawn, vivid, little figures. "We climbed to the third floor and reached an apartment furnished in the usual way. Straw chairs, arranged in several rows, awaited the audience and were just beginning to be filled. Dirty copper candlesticks with tallow candles lighted this retreat, whose grotesque simplicity did not misrepre- sent the philosophical austerity and the poverty of a wit. Elegant young women, girls, several dowagers, a lot of little poets, des curieux et des intrigantSy formed the assembly. The master of the house, seated before a table, opened the proceedings by reading some of his own verses. The subject of them was a pretty little monkey that the old Marquise of Preville always carried in her mufF, and which she showed to all the company, for she was present, and hastened to offer the hero of the piece to our eager eyes. "Imbert [a well-known author] then took the chair. Imbert, poet of the Judgment of Paris, read an agree- able trifle, which was immediately praised to the skies. His reward followed. Mademoiselle de la Cosson- niere came after him, and read The Adieu to Colin, 122 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND which, if it was not very clever, was certainly very tender. We knew that it was addressed to Imbert, who was on the eve of a journey, and it was smothered with compliments. Imbert recompensed his muse and himself by kissing all the women in the assembly. This gay and lively ceremony, though performed with propriety, did not please my mother at all, and seemed so strange to me that I appeared confused by it. After I do not know how many epigrams and quatrains, a man read some verses in a very declamatory manner in praise of Madame Benoit. She was present, and I must add a word about her to those who have not read her novels. "Albine was born in Lyons. She married the de- signer Benoit, went with him to Rome, and became a member of the Arcadian Academy. Just after her widowhood she returned to Paris, and remained there. She made verses and romances, sometimes without writing them, gave card-parties, and visited women of quality, who paid her in money and fine clothes for the pleasure of having a wit at their tables. Madame Benoit had been handsome. The aids of the toilet, and the desire to please, prolonged beyond the age which guarantees success in the endeavor, still ob- tained her some conquests. The openly voluptuous air of Madame Benoit was new to me. I was not less struck with the poetic incense which was lavished on her, and the expressions, * virtuous Benoit,' * chaste Benoit, repeated several times in these verses, that frequently forced her to raise a modest fan before her eyes. Meantime several men who doubtless found these eulogies very appropriate applauded raptur- FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 123 ously." Manon decided after these disillusioning ex- periences that she would eat her fingers rather than become an authoress, and that literature offered wo- men even more opportunities of becoming ridiculous than were afforded by the fine arts. Pleasanter than watching these unsuccessful escalades of Parnassus were Manon's frequent visits to the "dear little Uncle" Bimont, who had become canon of the Sainte Chapelle at Vincennes. His house there was pretty, the walks in the forest charming, and the so- ciety, noble, ecclesiastical, and military, less stiff and formal than either in Paris or the provinces. The chateau of Vincennes, like the palace of Hamp- ton Court, was inhabited by royal pensioners, many invalided officers and their families, and a chapter of ecclesiastics. Among them were several whose names fill a few lines on the pages of history: the Lieutenant du Roi, Rougemont, pimply and insolent, as Mira- beau, his prisoner, described him; the learned and toothless but still skittish Madame de Puisieux; Moreau de la Grave, the royal censor, of the type that condemned the encyclopedie and approved Cre- billon's novels, and the nimble-minded Caraccioli, better known to letters as GanganelH. The chateau was a little cosmos and lodged six hun- dred persons, without counting the prisoners in the dungeon. The Abbe Bimont was received everywhere, but made no .visits, and entertained but few people. There were balls, however, and races, inaugurated and patronized by the King's sporting brother, D'Artois, illuminations and fireworks, ever dear to the Gallic eye, and informal receptions every fine evening in the 124 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND pavilion of the park. Manon forgot her books and enjoyed everything with the zest of girlhood, from the dances and the talks to the visits to the hermits in the woods. They amused themselves at home, too, for the abbe was as young as his niece. The only serpent in this little Eden was the blue-blooded Mademoiselle d'Han- naches, the abbe's housekeeper. Her irritable temper and tiresome pretensions troubled Manon more than they did her amiable uncle. One day when they were declaiming a most moving scene from one of Voltaire's tragedies, Mademoiselle d'Hannaches, who had been silently spinning, interrupted them with shrill screams to the hens, who, more appreciative than the lady of many quarterings, had assembled to listen. Naturally, such incidents were trying to an idealist. After dinner, when the table was cleared, with mufF-boxes for racks, music was made. "While the good Canon Bareux, spectacles on nose, plays the bass viol with shaking bow, I scrape my violin, another canon accompanies us on a squeaking flute, and we have a concert fit to frighten cats. Then I run into the garden, pick a rose or some parsley. I take a turn in the poultry-yard; I amuse myself with the brood hens and the little chicks. I rack my brain for anecdotes and stories to warm up these benumbed imaginations, and to turn the talk away from the chapter, which sends me to sleep some- times [1776]. ... At the canon's house I must live like a canoness. There the wine-cellar is better furnished than the library, and more time is spent at table than anyivhere else." Some of her holidays were more eventful. Strict as she was in many things, there was a lurking spirit FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 125 of adventure in her. All Manon's world loved dis- guises and masks, and to put on a maid's or a peas- ant's costume was often a means of travelling inex- pensively and safely. Manon, invited by her cousin Trude to spend the day in Etampes, and wishing to visit the sights (instead of passing the time listening to provincial gossip from her cousin's hostess), dressed as a peasant, mounted a donkey, and successfully played the role of country girl all day. She trotted about alone through Etampes, with her arms akimbo, visited everything, from the tanneries to the Calvary where Ravaillac sharpened his knife, dined with the cook, and decided that if she were ever able to travel, it would be dressed as a peasant or a man (June 16, 1778). Perhaps her pleasantest social relations were with artists, relations singularly free from pretensions or artificiality. The genial freemasonry of the craft made the engraver a welcome visitor at the studios of emi- nent confreres. Manon's happiest hours with her father were passed in the ateliers of his friends, or at art exhibitions, where she keenly appreciated his tech- nical knowledge of and trained taste in the arts, and his evident pleasure in communicating them to her. A visit that she made to Greuze's studio is pleas- antly reported to Sophie (September 19, 1777). "The subject of his picture is 'The Paternal Curse.' I will not attempt to describe it in detail; it would be too long. . . . One may find fault with M. Greuze for the grayness of his coloring, which I should accuse him of putting in all his pictures if I had not seen on the same day a painting of another style which he showed me with especial kindness. It is a little, naiVe, 126 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND fresh, charming girl who has just broken her jug. She has it on her arm, near the fountain where the acci- dent has just happened. Her eyes are not too widely opened, her mouth is yet half ajar, she is trying to realize her misfortune, and does not know if she is guilty or not. You cannot imagine anything more piquant or prettier. The only fault that one could justly find with M. Greuze is that he has not made his little one sorry enough to prevent her from returning to the fountain. I told him so, and the pleasantry amused us. He did not criticise Rubens this year, and I was better pleased with him personally. He told me complacently the amiable things the Emperor said to him. 'Have you been in Italy, sir?' 'Cer- tainly, Monsieur le Comte' [Joseph H was travelling incognito as the Count of Falkenstein]; 'I lived there two years.' *You surely did not find your style there; it belongs to you; you are the poet of your paintings.' This remark was very subtle; it had two meanings. I was naughty enough to underline one of them, an- swering him in a complimentary way: *It is true that if anything could add to the expressiveness of your pictures it is your descriptions of them.' The author's self-love served me well. M. Greuze appeared flat- tered. I stayed three-quarters of an hour. There were but few people there. Only Mignonne was with me. I had him almost to myself. I wished to add to the praises 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. FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 127 I kept quiet and that was the best thing that I did." Rousseau was less accessible. He had been for at least a year the god of Manon's idolatry when a friend gave her an opportunity to approach her deity by in- trusting her with a commission for Rousseau. Realiz- ing that he would not receive a young girl, for his devotees in Paris had been frightened away from his door by the snappish Cerberus, Therese Levasseur, Manon wrote him a long letter in which there was much besides the original errand, announcing that she would call for an answer. She describes her visit in a letter to Sophie: "I entered a cobbler's alley, the Rue Platriere. I climbed to the second story and knocked at the door. No one could enter a temple more reverently than I did this humble portal. I was agitated, but I felt none of the timidity that I experience in the presence of those petty society people for whom I have no real esteem. I balanced between hope and fear ... a woman of fifty years of age at least appeared. She wore a round cap, a simple, clean house-gown, and a large apron. She had a harsh, even a rather hard look. 'Does M. Rousseau live here, madame?' 'Yes, mademoiselle.' 'May I speak to him.?' 'What do you want of him .?' "*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 cer- tainly it is not you who wrote a letter like that — ' 128 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND " * Excuse me,' I interrupted. ** *Even 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 is, that my husband has given up all these things en- tirely. He has left everything. He would not ask anything better than to be of service, but he is old enough to rest.' " *I know it, but I should have been flattered to receive this answer from his lips. I would have profited eagerly by this opportunity to offer my homage to the man of the whole world that I esteem the most. Receive it, madame.' "She thanked me, still keeping her hand on the lock, and I went down-stairs with the very slight satis- faction of knowing that he found my letter too well- written to believe it the work of a woman." (February 29, 1776.) Not long afterwards Rousseau died, and Manon never saw the writer who, after Plutarch, had most powerfully affected her philosophy of life. Rousseau was to her, as to so many of her contemporaries, an initiator. His feverish passion, his sentiment, that so often declined into sentimentality, were the antidotes to the dryness and cynicism that were withering the heart of an overcivilized, artificial society. The glow- ing eloquence with which in the midst of conventions he advocated a return to nature; his sanctification of love; his tender idealization of the domesticities; his sympathy with childhood; his affection for beauty, music, flowers, the country; his audacious theories of political organization; his novel social system; FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 129 above all, his knowledge, intuitive and acquired of the heart, and the irresistible potency of a poignant appeal to it — all these rhapsodies and exhortations, and descriptions, invested with the magic of a style exquisitely simple and beautifully direct, caused not only one revolution but many. Like most of his readers, Manon was charmed and convinced at once by what Lecky called Rousseau's "wonderful fusion of passion and argument," his pre- eminent trait. His logical faculty, his able defense of his opinions, his vigorous grasp of principles, were those quahties that she was quaUfied to appreciate. Rousseau's shortcomings and defects were invisible to her. His lack of the justness of mind that under- lies authoritative opinions and prepares definite con- clusions by previously weighing and appraising values was unperceived by her, captivated by the logic with which he defended his tenets. That he made no original discoveries, that the doctrines of the Social Contract were largely derived from the works of Locke and Sidney, that his political system, when he diverged from these models, was clumsy and complicated, made little or no impression on a girl unfamiliar with ques- tions of practical politics. Nor did they on those older and wiser, who carried Rousseau's reforms and revolts into every department of life. Women were the most avid recipients of Rousseau's message. His gospel was received by them with an unquestioning consent, a complete adherence, that they had never yielded to the teaching of Voltaire. The reason is easily found. The task of Voltaire was to annihilate the old creed, to demonstrate its incapac- I30 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ity to satisfy the spiritual and mental needs of hu- manity; the mission of Rousseau was to establish a new faith, to prove the adequacy of natural religion to the ethical and emotional wants of man. It is the nature of creatures feminine to adore the creative rather than the destructive powers. Voltaire, the extirpator of intolerance, was perforce less authoritative to beings who were receptive and assimilative than Rousseau, the apostle of a new worship, the religion of the heart. He who aspires to leadership of popular opinion should be dogmatic. Assertion, not exposition, is his business. He should not content himself with a statement of facts, and then leave his followers to draw their own inferences. With most men outworn formulas are re- jected because newer formulas are ready at hand to replace them. "From a board one drives out a nail with another nail," prosaically remarked the poet Cino. Men live by affirmations, not by negations. Voltaire demonstrated; Rousseau dogmatized. Vol- taire, as became the founder of intellectual liberty, presented his case with comment and suggestion, com- parison and example, and then left the conclusion to his reader's judgment. Rousseau, a true child of clear- headed, logical, narrow-minded Geneva, began his case by pronouncing a decision, continued his plea with a brilliant defense of his position, and ended with a burst of eloquence, or a touch of sentiment. Voltaire's appeal was to the mind; Rousseau's to the feelings. It was the absurdity of legal torture, the unreason of religious intolerance, the stupidity of cruelty, that revolted Voltaire. It was not only women who failed to perceive the earnestness under the gibes FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 131 of this master of mockery, Voltaire's method of at- tack on abuses mystified the literal-minded in general. His light lash cut to the bone, but it was wielded with an air of easy trifling, an appearance of detachment, that to the enthusiast seemed lacking in moral serious- ness. Manon apparently never included the defender of the Calas and the Sirven among her admirations, though she made many Protestant friends. The diamond-pointed wit and the satire of Candida left her unmoved. She merely mentions having read it as a child, and does not refer to it again. Children, like simple-minded folk, and cultivated dogs, and all instinctive creatures whose perceptions are unblunted by reasoning and undulled by reflection, are repelled by irony. Sarcasm generally offends, and consequently seldom sways, women. No satirist from Juvenal to our own day has ever been a lady's author. The dicta of the spirit that denies are reluctantly accepted by Eve's daughters. Voltaire, the athlete of intellectual emancipation, the bitter jester, railing against bigotry and cruelty, would never have been revered by them had not the scoffer been doubled by Voltaire the bene- factor, the saviour and defender. The charities of the Sage of Ferney softened the ironies of Arouet, the pungent wit. Manon had read Voltaire's articles in the Encyclo- pedie side by side with Rousseau's Emile, which she admired temperately and discussed rationally. But with the Heloi'se she slipped past the wicket of reason and found herself in an enchanted wood, a realm of demonstrative affections and delicious emotions, where sentiment was lord of life. To feel and to express feel- 132 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ing, these were the first commandments of the new ruler, to return to nature the third. Never was sub- ject more eager to hear, more prompt to obey, than was Manon. She was one of a countless multitude of converts. There can be no clearer evidence of the sustained fervor with which Rousseau's mandates were followed than the transformation of costume, of daily habits, of education, of literary style, of the face of the earth itself which took place, not only in France but in England, Germany, and Italy, at the close of the eighteenth century. Rousseau had made man over in his own image. Julie, the new Helo'ise, does not figure among our "favorite heroines." Her transports and despairs, her sacrifices and scruples, would excite smiles rather than admiration in a society that cherishes detach- ment as she cultivates expansion, and no doubt Saint- Prieux seems as far away from the sympathies of the twentieth-century lover as is Theagenes or Amadis. But to Manon the exalted and loquacious pair seemed as real, as moving, as were Lancelot and Guinevere to ill-starred Francesca. Rousseau sanctioned Manon's own excess of emotion, her ardors and enthusiasms; he kindled her imagination, which her studies and meditations had held in leash; she confessed as much in after life. CHAPTER VII BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS Manon's mother, her daughter suspected, had pru- dently kept the Nouvelle Heloise from the intense and imaginative girl. It was not until after Madame Phlipon's death that the book was brought to Manon by the Abbe Legrand in the hope of rousing her from the lethargy into which she had fallen. Her loss was literally irreparable. Her mother had been ailing for some time, and the doctors had recommended exercise and country air, and a short visit to Meudon seemed to prove as beneficial as it was delightful. The day after their return to town Manon went to visit Sister Agathe at the convent; she left her mother a little tired from her excursion, but apparently well, at three o'clock; at five, on her return, Madame Phlipon was dying. The end came before midnight. A stroke of paralysis, aggravated by an abscess in the head, which had not been suspected by her physicians, was the cause of her death (June 7, 1775). The shock threw Manon into a nervous fever. For two weeks the kind Besnards, who seemed to find youth and strength to nurse her, feared for her life and her sanity. One fainting-fit followed another, and the re- lief of weeping was denied her, until a tender letter from Sophie opened the source of her tears. She felt herself an orphan, and her first interview with her father after their bereavement increased her sense of 133 134 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND isolation. M. Phlipon's proffered consolations were of a more practical than sentimental nature. Provi- dence had disposed of everything for the best, he as- sured Manon. Her mother's work, viz., her child's education, was finished, and if Manon was fated to lose one of her parents, it was fortunate that Heaven had left her the one who would be most useful to her pecuniarily ! This eminently sensible consideration literally distracted the bereaved girl. Her father's insensibility pierced her wounded heart anew, and brought on a return of the dangerous swoons and con- vulsions. She was convinced that she was her mother's unique mourner, and the sorrow that should have gently drawn father and daughter together, com- pleted their estrangement. Madame Phlipon's death closed the sunny and tran- quil period of Manon's youth; with that gentle spirit, its cloudless morning passed away. The girl now in- herited her mother's household cares, which she shared with the devoted Mignonne, and the far more difficult task of trying to divert and interest her father, and to keep him by his own fireside. She was lamentably unsuccessful. Piquet was insipid when played for love, conversation flat where there were no ideas and tastes in common, no love of music or of books. After some dutiful endeavors M. Phlipon fled from the dul- ness of evenings at home to more convivial society. If the story of the Idle Apprentice is a sad one, that of the Idle Master is sadder still. M. Phlipon grew every day more indolent and dissipated; he took a mistress, and he spent more than he earned. Help- lessly Manon watched their modest fortune dwindle BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 135 away. After her mother's death her own dowry should have been secured to her, but her relatives thought, naturally, that her interests were safe in her father's hands, and also feared to offend him by asking for the customary inventory of property. Manon herself had too much family pride to complain of her father's disorders and extravagance. Her books and her pen were her consolations. She wrote a number of meditations and descriptions, which she entitled somewhat pompously (Euvres de loisir, et reflexions diverses. She had no other object in writ- ing than to record her thoughts and experiences and to express her emotions; and these essays are in no way remarkable. They are tinged with a mild melan- choly, and are generally didactic in tone. They con- tain touches of grace and feeling; among them is a very tender tribute to Madame PhHpon's memory, and a vivid account of a literary pilgrimage to the Hermitage of Rousseau at Montmorency with M. de Boismorel (October 29, 1775). This gentleman, whom Manon had not seen since her stay with Bonnemaman on the He Saint Louis, came to make his visit of condolence after Madame PhHpon's death (June, 1775). He found the studious child had budded into a pretty and cultivated girl. He soon made a second visit; Manon was absent, but her CEuvres were on the table in her little retreat that M. PhHpon was indiscreet enough to show him. M. de Boismorel begged for a sight of the manuscripts, and le parent terribley who did nothing by halves, promptly lent them to the curious visitor. The wrath of Manon, sing Muse, when on her 136 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND return she discovered the violation of her sanctuary ! "This offense against liberty and propriety," as she termed it, was condoned next day after receiving a well-turned letter from M. de Boismorel, offering her the use of his library and expressing his interest in her work. This was the origin of a long correspondence and a warm friendship; Manon tasted for the first time the pleasure of being appreciated by a man whose judgment she valued. M. de Boismorel possessed, besides his books and many other desirable things, an estate below Charen- ton, the Petit Bercy, with a garden running down to the Seine. He often pressed the Phlipons to visit him there, but Manon, remembering his mother's reception of Bonnemaman, long resisted, and only yielded when further refusal would have imperilled her friendship with her dear "Sage," as she called her new friend. It is amusing to compare this interview with the former one. The ladies of the De Boismorel family were in the summer drawing-room when the Phlipons arrived, and the dragon of Manon's memory seemed less formi- dable in the presence of her amiable and devout daugh- ter-in-law. The mama, who had patronized Madame Phlipon and treated Manon as though she were a muff- monkey or a spaniel, was rather more polite to a tall and dignified young woman: "'How good-looking your dear daughter is, M. Phlipon ! Do you know that my son is enchanted with her .? Tell me, mademoiselle, don't you wish to be married ?' "* Others have thought about that for me, madame, but I have not yet reasons to decide me.' BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 137 "*You are hard to please, I think. Have you any objections to a man of a mature age?' "'The knowledge that I should have of the person himself would alone determine my liking, my refusal, or my acceptance.' "'That kind of marriage has more durabiUty; a young man often slips through your fingers when you believe him most attached to you.' "'And why, mother,' said M. de Boismorel, who had just come in, 'why should not mademoiselle believe herself able to captivate him utterly?' '"She is dressed with taste,' observed Madame de Boismorel to her daughter-in-law. "'Ah! extremely well, and so modestly, too,' she answered, with the suavity which belongs only to the devout, for she was of that class, and the prim little ringlets that shaded an agreeable face which had seen thirty-four summers were the sign of it. '"How different,' she added, 'from that mass of plumage we see fluttering above empty heads. You don't care for feathers, mademoiselle ? ' "*I never wear them, madame, because being the daughter of an artist, and going out on foot, they would seem to announce a position and a fortune which I don't possess.' "'But would you wear them in another situation ?' "'I don't know. I attach small importance to trifles. Appropriateness is my only rule in such matters, and I take care not to judge a person by my first impres- sions of her dress.' "The observation was severe, but I made it so mildly that its edge was dulled. 138 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ** *A philosopher!' she exclaimed with a sigh, as if she recognized that I was not of her kind." How differently would this patronizing kindness have been received by a young person of the middle class across the Channel ! How an English Manon would have blushed and simpered and bobbed her thanks for the great lady's condescension ! "La, ma'am, thank you kindly — it will be my study to deserve your future commendation," Miss Burney's Evelina would have said shyly, hanging her head in a pretty con- fusion, far more winning than the cool self-possession of this featherless philosophe. M. de Boismorel's garden and library and the ex- cursions he planned for the Phlipons proved more pleasing than his womankind. His only son, Roberge, an ordinary and eccentric boy of seventeen, often formed one of the partie carree. He had an unpleasant habit of staring at Manon, but she saw more curiosity than friendliness in his looks, and rather resented his attentions. To her he was but one of those many in- ferior and incapable persons on whom a whimsical social order had bestowed undeserved advantages. She learned later that M. de Boismorel had said to her father: "Ah, if my son were worthy of your daugh- ter, I might appear singular but I would be happy!" Young De Boismorel was a cross to his cultivated and studious father. He was indolent and pleasure- loving, cared for little except the opera and the Italian comedy and the companionship of his frivolous cousin, De Favieres. This youthful magistrate, made a con- seiller de Parlement at the age of twenty-one, spent his time writing comedies and ariettes, wearing his BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 139 robe as though it were a jester's motley. As a counter- attraction to the fascinations of De Favieres, and as an incentive to study, M. de Boismorel proposed to Manon that she should gently admonish Roberge ! Modestly veiled by anonymity, she might in the form of a letter hold forth to him on the sweets of a useful and innocent life and the joys of work and effort. Ancient precepts that from a father's lips had proved ineffectual might, with a touch of mystery and com- bined with an appeal to the boy's curiosity, appear less trite and more forceful. It was only in a literary century that such means could be conceived of to coun- teract a young man's fondness for the stage and the stage-door. We refer, as a matter of course, to the cor- ruption of the eighteenth, but what parent in the twentieth century would count on a prettily written homily to reform a lazy-minded and dissipated young man ^ Truly those were innocent as well as golden days, when the pen was mighty as the powder-puff". Manon, pressed into service as a reformer, at first declined, then accepted, and wrote a homily which she despatched to Sophie, who sent it to Roberge from Amiens. This letter is an example of an extinct literary genre. Bound to be didactic in tone, it is a terse and clear exposition of Manon's own philosophy of life, a sermon against idleness and selfishness, a eulogy of activity and usefulness. It is so faintly tinged with irony, so deftly sweetened by an appeal to the recipient's self-love, and so stimulating to curiosity, that the boy swallowed the bitter draft as though it had been a sug- ared beverage. He proudly read it to his friends, who ascribed it to that immoral moralist Laclos, and envied I40 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Roberge his scolding from such a source. So deep was the impression made on his vanity that he actually became industrious and domestic — for a little while. "Yes, monsieur," the letter commences, "on the banks of the Somme you are known and cherished. In spite of what the good La Fontaine says, I will wager that some of the Abderites admired Democritos, and in this country, sir, our minds are not so befogged by the smoke of peat that we do not recognize and praise the inimitable color, the brilliancy, the light- ness of the manners of the capital; above all, of that class of distinguished inhabitants in which you hold so high a rank. One of my fellow citizens [Gresset] celebrated formerly with success the exploits of a famous parrot; there is still among us more than one author fitted to take you for his hero. I, however, shall keep the silence becoming a poor little modern writer, disregarding the indiscreet ardor which in a transport of admiration cries to me audaces fortuna juvaty and shall leave to others who are more expert the task of cele- brating the gift of being amiable without striving to become so, and the precious art of becoming indepen- dent even while daily acquiring new ties. I ask you only what beneficent genius has bestowed on you these rare gifts which make you in my eyes an inexplicable phenomenon. Imbued with old ideas, I followed a toil- some road, your example struck me, I stop and study it. . . . "I had hardly begun to live when, parched by the thirst for happiness which is common to us all, I sought anxiously everything that I thought could appease it. What pleases at first does not satisfy always; I have BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 141 proved that more than once. Alas ! why was I not as happy as so many magistrates without business, so many pretty abbes without cares, so many people who do nothing. Perhaps, it is true, habit and custom would have finally given me the right to be useless without remorse, and idle with impunity, but while waiting for this comforting privilege, my fervid imag- ination created new griefs for me. "I imagined Minerva appearing to me under the aspect simple and noble at once, that characterizes wisdom; her sage advice still echoes in my ears, the remembrance of it pursues me constantly. Teach me how to forget it, and share with me the importunate obsession. 'You wish to be happy,' said Minerva to me; 'learn then how to be so.' " Then follows an exposition of Manon's system of moral philosophy, and its practical application to daily life. Setting out with the desire of happiness as the means of gratifying it, she advocates an intelligent self-interest: human solidarity, the unity of society, the non-existence of independent felicity impose on us the obligation of being useful, while study and reflec- tion furnish us the only means of understanding our duties and the strength of mind to perform them. "*An enlightened reason is the preservative against, or the balm for, misfortune; a full and occupied life is the pivot of pleasures. Even if everything is only a matter of opinion, if existence is but a dream, it does not follow that there are no rules by which we may dream more at our ease, and the sage will always follow them. Let me light in thy heart the divine fire of enthusiasm for the beautiful, the good, and the 142 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND true.' With these words Minerva disappeared and left me troubled, moved. I began to follow the path she traced for me, when seeing you nimbly running in the opposite direction, a wish to gallop after you was born in me. 1 did so, here I am, but let it be to lead you back again. "It is useless to carry my fiction further; you under- stand me. I know you well enough to believe that yours is a nature that permits us to hope; I have seen a father who deserves to gather the fruit of his care. The exhortation of a man who will remain unknown to you should not be indifferent to you. Feeling and truth guide my pen, they alone should touch you, as they alone with me replace wit and talent. How flattered I should be, if on finding you what you might be on my return, I should be able to say to myself: 'I have contributed to his happiness, and to that of a worthy family, of which he is the consola- tion and the hope.' " M. de Boismorel's kindness supplied Manon not only with such tomes as those of Bayle but also the literary novelties of the moment. By the Sage's invitation she attended a sitting of the Academy, a social as well as a literary event, on Saint Louis's day (August 25, 1775). It was a complicated and lengthy performance, beginning with a mass in the chapel, sung by the stars of the opera. A fashionable preacher pronounced the panegyric on the saintly King, ren- dered piquant, on this occasion, by an indirect satire of the government and constant references to the new philosophy. In the evening Manon saw, for the first time, some of those writers whose works were BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 143 her daily companions. She confesses to disappoint- ment. The audacious D'Alembert was insignificant to look on, and sharp and rasping to hear, and the Abbe Delille read his tuneful verses in an unmusical voice. The annual prize was given to La Harpe, and his essay, L'Eloge de Catinat, has taken a permanent place in French literature. This more than fulfilled the girl's expectations, and she paid it the tribute of tears, tears of enthusiasm, of noble excitement. And to one "born a scribe" a meeting of the Academy was truly a red-letter day. This public homage to litera- ture, this honoring of letters as one of the nation's glories, not only by the intellectual element but by the court, the nobles, the fashionable, and the frivolous, seemed a sanction of her own master-passion, and to link the solitary and obscure student to an illustrious band of coworkers. Manon's devotion to literature was wholesomely incited by the appreciation and companionship of some new and congenial acquaintances. The '*Sage of Bercy" was but the first among a little group of congenial friends that frequented the Phlipon house- hold. Manon's mother lacked the social instinct with which her more expansive and highly vitalized daughter was endowed. Visits from friends outside the family circle had generally been confined to the shop and the studio; they now extended to the salle, where there was a shy but cordial hostess, who could listen as well as she could talk, and whose wide reading and alert mind lent a vivid and varied charm to conversation. And the friends who occasionally dined with the Phlipons, and sat out the long " apresdisnees" around 144 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND the fire, chatting, reading aloud, reciting verses, dis- cussing freely without heat or bitterness all things under the stars, and some things beyond them, appear singularly living and attractive through the dust of a century. One feels a faint retrospective envy of the girl who could gather about her, poor and obscure as she was, such a coterie of studious and intellectual men, and a conviction that the social conditions which produced them were more favorable to the expansion of mind and development of character than modern historians are disposed to admit. M. de Sainte Lette, M. de Sevelinges, the Captain of Sepoys, Demont- chery, the Swiss watchmaker More, the Abbe Bexon, a collaborator of Buffon, to whose works he intro- duced Manon, and Pictet de Warambe, a Genevese literary man of some note, who corresponded with Franklin, wrote for the Journal des Dames, and planned and discussed his articles with Manon, formed her little circle, in which M. de Sainte Lette was facile princeps. He was a man of sixty years, who having been a waster in his youth, had been obliged to become a worker in later life. To mend his broken fortunes he had passed thirteen years in Louisiana, as superintendent of the French trade with the In- dians, where his "prodigious strength of body, fully equalled by that of his mind," is noted in a page of New World history. He was spending ten months in Paris when he made Manon's acquaintance (January II, 1776), through a letter of introduction to her fa- ther, and was on his leisurely way back to Pondicherry, where he occupied an official position. He spent a large part of his leave in Paris at Manon's fireside. BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 145 Gentlemen of over forty years of age were considered harmless by M. Phlipon — a most vigilant duenna when younger men were present. The society of this dis- illusioned yet not embittered man of the world, who was also a man of affairs, who knew the savannas of America as well as the bosquets of Versailles, and whose naturally philosophical mind had been en- riched and developed by his wide experience of men, brought a novel element into Manon's life. M. de Sainte Lette personified for her that knowledge of the world which she had hitherto often failed to discover in the specimens of the ancien regime that had drifted across her social horizon. His winning simplicity pleaded pardon for his mental and social superiority, and his utter absence of claim or pretension disposed his auditors to forgive his attainments. To the at- traction of a frank though grave manner M. de Sainte Lette added an intellectual vigor and independence of character which the gentle **Sage" did not pos- sess. No wonder, as Manon writes Sophie, the hours galloped by in his society, and M. de Sainte Lette seems to have felt for the eager, intelligent girl that indefinable yet most definite sentiment which it is the privilege and the consolation of the autumn of life to feel in its fulness. There is a wistful sweetness, a sense of evanescence, a dim foreboding of separation in the friendship of the very young and the old, "Why did you come into the world so late?" "Why could you not have waited for me ? " the old and young unconsciously ask each other. Manon's two friends were lost to her soon after she had learned to know and depend upon 146 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND them. Sunstroke carried oJfF M. de Boismorel after an illness of only a few days (September 13, 1776), and M. de Sainte Lette died at Pondicherry in 1778- 79. He had left a heritage to Manon in M. de Seve- linges, whom he had presented to her. They mourned Sainte Lette together, exchanged manuscripts, criticised each other's writings, for M. de Sevelinges had also coquetted with letters and corresponded for some time. M. de Sevelinges was melancholy, lonely, and sentimental. He possessed that delicate taste which Diderot remarked was the result of remarkable sense, delicate organs, and a melancholy temperament. Manon was pleased and flattered by his observations on her compositions. Indeed, the Sage and Sainte Lette had already surprised her by urging her to write, to choose a literary genre, and to develop and perfect it. "If I were a man I would do so," was Manon's reply to these encouragements. Meanwhile she continued to chat and meditate on paper, though her time for so doing was filched from sleep and exercise, as she tells Sophie (December 25, 1776). "You find it strange that I write to you al- ways at one o'clock in the morning. The details of my daily life will tell you how I pass my time. At this season I never rise until nearly nine o'clock; the morning is spent in household tasks; in the afternoon I sew, thinking hard all the time, and inventing any- thing that I please, verses, arguments, projects, etc. In the evening I read until supper-time, which time is not fixed, as it depends on the return of the master [of the house], who, always out during the day, with no regard for his affairs, leaves me too often to answer to BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 147 all comers who wish to see him on business. He comes home generally at half past nine, sometimes at ten o'clock and later. Supper is soon finished, for when there are few dishes, when one never speaks a word and eats fast, meals cannot last very long. Then I take the cards to amuse my father and we play piquet. During the intervals I try to make talk; laconic an- swers cut it short. I turn my skein to catch up a bit of thread, I toil but in vain. Time passes, eleven o'clock strikes, my father throws himself on to his bed, and I go into my room and write until two or three o'clock." In June, 1777, the Academy of Besan^on offered a prize for the best essay on "How can the education of women make men better ?" Manon found the sub- ject attractive, and wrote a discourse which she sent to the academy. There were nine competitors, among them Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. None of the papers quite filled the conditions, so the competition was ad- journed until the next year, when neither Mademoiselle Phlipon nor the author of Paul et Virginie was rep- resented. Manon's essay was reviewed and criticised justly and ably by M. de Sevelinges, whose notes she greatly prized and sent to her girl friends. To some extent he began to take in her life the place left sadly vacant by the death of M. de Boismorel. Manon was intellectually lonely. Her heart was unoccupied, financial ruin was before her, and her vision of pure and disinterested passion had proved a fata morgana; her relatives, though kind and affectionate, inhabited another planet mentally. Madame Desportes, in whose house assembled the most congenial people of Manon's acquaintance, was always making matches 148 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND for her, presenting potential husbands to her, and urging her to marry. Manon's cousins, the Trudes, were not intellectually stimulating. The husband, a manufacturer of mirrors, adored respectfully and dis- tantly, yet most jealously, his wonderful, clever kins- woman, and bored her to extinction almost in conse- quence. Madame Trude was the Parisienne we have agreed to call typical. She combined a deep sense of the hollowness of the world with a passion for its futilities. She contrived to be truly pious and extremely coquettish synchronously, never missed a mass or a ball, and would pass three hours before her glass after sitting up all night with a sick friend. She would weep all the morning over her husband's rough- ness or neglect, laugh and sing all the afternoon, and dance all the evening. Neither of these people ever opened a book, or possessed an idea in common with the cousin they both loved. Association with them was like playing with grown-up children. In this dearth of kindred minds M. de Sevelinges's companionship grew very precious to Manon. His letters were the loopholes through which she looked out on the world of intellectual activities. The prac- tical M. Phlipon, who indulged in too many extrava- gances himself to permit any in his daughter, soon objected to a correspondence that cost several cents a day in postage-stamps. Manon rebelled against having her outlook walled up; she therefore begged her uncle Bimont to receive M. de Sevelinges's letters for her at Vincennes. The good abbe, willing as one of Shakespeare's priests to oblige a lady, forwarded the letters under his own hand. He had great con- BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 149 fidence in his niece, none whatever in his brother-in- law, and he regarded M. de Sevelinges as an ordinary suitor, rather old for Manon, a little too well born, a little too poor, to please M. Phlipon, but desirable in many ways. Manon did not undeceive the amiable abbe, and the epistolary chat ran on smoothly until, in spite of his fifty-five years and his two grown-up sons, M. de Sevelinges fell in love, pallidly and waveringly, with Manon. Her dowry had shrunk to a pittance, his income was too small to support a second family with- out impoverishing his children. He therefore sug- gested to Manon, whose existence was becoming daily more and more precarious and unhappy through her father's disorders, that they should form a union like those of some notable early Christians, a marriage of mental communion and sympathy. Manon, who afterwards described this arrangement to Sophie and to M. Roland, had, without loving him, grown very fond of the sensitive, courteous gentleman, and asked nothing better than to become his daughter under the name of wife. Her radiant visions of happiness had been dimmed by painful acquaintance with the darker side of life. La Blancherie's defection and his impossible book, her father's dissipation, two or three unpleasant experiences, had somewhat tarnished her ideal of man, and she esteemed herself fortunate in becoming the lifelong friend of a philosopher who was also a gentleman. But there was a vagueness, a mysterious reticence about M. de Sevelinges's proposal that was disturbing to confidence. Manon's frankness did not encounter I50 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND equal candor. She was puzzled, then suspicious, and the correspondence languished. One day she was called to the shop to see a customer in the absence of her father. She found there an elderly gentleman who ordered an engraved seal. There was something strangely familiar in his voice and appearance, but it was not until he had gone that Manon realized, in a bewildered way, that the customer was M. de Seve- linges in disguise (November i, 1778). Far from being touched by this romantic escapade of her ambiguous suitor, Manon was shocked and annoyed. She realized the dangers of despising the defenses of conventionality. She felt also that M. de Sevelinges had forfeited his dignity by this clandestine visit. Her own self-respect suffered through the suspicion that he thought such concealment could be agreeable to her. It never oc- curred to her that her adroit arrangement for receiv- ing his letters might suggest further enterprises sub rosa to an experienced man of the world, who, "like the poor cat i' the adage," stood hesitating on the brink of a decision. His action decided Manon, however, and put her on her guard. Still, she did not break openly with him until after her betrothal to M. Roland, when she gave the coup de grace to their moribund corre- spondence in a letter that is a model of kind severity. The young girl who ventured outside the stockade of convention had to be prepared for an occasional attack, and sometimes even a blow. Manon had counted too much on the rectitude of her intentions and her conviction that frankness might be substituted for prudence. As it was, she returned from this little sally into the open with no more harm than an added BEREAVEMENT AND NEW FRIENDS 151 distrust of men and their professions. Her early ideal was being battered into a different shape by harsh experience. She was learning that straight thinking does not necessarily imply clean living, and that the pos- session of the wit to know does not furnish the will to do the right, and was in consequence disposed to look reverently on any one who united these qualifications. She realized that philosophy, like devotion, had its hypocrisies and its TartufFes; therefore, she always anticipated with pleasure the visits of a friend of the Cannets, who they assured her was a sage in con- duct as well as in belief. CHAPTER VIII ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE This M. Roland de la Platiere, inspector of manu- factures, bearer of a letter from Sophie, had presented himself to Manon on January ii, 1776. "He is an enlightened man, of blameless life, to whom one can only reproach his admiration for the past at the ex- pense of the modern, which he undervalues, and his weakness for liking to talk too much about himself," Sophie had written of him. Manon was busy with a letter to her friend when M. de la Platiere called. She received him en neglige ^ in white dimity short gown and ruffled petticoat, her unpowdered hair turned up under a big cap. She had expected a sage — she saw a tall, lean, yellow man, of some forty odd years, al- ready slightly bald. His address was good though somewhat formal, and his simple, easy manners allied the politeness of the well-born to the gravity of the philosopher. This gravity was neither forbidding nor severe, for when he spoke his regular features be- came animated and expressive, and a shrewd smile transformed his thoughtful face. His voice was deep and his diction, though piquant, was harsh. *'An ex- terior more respectable than seductive," thought Manon, whose eyes were full of the vivacious, glowing face of another philosopher of half M. de la Platiere's years. But the latter had dwelt so lately with the rose — he had just left Sophie — that Manon welcomed 152 ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 153 him with timid cordiality, blushed, stammered, and listened with pretty deference to his opinions on Ray- nal, Rousseau, Voltaire, travelling, and, of course, the government. The girl was too fluttered to appear well; she regretted it naively to Sophie, fearing that she had not justified her friend's report of her. Never- theless, M. de la Platiere asked permission to come again, which she accorded gladly: "Nous verrons s'il en profitera.^* He did profit by it, but the second visit was less agreeable. Manon had a bad cold. Papa Phhpon played watch-dog, a tribute to the personal charm of the caller, and grew impatient and fussy as the visit lengthened; Manon was nervous and annoyed by her father's rude- ness, and "was more stupid than the first time." M. de la Platiere laid violent hands on her idols. BufFon was nothing but a charlatan, his style was only pretty, and as for the Abbe Raynal, his history was not philo- sophical, it was a novel, only fit for toilet-tables. These heresies startled Manon. She confesses, how- ever, that she does not prize Raynal quite so much as before, and is growing suspicious of Buffon — "I pick them over more." The philosopher was evidently as independent as she was in his opinions. They agreed better about the ancient writers, while regretting that "modern history does not show those touching revolutions where whole peoples struggle and combat for liberty and the public good." Patience, my friends, you may yet see this affecting spectacle ! By May, Manon had learned to appreciate the men- tal rectitude, sound judgment, and chastened good taste of M. de la Platiere's literary criticisms, as well 1 54 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND as the variety and extent of his information. In June she dreamed of him, and was sorry not to know 3.ny- thing about him. In July she gently resented Sophie's criticism of him, and in August she accepted the cus- tody of his manuscripts and the responsibility of their disposal in case he should never return from a long ItaHan journey. M. de la Platiere dined at the Phlipons, with Sainte Lette two days before he left Paris. Good-bys were gayly said, and the traveller asked M. Phlipon's permission to embrace Manon; it was accorded, and though the ceremony was more solemn than tender, Manon graced it with a blush. **You are happy to go away," said Sainte Lette in his deep voice, "but hasten your return in order to ask as much again." The inspector's Italian tour was a long one. Dur- ing the eighteen months that he was absent from France, Manon had ample leisure to study the papers left in her care, and to form a very definite opinion of their author. Travels, reflections, projects for future works, personal anecdotes, incidents, and observations, jotted down roughly without any pretense of arrangement, all bore the impress of a strong character, a stern ideal of duty, and, above all, ceaseless mental activity. For M. de la Platiere had also been prodigiously in- dustrious in his economy of time and use of oppor- tunity. And his opportunities had been wrested from a contrary fate. If the sight of a good man struggling with adversity is a noble spectacle for gods, the in- spector of manufactures had contributed largely to the entertainment of Olympians. Born with many advantages, the perversity of destiny, that vengeful. J. M. ROLAND DE LA PLATlfiRE, INSPECTOR OF MAXUFACTIRES AT LYONS Engraved by Lemoine in 1779 ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 155 uninvited fairy godmother who so often intrudes at a birth-feast, had by some trick or turn changed them to stumbhng-blocks in the way of achievement. Jean Marie Roland de la Platiere, born in the manoir of Thizy (called Theze to-day), baptized the 19th of February, 1734, was one of the ten children of Jean Marie Roland, the elder, and Damoiselle Therese Bessj^e de Montozan. The Rolands were an old family (even if we disregard a vague ancestor believed to be a man-at-arms of Charles VII), and begin their line with the definite Nicholas Roland, inhabi- tant of Thizy-en-Beaujolais, who in 1574 married a certain Dame Gabrielle Mathieu. We do not know if like the Prince Charming and the Beautiful Prin- cess of fairy-tale they lived happily ever afterwards, but they certainly had many children, and the chil- dren achieved position and honor. Such picturesque titles as "Seigneur de la Place," *Trieur," "Ecuyer,'* ** Grand Pe'nitencier," "Prevot des Marchands de Lj^on," "Conseilleur au Parlement de Paris," "Baron de la Tour," "Chevalier de Saint Louis," "Capitaine exempt des Cent Suisses du Roi," pleasantly enliven the family-tree. That of noble Damoiselle de Mon- tozan was even richer in such decorations, and one of its branches had been grafted on to the trunk of the Choiseuls. The damoiselle had aristocratic tastes, played high, kept an open house, and loved company, with the usual result. When Jean Marie Roland, the elder, died, his heir, Dominique, was obliged to sell the manoir, the big town house at Villefranche, and the domain of La Platiere at Thizy. The Rolands, how- ever, still kept the name of La Platiere, which they 156 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND transferred to the Clos of Theze, some miles from the town of Villefranche, which still belongs to the family. Five of the ten Roland children had died. Dominique and his three younger brothers had all be- come churchmen, when to the youngest one, Jean Marie, was offered, at the age of eighteen, the choice of going into business or becoming a priest. He de- clined both careers, and deciding to study manu- factures, he went to Lyons, then a centre of the linen trade. Two years later he travelled on foot to Nantes to take ship for the West Indies, but was pre- vented from sailing by a hemorrhage from the lungs. M. Godinot, a cousin of the Rolands, who was in- spector of manufactures in Rouen, offered the young Jean Marie a position there, which he gladly accepted, and began his life's work: the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of manufactures, not only in France but in foreign countries as well. His zeal and intelligence made him many friends in Rouen. Besides his technical studies and work in the factories, he applied himself to science, mathe- matics, chemistry, botany, and even drawing. His capacity and industry recommended him to Trudaine, the so-called "ministre du commerce" who promised him the first vacant position of importance, and mean- while sent him to Languedoc (1764), where he found both commerce and manufactures "in a horrible state of ruin and commotion." Here he first realized the extent and the importance of his work, its intimate relations with natural products, with nature herself, as well as to sister industries, and its close ties with society, law, government, and neighbor nations. In ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 157 Rouen, Roland, as history calls him, was a diligent, patient student; in Languedoc he became an energetic and enthusiastic economist. "The zeal of an inspec- tor, Hke his knowledge, should find its limits onl}^ when there remains no more good to do," he wrote just be- fore he fell ill from overwork. Trudaine, reluctant to kill the willing horse, then offered Roland the inspectorship of Picardy, which he accepted (1766). This was at once a comfortable and an important position, for Picardy was the third manufacturing province in France. But to Roland no post would ever be a comfortable one; he was too active-minded, too bent on improving and reviving the national industries. Picardy was in a ferment; greater and smaller interests were in collision, and new decrees and interfering parlements were fomenting disturbances. Home manufactures had been per- mitted by a decree of 1762 to the peasants, and the merchants and factory owners of Amiens were in open rebellion in consequence. They complained that all the standards of excellence had been lowered by this injudicious hberty of production, and that the quality of the goods had deteriorated. Roland soon discovered that the fires, robberies, and murders that afflicted the city were due entirely to the misery of the people, caused in its turn by the indefinite freedom accorded to industry, which had degenerated into utter hcense. **We must give complete liberty in taste, the choice of stuffs, the arrangement of colors and designs; on the contrary, we must be very rigid about everything that extends and assures consumption, like lengths, widths, and quaHties," Roland decided. How he com- 158 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND promised, how he pacified, soHcited, argued, and pleaded, he has himself described at greater length than I can follow here. As he defended the work- man and protected the poorer and smaller producers, he was respected and beloved by the people, and, very naturally, disliked and dreaded by the great merchants and middlemen. A meddling, scribbling, criticising Jack of all trades, who hobnobbed with every master workman in the province, knew every factory, inspected every bleaching-field, learned every process, and who, instead of jogging along in the old rut, was constantly suggesting improvements, calling for new processes, and inviting conservatives to ad- mire and imitate foreign inventions — such was Roland in the eyes of the gros bonnets of Amiens. Fortunately their hostility was impotent to check his investigations or his ameliorations. He went often to Paris to keep abreast of scientific discovery; he made long trips through France to visit her industrial centres, and followed them by foreign tours through Holland, Flanders, Switzerland (where incidentally he visited Ferney and dined with Voltaire), England, where he examined the new spinning-machine, Ger- many, where in the great fairs of Frankfort and Leipsic, the meeting-place of "Occident and Orient, he found people of all nations and merchandise of all kinds." There Roland conceived the idea of great international exhibitions of arts and industries, an idea which was realized more than half a century after his death, and for which he has never been honored. Roland's accounts of his toils and travels are a val- uable chapter in the history of French manufactures, ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 159 and are interesting to the general reader. Everything that he examined was noted, measured, and carefully described, always with a view to the improvement of the home product. "Everywhere I collected patterns and samples of the stuffs I had seen; everywhere I noted dimensions, prices, time, place, road and trans- portation expenses, and calculated the difference in foreign wages and moneys . . . this time, as always, I brought back bales and volumes; this time, as before, I opened them both to all. Samples, tools, machines, methods, processes, notes, everything, I offered for the improvement of our factories and our commerce with as much ardor as I had collected them." This is not overmodest, but Roland's assertions are corrobo- rated by his contemporaries and fellow workers. These reports are aids to appreciation of the reforms of Tur- got, and strongly suggest that if they had not been opposed the Revolution would have come in a milder guise. During the industrial pilgrimages Roland, backed by Trudaine, kept up a running fight with the munici- pality, the merchants, and the Chapter of Amiens. Always protecting the liberties of the workman against the encroachments of the employer, he added to his cares a campaign against the tyranny of the Chamber of Commerce, the Municipality, and the royal agents over the manufacturers, whom they considered as inferiors and excluded from the local government. Not contented with these reforms, this indefatigable combatant of abuses attacked the monopolies, and even the immemorial rights of the Chapter, who owned the only fuller's mill in this manufacturing town of i6o MANON PHLIPON ROLAND fifty thousand souls, and refused to allow a second one to be built ! The retirement of Trudaine (1777) resulted in the victory of the Chapter and the dis- comfiture of poor Quixote-Roland. He was more suc- cessful in the improvements he introduced in machin- ery, tools, and goods, notably the manufacture of cotton velvet, and under his inspectorship the number of shops in Amiens trebled. In spite of the enmity of the rich and ruling class in Picardy, his researches and their results made him many friends. He was an honorary member, associate, and correspondent of several academies in Rome, Paris, MontpeUier, and many other French towns, and his writings were quoted and respected by his fellows. One of his suggestions has become a world-wide reality and the grandest of modern festivals — the international industrial ex- hibition, as already noted. In spite of his tireless labors in his profession, Roland had found time to become not only a well-informed but a cultivated man. He was as famiHar with the liberal philosophy of his day as with its belles-lettres and its history. He was a lover of Italian poetry and of Latin literature. His taste was pure, though rather austere. He was a man of sentiment also, and from his busy life romance had not been excluded. This rigorous, rather brusque, decidedly combative man of affairs, with his firm grasp on the realities of existence, was not without imagination. He possessed an inner life of tender memories and proud aspirations. Long before he had won the position of inspector, long be- fore he could be described as bald and yellow, he had loved and been loved by a young Rouennaise, a Made- ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE i6i moiselle Malortie, who had died in 1773, and who, renamed CleobuHne by Roland, had been mourned in prose and verse by her betrothed. Later there had been several fond adventures, notably a tragic episode with a young Italian widow, proving that the observ- ing traveller had not confined his attention to ma- chinery and manufactures. The brilliant and coquettish Henriette Cannet was deeply interested in the grave inspector, and followed with some anxiety the progress of his intimacy with Mademoiselle Phlipon. The later portraits of Roland, painted and engraved during his ministry in 1792, show a high-nosed, deli- cate-featured elderly gentleman, a kind of benevolent ascetic in expression, with the unmistakable air of the philosopher and the idealist. His loosely flowing hair is characteristic of the reformer of all ages, and his frilled shirt is open at the throat in a decolletage that at sixty is pleasing chiefly to the wearer. But the gentleman who presented Sophie's letter to her friend sixteen years before was a very diff'erent person. Join-Lambert discovered not long ago an engraving from a drawing of Lemoine's, dated 1779, that pre- sents a truer image of the inspector of Amiens. This M. de la Platiere, simply and conventionally dressed, with the high stock and cravat, the tight-fitting coat, and the powdered hair neatly rolled at the sides and confined at the back by the black solitaire^ is a man of the world. The well-cut face is amiable though alert-looking, and suggests that the original of the portrait did not lack a certain quiet distinction. M. de la Platiere was, however, far less conventional than his portrait. He possessed an uncompromising 1 62 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND sincerity that many times had proved a lion in the path of success. His clear vision, his close grip on facts and their relations, made polite deceptions and the little tactful arrangements of truth by which favor is gained, and superiors flattered and managed, dis- tasteful, almost impossible, to him. He justly censured the hobbles and fetters by which French trade was partially paralyzed. His valuable reports and in- telligent suggestions were couched in terms of un- compromising candor. He disdained also to conciliate the varletry and underlings, whom even now in a re- publican France it is wise to propitiate. Very naturally Cerberus unsopped fell upon the reformer in the rear. Roland's ruthless veracity qualified the popularity he won by the unequalled prosperity he brought to Amiens. He was censor as well as philanthropist — a kind of Cato Franklin. Still, it is wise to remember in reading hostile criticism of him that Roland was an innovator, and was consequently constantly accused of pride, conceit, overconfidence in himself, as well as a lack of loyalty and patriotism, because he pointed out errors and blunders in the administration, and often ad- vocated adoption of foreign processes and inventions. Self-reliance, even a touch of arrogance were not un- pleasing to Mademoiselle Phlipon, disgusted with the supple spines of shopkeepers. Roland's high valua- tion of his own services and labors, his attachment to his own opinions, his exacting temper, seemed to Manon so many proofs of his independence of char- acter. She was inclined, perhaps, after her recent disappointments, to overvalue energy and industry in man. To her, frankness implied courage; Roland's contempt for formalities and conventions, his cham- ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 163 pionship of the poor and helpless, and his patient en- durance of discomfort and privation, she counted among the manly virtues she v^^as temperamentally qualified to appreciate. That he was peevish and exacting, alternately irritable and morose from constant over- work and poor health, she only learned later. As it was, in the disenchantments and desolation of her life he figured as the virtuous sage, and we know that Manon's ideal man had long been a philosopher. After the eclipse of La Blancherie, the death of M. de Boismorel, the departure of Sainte Lette, and the mys- tification of M. de Sevelinges, Manon's thoughts centred in M. Roland. He and M. Sainte Lette had spoiled her, she wrote Sophie, by giving her a dangerously high standard of comparison. When M. Pictet, the Genevese writer, congratulated her on having refused a very eligible suitor because he was indifl^'erent to her, she reflected that "she never found her own ideas and tastes except in men of a certain age who had corrected the errors of youth, and, above all, in those who had known misfortune and the vicissitudes of the world." The news of Roland, his hasty yet suggestive notes in his travels, brought to her from time to time by his brother Pierre, who was the Prior of Cluny, stimu- lated her imagination and occupied her thoughts. "Qu'il est heureux de parcourir cette belle Italie," sighed the stay-at-home as she read of Roland's wanderings. They possess interest even for the reader of to-day who glances over the six small volumes with their long title: Lettres ecrites de Suisse, d'ltalie, de Sicile, et de Malthe (sic) par M. . . . avocat au Parlement, a Mile. ... en 1776, 1777, 1778. Amsterdam, 1780. Many of these letters were not sent in sequence to i64 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Mademoiselle Phlipon. The epistolary form, so pop- ular in the letter-writing age, was given to Roland's rough notes after his marriage when they were ar- ranged for publication with the assistance of Madame Roland. M. Join-Lambert says of them rather severely : "Z^ mariage, auquel ces confidences litter aires out con- tribue, a peut-etre He pour Roland son plus reel succes d'auteur^ Yet it would be difficult to-day to find a manufacturer or worker in applied science who could produce such an all-round book of travel. Roland had many interests; the extent of his observations was not curtailed by the exactness of his information or the definite object of his travels. He made time for general sightseeing and for visits to celebrities. Though his work was primarily an account of the industries of the countries visited and of agricul- ture in its relations to commerce, historical and lit- erary associations and the fine arts found place in it, as well as reflections on government and institu- tions. The eighteenth-century traveller in Italy, were he Doctor Burney, Arthur Young, or Goethe, was, of course, bound to form and express opinions on the fine arts. They wore curious mental blinders, those intelligent folk; invariably bent the knee before the shabbiest bit of antiquity, and averted a scornful eye from the noblest mediaeval monuments. Roland erred in good company when he sought out the temples of Sicily and ignored the churches of Palermo. He was more impartial in his judgments of men. Freethinker as he was, he saw much to commend in the mild, tolerant rule of the Pope, for "Under it a sage could ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 165 live always in security." Roland's relationship with the Choiseuls, then influential in Rome, was probably most useful to him where influence counts for so much. He had several interviews with Pius VI, whom Roland praised for his amiable simphcity and courtesy, and who ''a su deposer ses grandeurs et s* entretenir avec un etre son semblable, sans lui rien faire perdre de la dignite de rhomme." (Lettre XVIII, Tom. V.) Roland's personal dignity has sufi'ered somewhat in the letters of his travelling companion, Bruyard, who was appointed by the minister to assist him in his notes and observations. Like those of many young assistants, Bruyard's criticisms of his chief are severe. These animadversions vary in gravity. Roland de- sired to be addressed as Bias, but at the same time he generously bestowed on the carping young neophyte the equally honored name of Thales. It was as Bias, by the way, that he corresponded with Mademoiselle Phlipon, who, more modern or more modest, replied under the name of Amanda, instead of that of Diotima or Hypatia. These innocuous diversions were popular among both the lettered and the illiterate. Practical unlearned folk, like Queen Anne and the great duchess, addressed each other more prosaically as Morley and Freeman. Apparently these good people extracted as much pleasure from such puerilities as we do from hyphenations and mysterious, mediaeval spellings of commonplace praenomens. Bruyard's second indictment was far more serious. Roland was scant of luggage, sparing of fresh linen. This is a grave charge, and forecasts the untidy re- publican of '92, the minister of the interior affronting i66 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND the court by his shoe-strings in place of buckles, and his wide-brimmed hat. As to Roland's mind — the young critic admitted that he had brains, but observes that when he met some one who had more, he was mute, all ears, and later repeated what he had heard as though it were original. "He knows all books, their authors, and their printers, and seems a savant to a librarian. He has travelled a great deal — he is a naturahst, or thinks he is, for what isn't he ? Finally, I am a dolt, an ig- noramus, I know nothing, and he knows everything." Perhaps the animus of this paragraph may be explained by this coda. The valet's testimony may be valuable but he does not see much of the hero, after all, and is as prejudiced as the enthusiast, only in a different way. The youthful censor is not more favorable to Made- moiselle PhHpon: "He [Roland] often read her letters to me, qui annoncent une demoiselle de beaucoup d' esprit, mais d'un esprit exalte, et qui tout en gemissant d'etre nee du sexe feminin, en laisse cependant entrevoir les faiblesses." So much for Manon. He was not easily deceived, this young Bruyard. It was perhaps in an exalted mood, or more likely in a lonely hour, that one day, some time in the summer of 1777, Amanda wrote the peripatetic Bias a certain "charming little letter," possibly after La Blancherie had proved himself truly "feather-headed," or Papa Phlipon had been unwontedly trying. Until then Roland had made all the advances. It was he who had paid long and frequent calls, undismayed by close parental attendance, and who had practically made Manon his literary confidente and executrix — no small ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 167 mark of confidence in one who had friends among well- known men of letters. Now it was the girl's turn. Her letter, received in Rome, was not answered until some time later. Roland also was engaged in an ex- perimental affair of the heart with an accomplished widow of Leghorn. From this adventure he emerged trailing his wing and dragging his claw, in sore need of renovation. Apparently Mademoiselle Phlipon's *' char mante petite lettre^' arrived opportunely to poultice his lacerated breast and salve his wounds. He carried it with him to his home in Villefranche, where he laid by for repairs after his strenuous joumeyings, for a traveller's life was not padded with comforts. "Leav- ing Paris in 1776, I returned in 1778 after an absence of eighteen months. I had again traversed Switzer- land, travelled over all of Italy, crossed the Alps three times and the Apennines three. I had visited Sicily, both the towns and the country. I had pushed on to Malta. Nine times I took ship. Three times I was in the most imminent peril,^and in danger of death. I slept thirty nights on bare boards. I was eighty nights without undressing, twenty-two consecutively, only occasionally changing my linen in the daytime. I bore incredible fatigues, rushing about, studying all day long, often lacking the necessities of life, and writing at night. The passion for seeing and learn- ing bore me up. I reached home, fell down like a stone, and remained several weeks between life and death." It was during his convalescence that Roland an- swered Manon's letter. He was still ill, depressed, weak in body and in soul. He spoke darkly of seek- i68 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND ing death, of a mysterious sorrow, of the hollowness of things terrestrial, and the comfort to be derived from the letters of a clever and charming young friend. Roland, the Spartan, the strong and self-sufficient Roland, evidently wished to be petted. The wounded hero is not less irresistible than the conquering war- rior. Manon dressed his hurts with deft, gentle fingers. Roland's numbed heart stirred under her soft touch, expanded, finally overflowed. A correspondence of which one hundred and twelve letters remain records the Hats d^ame of two exceptional beings, as well as the rise and progress of a singular affair of the heart. Manon's first letter in reply to Roland's plaint is an outburst of girhsh enthusiasm. I think the page of the Memoirs devoted to her courtship and marriage would have been written less summarily if Madame Roland could have glanced over Mademoiselle Phli- pon's love-letters again. Alas ! the fires are as eva- nescent as the snows of yore. Manon replied warmly and instantly to the bat- tered sage's appeal for sympathy (October 17, 1777). She reproached him for waiting until he was less mel- ancholy to answer her letter. She had thought him so tranquil and happy, while she was passing the hard- est year of her life, except the one when her mother died. Would you believe it, yesterday she was writing to Sophie: "I spend my life with indifference, and I would lose it without pain." "This expression escaped me in a moment of sadness, but I feel that friendship makes me change my language." She wishes to see the rest of his notes, and she ends by a confidence. Roland, if he returns to Paris before he answers her ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 169 letter, must glide lightly over what she has written of her sorrows. A very pretty entree en matiere. Apparently Roland thought so, for he sends his appreciative young friend the remaining manuscript of his travels. Her acknowl- edgment of the receipt of it is more didactic than enthusiastic. These notes included an account of his suit to the intractable widow, and Manon found much matter in them to increase her misanthropy. Roland's ItaHans were not estimable. "One must escape to the heart of Switzerland or the banks of the Thames to be reconciled with one's kind." To these generalities a little lesson is tacked on. "I am glad that you have traversed — a tempest, and I congratulate you with all my heart. It seems to me that each trial while exer- cising the strength of the soul should increase it; from this point of view misfortune becomes an advantage to those who know how to bear it. Therefore, I am far from pitying you at present." The key is lower, and the rather curt criticism of the longed-for notes is the reverse of enthusiastic. Still the friendship grew apace, for (August 12, 1778) Roland begs Manon to conceal the frequency of his visits from her old friends the Cannets; Manon writes to protest against this dissimulation and the reserve and petty deceits it imposes on her natural openness. However, the lady doth protest too little, and her letter is rather an expression of the pleasure she feels in sacrificing her candor for Roland's comfort than a plaint of her in- fidelity to Sophie. A letter from Amiens of December 30, 1778, con- tains the explanation of Roland's request. Henrietta I70 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Cannet loves him. It is to spare her that Roland hides his assiduities to her friend. The poor girl is ill — in fear of death. She talks with Roland, says many **choses honnetes"; her grieved brother tells him some- thing that shows they still have hopes of him, "but she — she knows well that — nothing — nothing — nothing," Roland writes enigmatically. This must have been mournful news for Manon, yet she gives but a few lines to it in her long answer (of January 3, 1779) to Roland's letter. Their intimacy was greatly increased by this secret between them, and poor Henriette's dis- appointment drew them closer together. Nevertheless, Roland was prudent, and in a guarded letter, written to thank father and daughter for some New Year's gifts, he retreated from the position he had seemed to occupy. Perhaps this was only a formal note to be read aloud to Papa Phlipon, Who knows ? Habitual frankness makes strange compromises on certain occa- sions. As time ran on, the expected occurred, and the Memoirs record briefly that during the winter of 1778- 79 Roland told Manon what she probably knew long before he was conscious of it — that he loved her. The girl confessed an equal flame, as her contemporaries would have put it, but lamented that marriage between them was impossible. Her lack of a suitable dowry, and her father's extravagance and misconduct, which might at any time break out into open scandal and increase the social inequaUty between her and Roland, were her reasons — reasons which the lover accepted with rather suspicious resignation. As love was out of reach, the philosophic pair agreed to forego it, and cultivate in its stead a kind of "amitie amoureuse," ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 171 A sentimental friendship is a beautiful but fragile possession. Love is an admirable actor, but for short seasons only. The doctor's hood (and is not Abelard there to prove it ?) becomes him vastly, and he can fold his wings close under the scholar's cloak, and carry his torch like a sage's staff as well as he can wear a hundred other guises — but not for long. Love thus austerely draped and disciplined is a very comely godhead, devotion to him a very pretty and dehcate form of asceticism — and Manon prided herself on act- ing ^' en heroine de delicatesse.'^ Perhaps the sweetest season of a mutual passion is the budding time of love, when "amor puer est,"' and thrives on such dainty fare as sighs and looks, when every advance is a dehcious conquest of audacity over timidity, when a stolen ribbon is a treasure, and a hand-clasp an event. It is precious and fugitive as those rare days when the vernal flame of spring foliage is shut fast in the exquisite closed shells of the young leaves and the folded burgeons of the new blossoms. A warm rain, a few hours of genial heat, and all this lovely reticence and discreet promise flowers into frank fulfilment. The devotees of friendship were peacefully happy for some months. They read and studied together, they wrote each other long letters, they exchanged verbal endearments in Italian, and quoted from sugary Amintas and Pastor Fidos. They confidently declared the tender sympathy that bound them was the one joy in an otherwise unpleasurable universe. Then one day in April something happened. What ? From cir- cumstantial evidence it may be inferred that "the val- 172 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND orous and erudite Shepherd MeHndor" had saluted his pastorella with an ardor more pastoral than platonic, without the permission and the presence of Papa Phli- pon, and the shepherdess was crying. Her pretty, unreal idyl was spoiled, shattered like a broken Dres- den-china eclogue. Love's opening wings had ruffled his sober cloak, and his torch was aflame again. At least as much may be inferred from Manon's letter of April 22: "It seems that I am not satisfied with my- self . . . and what is worse, you are the cause of it. I feel the truth of one of your remarks only too well, that the wrong-doing of your sex towards mine is all our fault." She will be responsible for them both in the future; she will keep their friendship pure. "I confess that your vivacity intimidates and frightens me. It would rob our intercourse of that happy con- fidence, that liberty, that noble and touching intimacy that are the fruits of virtue. It seems to me that friendship is not so ardent in its caresses. It is sweet, natural, and innocent." Roland's reply showed him more moved than Manon, but impenitent. On the contrary, he reproaches Manon for the coldness and the firmness for which he praises her, also, though grudgingly. The knowledge of her worth excuses, nay, justifies his transports. He complains of her aloofness, her desire to continue to enjoy the peace of a quiet conscience. " Tu pourrais done etre heureuse sans que je fusse heureux. This thought wrung my heart. Ah ! thou knowest but little of the ardor of my soul, and thou dost not seem to realize how much thou hast repressed it. Speak to me, then, of the tranquillity and the triumphs of thine. . . . ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 173 I have neither metaphysics to display nor antitheses to make. I have only a heart which is no longer mine to offer thee. It is frank to excess; it loves thee. That is all that I am worth, and it is enough for me to be worthy of thee in this way." All this is written for the first time in the intimate second person singular. This is Roland's first love-letter, as unreasonable, as artless, as boyishly triumphant as though it were written years before to Cleobuline. It was a most satisfactory declaration of love, but not in the least a proposal of marriage. Roland offered his heart but did not mention his hand. Manon, as she wrote Sophie, was not an Agnes. She had been trained in a harsh school. Experience was her mistress; M. de Sevelinges's enigmatic wooing, her own self-deception about La Blancherie, poor don- key that she had generously draped in a lion's skin, were severe lessons. She had been too confiding; had counted on meeting her own candor and openness in her friend. Because she had played her game of friendship with cards on the table, she had expected equal fairness in her partner. She had again been roughly disillusioned. Her father, too, had served as an unconscious Helot to this young Spartan. She had close under her eyes a heartwringing example of the disintegration that follows yielding to impulse. She was doubly guarded by imagination as well as experi- ence; was familiar with the language, the unconscious arts, the self-deception, the subterfuges, of passion. Richardson and Rousseau were her initiators, and their Clarissa and Julie were at once sympathetic compan- ions and horrible examples. The novels of sentiment, 174 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND far from blinding her or distorting Manon's views of life, were an admirable substitute for emotional expe- rience. So much has been written of the ravages of light literature, the disastrous effects of its perusal on the callow mind, that one is tempted to linger on its educational value, en passant^ and its uses as a sub- stitute for actual tarnishing experience. Manon was too well versed theoretically in the sophistry of pas- sion, the specious reasoning of a yielding heart, not to be on guard at once on the receipt of Roland's letter. His own writings, as well as those of Rousseau and Richardson, had furnished her matter for caution. Among Roland's papers there was one addressed to the obdurate Italian widow on the relative blameless- ness of a liaison with a young girl compared to the heinousness of a love-affair with a matron. The Italian lady held the more usual opinion, and Roland devoted several pages to confuting her. Perhaps they were in Manon's mind when she replied to Roland's declara- tion. If his was a confession of love, hers was the confession of faith of an ardent young creature whose noble passion for truth and justice has suffered no compromise with conventions. This letter, in spite of its careful phrasing, is the spontaneous utterance of a generous heart. The young Stoic's severe self-disci- pline, her impassioned pursuit of the finer issues of Hfe, told in this difficult hour as the muscles of the trained gymnast stiffen to meet a sudden strain. Manon's happiness was at stake. Youth was flying, life was narrowing and darkening all around her. This one man, who had amid mediocrity and pettiness seemed to her both an exception and an example, ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 175 was slipping down from the pedestal on which she had placed him. Roland, the sage, the wise, kind friend, was sinking into the mass of ordinary, selfish, greedy mankind. She could not easily consign him to that category. The one comforting reflection that remained was, Roland had misunderstood her — most ancient apology offered by loving women for the men who held them lightly. She would make her position very clear, trace the rise and progress of her feelings, explain her theory of conduct. Surely, then, without reproaches or complaints, he would realize how much he had been mistaken, and would judge and condemn himself. If there is a certain lawyer-like conciseness in this exposition, a firm, clear reasonableness that proves the fever in her veins had not reached her head, there is also a tender appeal to Roland, not to forfeit her confidence, to be for her the friend she can trust to defend her against her own weakness, if need be. In spite of elevation of style, between the smoothness of flowing periods we can divine the hurried throbs of a lonely heart, as deeply wounded in its affection as in its pride. "You have laughed at my sermon, dread to hear my complaints. I am sad, discontented, and ill; my heart is oppressed. I am crying, but my few burning tears do not relieve me. I do not understand myself, or, rather, when I do it is to blame myself, and to tell you once and for all what I am and wish to be always." A succinct survey of Manon's emotional and intellec- tual life then followed. Her solitary childhood, her studies, her religious doubts and philosophical opin- ions, her ideals of duty, are swiftly and simply touched 176 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND upon, a prelude to a more intimate review of her pres- ent situation. " Feeling deeply the obligations implied by the holy names of wife and mother, I resolved to assume them only for a being worthy of my entire devotion. Among those who sought it one only, of whom I have spoken to you (M. de Lbl.), deserved my heart. For a long time I kept silence, and it was only when I realized our impossible situation that I spoke, to beg him to leave me. I have since then had reasons to congratulate myself on this resolution, which at the time was inexpressibly painful to me. Many changes have altered my situation in life, but I have, in spite of them, persisted in my determination to sacrifice everything but my ideal. My fortune has lessened, but my pride has increased. I would not enter a family that did not esteem me enough to consider itself honored by allying itself with me, and I should be indignant with any one who in marrying me thought he was doing me a favor. Naturally enough, with these opinions, I have counted upon a single life as my lot. In this estate my duties would be fewer and less sweet, perhaps, but not less severe and exacting. I looked upon the charms of friendship as pleasant compensations; I desired to enjoy them with the de- licious abandonment of confidence, but you are lead- ing me too far; it is against this that I try to defend myself. I saw in your strong, energetic, enlightened, and experienced mind the stuff for an ideal friend; I delighted in regarding you as such, and adding to the gravity of friendship all the feeling of which an afi'ec- tionate nature is capable. You were moved by this, and you awakened in my heart an emotion against ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 177 which I beheved myself armed. Then I did not veil it; I described it unreservedly, and I expected from your generosity the help that I needed. But far from sparing my weakness, you daily became more enter- prising, and now you dare to ask me the cause of my embarrassment, my silence, and my fears. Monsieur, I may become the victim of feeling, but the plaything of any one, never. You must have met in society many women a thousand times more lovable and in- teresting than I am who proved to you that the attrac- tion of pleasure was strong enough to make them judge leniently of an amiable weakness, and the fugi- tive attachment that caused it. They can yield in turn for those who, one after another, possess the art of charming them. Brought up in seclusion, I may be rustic and shy, but I cannot make a pastime of love. For me it is a terrible passion, that would possess my whole being and influence my whole life. Give me back your friendship or fear to force me to see you no more." (April 23, 1779.) To this appeal Roland replied diplomatically. He instantly returned to vous and to mademoiselle. He was hurt and indignant. His intentions were inno- cent. He was no vile beguiler of maidenly affections. He justified himself by remarking that his frankness was greater than Manon's, and exercised earlier in their acquaintance than hers. With her his heart was always on his lips. As to his outburst: "Deeply moved, I believed that without crime I was sharing feelings which you accuse me of, and blame me for possessing. I do not analyze your principles, I respect your person. I may become unhappy through having 178 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND known you, but I would die before I could insult you. I do not pretend that you consider my happiness; it is enough for me not to trouble yours, and if it is too deeply affected by a sentiment that enslaves me, and I am to see you no more, I will try to forestall the fatal moment when you propose to proscribe me." Did Manon feel rather flat when she read this miffed answer to her tender heroics ? The Sieur Roland, accused of being too enterprising, borrowed the meth- ods of a country boy, who, when asked to take his arm from the back of a girl's chair, complies with an air of shocked surprise at her unworthy suspicions. The resignation with which Roland proposed to antici- pate Manon's edict of exile was not reassuring. He, too, was inchned to make terms. His notion of the privileges of friendship was more liberal than hers, and her repulse mortified more than it hurt him. Manon's next letter was, therefore, devoted to sooth- ing and coaxing him into good-humor. "O, my friend, why trouble a vision that could be so beautiful. ... I am in a frightful state. I do not know what I am writing. How you have hurt me ! My friend (I call you this sweet name with a melting heart), else- where you may find less rigor but not more tender- ness." She was afflicted by the thought of his un- happiness, still more by his barbarous assumption that she could be happy while he was unhappy. He was invited to satiate himself with her despair and to contemplate her distress. If he dares to continue to be miserable, "fear to become so to a degree that you dare not face." She was again tender, sweet, and despairing, and Roland, manlike, forgave her for being ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE 179 right because she was unhappy in consequence. Her letter brought a penitent lover to his knees. "My friend, my sweet friend, forgive me; 1 bathe your letter with my tears — let them efface my offense; forget my weakness; consider only my repentance." His situa- tion is frightful, also, and will be until he learns that she still loves him, and loves to love him. He has added to her troubles. Dreadful thought ! Why is she so tormented } Why does she not tell him ? Does she not remember the proposal he made to her ? Is not he cherishing it in his heart ? Will she not answer it clearly and in detail, giving other reasons for her refusal than those she has already advanced, and which he has considered? " Songe que je te vois sans cesse, et plus encore dans Vavenir que dans le passe. Songe. . . ." (April 24, 1779.) A hard-hearted Dulcinea would have been touched by this letter, and Manon was not marble. **If you had loved me less you would not have been guilty; the wrongs and errors of feeling may afflict, but they never offend." In plainer speech, it is easy to forgive the havoc caused by one's own charms. No, Manon cannot add other reasons to those she has already urged against Roland's proposal, "because I have no others. I might perhaps wish to have stronger ones to see you overcome them." She cannot enter into details; her poor bonne Mignonne is dying, and Manon is her nurse. In a letter written at five o'clock the next morning beside the sick-bed the details demanded are given and Manon's financial situation clearly explained. She has in her own right fourteen thousand francs. After they have been made over to her she will remain i8o MANON PHLIPON ROLAND with her father, paying her board, and keeping house for him. To take possession of her dowry was the only means of saving it for him as well as for herself. Papa Phlipon did not appreciate the Fabian method of helping folk in spite of themselves; he had worried the notary, complained to the neighbors, and tried to persuade himself and others, that he was a rococo Lear, the victim of fihal ingratitude. Bonnemaman Phlipon, the Besnards, and the little uncle forced papa's hand — one can easily imagine the endless gab- ble, the discussions, disputes, and argumentation that grew out of the situation. In the midst of it the faith- ful Mignonne left hers. "I have always wished to die with you, mademoiselle," said the poor woman, pressing Manon's hand; "I am content." Then the little uncle carried off Manon, worn out with grief and watching, to Vincennes (April 27). On the 6th of May she returned to Paris, where she found an ultimatum from Roland, that "they had been cruel enough" not to forward to her, and in which the prudent sage, for once treading circumspection under- foot, ordered rather than entreated Manon to say yes or no to his proposal. Their present modus vivendi was too torturing; there must be no more shilly-shally- ing, no more conditional mood. Will she marry him ? She must decide now and quickly. Observations on general topics will not count as an equivalent. Yet he finds time to regret Mignonne. "/^ fleure avec tot sur la cendre de cette bonne dme : eh ! ce nest pas de son malheur; fenvierais de finir comme elle. C'est la seule douleur que f aimer ais a prevoir dans ton cceur.** (April 30> 1779.) ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE i8i Happy Manon ! She read, she wept, she tried to ex- press herself, she stifled, she threw herself upon his breast, to remain there all his; at least, so she told him in a rapturous paragraph. She knew no other reasons against their marrying than those already given, "which he has conquered," she wrote, apparently for- getting that in triumphing over her unselfish scruples he had vanquished them in the leisurely Fabian man- ner, cunctandoy but her Te Deum is as prompt and joyous as though they had been overturned by assault. "My pride equals my passion; in any other situation I would have offered myself to you; in mine you have had to oblige me to forgive your advantages. Why cannot I send you my letter on the wings of the wind .? Adieuy mon ami; be happy and dispose of me to be- come so." (May 6, 1779.) CHAPTER IX COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE Manon's little bark might now be considered ha- vened in still water, with the promised land of matri- mony in sight. But it was to toss in storms for many months more. Roland desired their engagement to remain secret, and Manon acquiesced as before, exer- cising her own love of openness by writing him the history of her past tender passages with La Blancherie and De Sevelinges. She had to send to Sophie for the documents in these cases, and invent a pretext for so doing. Her way was not rose-strewn. Sophie was vaguely jealous and suspicious; she felt that Manon was less communicative, less affectionate, less absorbed in her than she used to be, and reproached her friend, while Roland was retrospectively jealous of his prede- cessors in his betrothed's thoughts, and actively jeal- ous of L. F., as he is called in the letters to Sophie, the giovane in those to Roland. This young man, of about Manon's age, was the pupil and apprentice of her father. He lived with the Phlipons, and soon sacri- ficed at Manon's shrine, a hopeless but fervent devo- tee. His goddess treated him leniently, like a great boy, scolded and laughed at him, lent him good books, administered medicine and advice when he was ill, mended his clothes and his manners, and tried to keep him from following in her father's descending foot- steps. 182 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 183 It was incomprehensible to Roland that she could be so kind to one who was madly in love with her, who raged and pleaded, threatened to kill himself and Roland, and who sometimes diluted his sorrows in dis- sipation. No man, but every woman, will understand the girl's complex feelings towards this unhappy boy, and comprehend her indulgence and commiseration. L. F.'s perfect disinterestedness, and his frank aban- donment to passion, threw into high relief the pru- dence and uneasy self-love of Roland. ^^ Ah ! mon amiy comme on aime a vingt ans !'' Manon heedlessly wrote him, hardly a grateful reflection to her cautious be- trothed. Nor was the project of the Besnards calcu- lated to soothe him; they found an easy solution of the Phlipons' domestic difficulties in a marriage between Manon and L. F., an "inept" notion which Roland's fiancee nevertheless was obliged to combat. An avowal of her engagement would have greatly lightened her cares, but Roland held her to her prom- ise. His own affairs were not prosperous. He was discouraged and harassed by opposition to his reforms, and often balked of results by the inertia or the hos- tility of his superiors. His digestion was wretched, his nerves exasperated, and yet his demands on his strength were unremitting. We are apt to assume that nerve- strain and overwork are peculiar to our crowded life, but the tasks of the past, unrelieved by material com- forts and unlightened by time-saving appliances, ex- acted prolonged mental tension, and consumed vital energy as ruthlessly as our own enterprises. Roland's letters, shorter and fewer than his be- trothed's, occasionally betray fatigue and irritability. 1 84 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND His natural and not unamiable jealousy of Manon manifests itself in a peculiarly unlovable way: in sharp criticisms of her friends and admirers, and, above all, in animadversions on her father's behavior. He found fault with Manon herself for what was inevitable in her situation: for practically becoming her father's ser- vant, for doing kindly offices to sick neighbors. He assumed a tone of aggravating superiority to all her little world. Much of this ''picotage'' (pecking), as Manon called it (in postnuptial days), was really in- spired by solicitude for her health, and the spirited girl received it with submissive sweetness, and answered it with apologies and explanations. Firm and rather imperious with her own family, to Roland she was all tender deference. She learned early in the game of love that irrefutable arguments and eloquent pleading were ineffective compared with an affectionate mes- sage, or a little wail of loneliness or longing. Her let- ters are not often playful, her situation was too strained for sportiveness, but they are ingenious in their divers expressions of affection. "I love you, you are dear to me, tell me so in your turn," was never set to more varied melodies. This literary art, if literary art it is, had become so natural through constant exercise that feeling flowed instinctively into form. The child had lisped in clear-cut prose, the maiden loved in lucent musical phrase. It was said of Madame Roland that she had the art of making all that she did appear to be the work of nature, as if such consummate art were not in itself largely nature's gift. In any case, her letters must have been a consolation and a stimulus to a morose and doubting lover. Ro- COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 185 land meantime had begun to take his engagement seri- ously. He hired a house at Amiens, close to the clois- ter of Saint Denis, which was used as a cemetery; it would have seemed a lugubrious residence to an out- sider, but **it will be the cottage of Philemon and Baucis," **you can make a temple of it," Roland wrote. More prosaic details followed: he had enough house and personal linen for two years, table-silver for eight persons, two soup-spoons; no other house- hold stuff. Manon*s trousseau preoccupied him. She must dress well; at least like other people. It was well enough for him to play the Quaker. "I can be what I really am; it is enough for me to be what I wish to be; but you, my wife, must be what you should be." The contemner of irksome conventions pre- served them for his womenfolk. This imperfectly emancipated reformer held that he could cast off his cravat, but madame must retain her neckerchief. To this mademoiselle yielded a charmed assent. She was glad to reduce her wardrobe to the minimum, and planned to sell her mother's jewels, "for since she had hoped to possess Cornelia's some day she had just despised them." Her Roman met Roland's Greek (May 11). While waiting for the temple and the Gracchan ornaments, however, it was indispensable to conciliate a father who was Roman only in his severity. When his daughter's dower was finally wrung from the protesting M. Phlipon, he incontinently invited her to leave his house. Terrified at the scandal this would cause, Manon wrote Roland, who suggested, as a last move, that she might tell her father that she was 1 86 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND affianced, and expecting to be married speedily. This magnanimous concession was clogged by a hard condi- tion — she must not reveal the name of her betrothed, but explain that for family and business reasons the bridegroom-elect was obliged to remain incognito for the present. Manon in reply urged that her father would cer- tainly suspect him of being the coy lover, and that the secret would be as well kept if M. Phlipon were trusted wholly. By this time Roland had begun to waver and to regret what he had advised. His letter practically retracting this permission arrived too late; it was crossed by a rapturous missive from his fiancee. "Kiss my letter, tremble with joy; my father is satisfied, he esteems you, he loves me. We shall all be happy ! Paix, salut, amitie, joie par toute la terre. . . . Mon cher maitre, listen to my story. ... I was saying then — my faith, I don't know what I was say- ing." A calmer narrative of facts followed these in- troductory transports. Tactful Mademoiselle Des- portes, la precheuse, as the lovers called her, prepared the recalcitrant papa for this revelation. After her gentle emollient sermon to soften his heart, came the coup de theatre. The salon door was thrown open, and Manon threw herself, weeping, at her father's feet. Neither Greuze nor Rousseau could have arranged a more touching scene for a people with whom emotion spontaneously seeks dramatic expression. "Overwhelm me with your anger, if I have deserved it," sobbed the kneehng girl, "but do not hate me!" M. Phlipon was very naturally silent and bewildered. Manon was stifled with sobs. Mademoiselle Desportes COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 187 began to explain, but the surprised M. Phlipon for once took the centre of the stage. This was his only mono- logue in the long domestic drama in which he sustained so unsympathetic a role: "Your proceedings are always very strange," he said, addressing himself to Manon. "I can forgive your de- mand for a settlement that the law authorizes you to make, but which wounds and offends me, which proves that your attachment to me is no longer what it was, and that it has given place to ingratitude. To wish to remain with me, and yet to arrange your affairs as though you intended to leave me, is contradictory. All your motives displease me. If you had more worthy ones, I should judge differently, but in that case, why have you concealed them?" "What !" answered Manon warmly. "If I had some reason that honor made me keep secret, would you consider keeping it a crime.''" "What secret could you keep justly from a father ?" "One that had been confided to me under a promise of secrecy, because certain circumstances made it im- possible to tell it." "This ambiguity does not impose on me; I want to see clearly into this; give me a good reason if you have it, or do not torment me any more." Manon, who by this time had recovered her wind, replied by a plausible allocution: "You have declared, father, that our settlement would appear perfectly natural if there were any question of my marrying. That is exactly what it is for; that's my secret; you will soon know my reasons. Some one whose prefer- ence honors me, and flatters you, I am sure, has proved 1 88 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND his esteem for me by making his wishes known to me. His only object was to learn what mine were, and if he could count on them. Some delicate precautions to take with his own family prevented him from speaking to any one, even from making his declaration to you. He swore me to inviolable secrecy. From that time I felt that we ought to put our affairs in order. I thought it was better to arrange them between you and me. I resolved to induce you to do so. On the other hand, I did not hide the smallness of my fortune. I said that I should soon know how much it was, for my coming of age would remind you to tell me, but that a happiness that would straiten your means would be far from perfect for me. The delicacy and disin- terestedness that had guided this person in all his ideas inspired him to answer that he was as deeply interested as I was in your welfare and comfort, and that he left to you the use of what would insure them. Believing as much in his probity and generosity as in his other good qualities, I made him a confession that I expected you to confirm some day with as much joy as I felt then. You may guess of whom I am speak- ing; it is useless to name him. At least, my cousin will permit me not to do so before her. . . ." M. Phlipon, relieved, softened, overjoyed, caught the orator in his arms, and Manon wept on his breast "the sweetest tears she had ever shed in her life." Papa whispered Roland's name in his daughter's ear, and then assured Mademoiselle Desportes that his future son-in-law was all that he could wish for, and that in her choice he had a new proof of Manon's wis- dom. He promised that though her fortune was mod- COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 189 est, she should have all that belonged to him one day, as he should never marry. These praises and prom- ises were offered in a tone of such sincerity and fond- ness that Manon was convinced that he would bless her union with Roland "with all his heart." She did not forget to slip in a word of warning to her fiance between her ecstasies. In a few days Ro- land would receive a formal letter from her, to which he must send an equally discreet reply to be shown to papa. Her father had asked her if Roland knew that she was going to tell him of their engagement, and she had answered that she was authorized to do so. This avowal and showing him a letter from Roland would affirm M. Phlipon's confidence, and insure future peace. Roland will advise her, and she will submit her opinion to his. These prosaic arrange- ments made Manon grow lyrical again: "My loving friend, I owe you all my happiness. How transported you must be ! You give me all that is dear to me; you give me back a father's love, you fill my heart with all the sweetness that nature, virtue, and love can bring to it. . . . And it is to you whom I respect, whom I esteem, and whom I cherish more than any- thing else that I owe these blessings. Surely one never dies of joy, since I feel all this and am still living." (June 27.) To these effusions Roland replied dryly and coldly (June 29). She had forced his hand, she had told his secret; her delicious wooing phrases, her enchant- ments, could not juggle away the disagreeable fact that her common, dissipated old father was now in their confidence. "Do not write so many pages to 190 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND justify or excuse something done; I shall not think of it any the less, and I shall not speak of it again." Only a man very much concerned with his own dignity, very jealous of his authority, could have answered a cry straight from the heart with such frigid pettiness, to which poor Manon replied, in spite of Roland's prohibition by a justification of her confession. At least his liberty has remained quite unfettered. "I have not arrogated to myself your right to announce your intentions, or to hasten the time when you pro- pose to do so." This pained Roland and he expressed his distress at the same time, forbidding his bonne amie to add to it by alluding to its cause (July 3). He maintained an injured attitude all through the summer. M. Phlipon was a perennial source of complaint; his bad health was also a cause of offense. How will he be able to get on without the constant care that his daughter is obliged to give him ? What does he intend to do ? What arrangements has he made for the future ? (August 5) Manon, now general drudge and occasional sick- nurse, leaves her pots and kettles, puts down her needle, and answers gently, reasonably, with a noble patience, these querulous questionings. She shows a maternal indulgence to each fretful, carping arraign- ment. Pauvre ami, how ill and worn he must be to be so cross and exacting, how much need he has of love and consideration. The more fractious Roland, the more amiable she. That sweetness (of which she wrote when a girl of fifteen) "that men are accused of loving because it is so much needed in dealing with COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 191 them," stood her in good stead during this dreary stage of her Hfe-journey. But though Griselda was amiable she was sad, and her sadness penetrated Roland's hard self-love. Finally, he wrote to M. Phlipon, asking in good set terms for his daughter's hand, but still requesting se- crecy. M. Phlipon found the demand glacial, haughty, and even lacking in respect to his daughter. The re- quest for secrecy excited, not unreasonably, his suspi- cions; it was not in such clandestine manner that the tradesmen of the cite made their offers. Manon argued, coaxed, until he yielded an ungracious "He is a de- serving man, I admit. He suits you very well. Let things go on. I won't prevent them." This negative consent was all she could extract (August 29). When a little later the attack was renewed, he repulsed it with a dry "He was in no hurry to write to me, I am in no hurry to answer him; besides, you are not asked for in this letter. It is obscure. I don't understand it." With the obstinacy of a weak nature, he stood by this decision. Manon, pushed to the wall, used the last argument of women — hj^sterics. Frightened, not touched, he promised to write, but before doing so asked to see all the letters Roland had sent her since he left Paris. To her astonished question: "What is your motive in making such a demand ?" M. Phlipon answered airily: "It's a caprice that I have. If you refuse me this satisfaction, you can no longer count on me for anything." Such was his ukase, coupled with the request that she should leave the house. De- cidedly, he was not conformable, le fere Phlipon. To this proposed eviction Manon replied with dignity; 192 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND *'I shall not go. You have no right to send me out of your house. I ought not to leave it except under a husband's protection, and I shall not leave it in any other way. I have not lived here for twenty-five years honorably and decently, to go away in a man- ner that will shame and disgrace yow." (September i.) Papa made no answer, but took "the key of the fields," and sedulously avoided Manon. Miserable days followed for her, bruised between the impact of two egotisms, her happiness depending on a father and a lover equally self-centred, who con- sidered their own susceptibilities as more precious than Manon's peace. Finally, the tears and prayers of Tante Besnard and the weakness following an attack of illness again softened the resolve of the terrible parent, and he consented to write an answer to his elusive son-in-law-to-be (September 4). "Mr.: "Questions of interest cannot certainly hurt the busi- ness in hand. My daughter has recently provided for them, having used the rights she acquired by coming of age three months ago to obhge me to give an exact account before a notary of the property of her dead mother. This business is now irrevocably settled. You have done me the honor, Mr., to write to me; I ought to have that of answering you. But first hav- ing asked my daughter to communicate certain things to me, that she has very dryly, and even, I dare to say, very roughly refused to do, this decides me to tell you with regret that she can freely enjoy the privi- lege of her majority to accelerate the termination of this affair." COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 193 Truly a very impertinent and paltry answer to a rather stiff and condescending demand ! To the self- righteous Roland "it revealed a soul that he could not understand, and that filled him with horror." Imagine the feelings of King Cophetua, if, after hav- ing decided to honor the beggar-maid with his hand, her disreputable old father had received his royal request with a pied de nez. Roland could not avenge this insult on the dishon- ored head of the impossible M. Phlipon, but M. Phli- pon's child was convenient, and on hers were poured out the vials of Thales's just wrath (September 5, 1779). The awful abyss between his family and a creature like Manon's father was suddenly revealed to him. He had tried to realize it before, but could not. What spiritual vileness, and what a horrible hand- writing! What baseness of character, what a low nature were betrayed in every line! Even the abbre- viation of "Monsieur" (common enough in business correspondence) was fraught with sinister significance. Roland plunged her father's unpolished stylus into Manon's naked heart, and then turned it round. "I cannot defend myself against an attachment that de- livers me up to you without reserve, and which even in this moment is graven on my heart with the deepest respect, but your father — 0, my friend, your father ! The very thought of him gnaws me. Black presenti- ments trouble and overwhelm me. His character, his conduct will become a living disgrace to my people, and will change their tender regard into a vulture that will ceaselessly devour my heart. No, my personal unhappiness would be nothing, but it is frightful to 194 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND - think of your situation. I reproach myself for it with bitterness of self-disgust. I am oppressed with deadly sadness." Two days after a second vial was unsealed. Manon had been culpably indulgent to this lost soul of a parent. Her devotion to an unworthy object awak- ened Roland to his own lack of duty to his relatives in allying them with a Monsieur Phlipon. It also re- vives memories of their loving care of him when he returned, frayed and spent, from his wanderings. His contemplated ingratitude to them filled him with tardy remorse. His secretiveness towards them weighed on him. To lighten his heart he sends them Monsieur Phlipon's monstrous missive with an account of the whole wretched business (September 7). To this assault Manon opposed a saintly resigna- tion. Her filial virtue had furnished the scourge for her punishment. She released Roland from any en- gagement to her, congratulated him on his family ad- vantages, and herself on having been the means of recalling his obligations to him, approved his pro- ceedings, and ended by asking him to remain her friend always (September 9). Ten days later Ro- land answered Monsieur (or, rather, as the outraged writer addressed it vengefuUy, "Mr.") Phlipon's letter in a superior and stately manner calculated to infuri- ate the meekest of mankind. In it, while grinding Mr. Phlipon to earth, and expressing his esteem and respect for his daughter, Roland haughtily withdrew the offer of his hesitating hand (Septem- ber 19). All through September and October Manon wavered COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 195 between her conviction that she ought to leave her father and seek some means of earning her living and her instinctive affection for her capricious parent, who at times was undeniably appeahng and attractive. Her struggles between prudence and generosity per- plexed and worried Roland, who remained untouched hy 2L manly and apologetic letter written b}^ the prodi- gal father in a remorseful moment (September 23). "Esteem and friendship remained to them," but neither seemed satisfied with these reasonable conditions. Roland discovered "that philosophy which he thought good for everything was good for nothing," and Manon found the path of duty rather tortuous, as well as steep and hard. Too sensitive and affectionate to follovr reason calmly, too logical and reflective to abandon herself to feeling, she appeared inconsistent and ca- pricious to a colder, more self-centred nature. The long struggle between reason and instinct finally ended in the sad victory of the former. Manon hired a small apartment in the convent of the Congregation, and went back to live with her old schoolmistresses, the nuns (November 6, 1779). Convents offered inexpensive and dignified retreats for women of small means who wished or were obliged to lead a simple Hfe aside from, though not outside of, the world. Orphaned girls with slender dowers, re- duced widows, decayed gentlewomen, took rooms in a religious house, where they received visits and enter- tained in a subdued way. Great ladies, who were other-worldly as well as worldly, retired to a nunnery for a retreat during Lent, or when in mourning. Some- times romance crept into the cloister and the heroine 196 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND of a love-affair or a scandal was stealthily watched in chapel and garden by pupils and pensionnaires. The hard and worldly Madame de Boismorel had mourned the gentle *'Sage" in a fashionable convent, and Madame Recamier's receptions at the Abbaye au Bois are an example of the discreet yet animated social life that throve in semimonastic seclusion. This curious little world that mingled its gay chatter with the nuns' canticles, and the chypre of its casso- lettes with the mystic fragrance of incense, was humor- ously and amiably sketched by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. Even now the tourist seeking Lafayette's grave, or he who follows the trail of Jean Valjean on the dark chase from the Gorbeau House to the nun- nery of the Petit Picpus, will find the modern counter- parts of these ancient lady-boarders strolling in the old walled garden and chatting in the convent parlor. The Congregation was a second home to Manon. There she literally fell into the arms of her devoted Sister Agathe, "the plaintive dove" of her school-days, and there, though lonely and sad, she enjoyed the tranquillity so lacking in the house on the Pont Neuf. Thrifty of her time and her money alike, Manon planned a rule of daily life after she had estabHshed her few penates "under her roof of snow," for she lodged very near heaven. Her expenses were calcu- lated to a sou. She bought and prepared her own food, and Spartan fare it was — "beans, rice, and pota- toes cooked with salt and butter" cost little money and small pains. She went out twice a week: once to visit her relatives, once to look after her father's wardrobe and household. She kept the early hours of COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 197 the convent. The morning, after making her own toilet and that of her apartment, she devoted to geog- raphy and the ItaHan language, studies that she hoped to teach later. Then she took up a favorite book "to rest her mind" — Jean Jacques, Montaigne, or Horace. The afternoon was given to needlework (when she could resist the temptation to read) and a walk in the convent garden. Under the great lime-trees, where she used to stroll with Sophie's arm around her waist, she loved to dream, to remember, and sometimes to weep. Music and a brief visit from Sister Agathe filled the short evenings. There were a few calls to receive and return from the boarders in the convent, visits from friends at the grating, and occasionally a little musical party in one of the cells. Manon often spent whole days almost alone. "My taste for solitude is becoming a passion. In satisfying it I can think of you without distractions," she wrote the tepid Thales (December 4, 1779). The cessation of petty vexations and sordid anxieties lent her mental leisure to review the few joys of her brief betrothal, her bright visions of the future, now so dun and drab. Her young energy revolted against a passive accep- tance of dreariness. She would not resign herself to a flat and flavorless existence. She would fight, work, deserve felicity, even if she never attained it. In the peace of the dove-cote her affection for Roland, long dominated by lacerated pride and the melancholy realization of how much he lacked of the ideal lover of her maiden fancies, deepened, and grew in tender- ness and solemnity. In an atmosphere of consecra- tion to an ideal, of little daily acts of self-sacrifice, 198 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND Manon, always impressionable, always vibratingly sen- sitive to any demand upon her, fell in love a second time. Thales, the philosopher, the impeccable wise man, was no more, and in his place in her heart was a weaker, erring, irritable person with some very infuri- ating characteristics, some disconcerting shortcomings, who in a mysterious way was more lovable than the sinless Sage of yesterday. To love him now that fate and Papa Phlipon had parted them forever seemed an act of devotion to Manon. Absence, which fires great passions and extinguishes little ones, also fosters illu- sions. Memory is a flattering painter when affection is at her elbow. Roland, unseen for many months, took on a different aspect; he never seemed more de- sirable than when he was inaccessible, and Manon was never so tender as when, apparently enfranchised by despair, she let herself go. She ceased to demand, and was content to bestow. Her letters, which had been explanatory or apologetic, but always sincere eflPorts to understand Roland's tactics, his wavering advances, and hasty retreats, changed in tone. To justifications and defenses succeeded idyls and elegies, confessions of love and longing. She frankly accepted the facts in the case. Her late suitor was not really separated from her by pecuniary embarrassments and social inequality, or even by the iniquity of M. Phlipon, but by his own lack of passion strong enough to burn away the barriers between them. He was not to blame; he loved her in the measure of his ca- pacities, and she was content to be the generous lover who kisses — metaphorically. Her situation was in some respects a trying one for a high-spirited girl. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 199 Her relatives considered her a victim of unrequited af- fection, abandoned by a cold and worldly lover. She accepted the role of Ariadne with perfect good temper and an utter absence of petty self-love. She had re- signed herself to being misunderstood. A friend (probably the same Madame Legrand who was one of Marie Antoinette's household) found Manon a place at court. The position was dependent on the whim of the Queen, and had been created for her amusement; it was, perhaps, that of lectrice, or reader. The young republican promptly refused it. The sur- prise and annoyance of her family and friends may be easil}^ surmised. Fate was disciplining Manon as the gymnasiarch of Epictetus trained the young athlete, fortifying her weakness, augmenting her strength through blows and struggles. Unconsciously, out of anxiety and disappointment and disillusion, the girl was applying a principle, evolving a philosophy which is the protest of the mind against the incoherence and cruelty of life. Like the artist who seeks to impose law on the disorder of nature, she opposed a mental harmony to the discord of "an opaque, impenetrable, miscellaneous world." To essay the subjugation of fate to the sway of will and the intelligence compels reluctant admiration even when it discourages imita- tion, and predicates much self-esteem and self-rehance; indeed, she possessed both, but her self-esteem was mitigated by a sense of personal responsibiHty, and was 3^oked with an impassioned loyalty to ideals. If her attitude was more Olympian than Promethean, and, consequently, far less sympathetic in her Memoirs, in her letters the torments and the gnawing of the 200 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND insatiable bird were seldom absent. Those addressed to her timid and susceptible lover are frank capitula- tions. "Good-by, Pride." "Be thou man or illusion, I give myself up to the feelings you inspire in me that I foolishly believed I had repressed." "Come! Be forever under the name of friend all that thou canst be to the most tender and faithful heart." Safe behind the convent grating, reassured by distance and seclu- sion, Manon dared to woo as she would be wooed. Happy Roland ! one exclaims in reading them, to re- ceive such glowing missives ! But Thales, whose blood was surely chilled by the water which the Greek phi- losopher whose name he borrowed conceived was the vital principle, replied lukewarmly, evasively, to these delicious yet maidenly effusions. To Roland the state of his liver was far more preoccupying than the con- dition of his heart, and he answered Manon's chaste sapphics with a description of his last bilious attack, enrichedi with realistic details, or with prudent advice to conciliate her relatives, as the only real joys of life are to be found among one's own people. All Roland's letters are full of reference to his business perplexities, and sometimes his lack of funds. He was suffering at once from weak health, poverty, and a severe disap- pointment. In December he was tempted to resign his post. He had lost the protection of Turgot; Godi- not, his cousin and protector, had retired from the inspectorship of Rouen, and Roland fully expected to succeed him, but the position was given to a less able but more popular man. In addition to these causes of anxiety Roland was afraid of Manon, afraid of her empire over him, of her "tumultuous" tem- COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 201 perament, of her strong will and her independent character. In spite of her professions, of the deference she had always shown him and his opinions, he divined the energy and persistence that underlay her apparent docility. He realized that she had managed her father, dominated her relatives, and mastered an in- subordinate and passionate lover. These were not guaranties of passive obedience to a nervous, suscepti- ble bachelor in deUcate health. Then, too, in spite of his own scorn of restraints, Roland adhered to the conventions that his age and nation imposed on young girls, and Manon had emancipated herself from many of them. The bonds of custom galled Manon's high spirit; the vast opportunities that Paris offered her for study and culture tantalized her. In a rebellious mood she wrote Sophie: ''Sometimes I am tempted to put on breeches and a hat to obtain freedom," and, again: "I ought to have been a Spartan or a Roman woman, or at least a Frenchman. Then I should have chosen for my country the republic of letters, or one of those republics where one can be a man, and obey only the laws. . . . Ah ! Liberty, idol of strong souls, aliment of virtues, for me you are but a name !" (Feb- ruary 5, 1776). Manon had enfranchised herself to a certain degree. Even before the death of Mignonne she constantly went out alone to walk, to church, or to shop. Disguised as a servant seeking a situation, she had gone to the lodging of her father's mistress to confirm her suspicions of his misconduct. Humbly dressed like a girl of the people, she had visited the poor and found it a dangerous proceeding. During 202 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND her brief engagement, in spite of her affectionate pro- testations of submission, she had carried affairs with a high hand. Roland feared for his prestige. Could he maintain his superiority in daily contact with so much purpose } So he sought safety in flight and in avoiding contact with this invading personality. No, he could not visit Manon (as she suggested December 13, 1779). He should only pass through Paris, arriv- ing late in the evening of the 28th of December; he expected to leave early the next morning to visit his brother, the Benedictine monk, at Longpont. He should not return to Paris until two weeks later. He was deeply affected by his disappointment and the conduct of those he thought were his friends; all things were awry with him; he feared that he was going to be very ill, but he cared Httle, he was tired of the wretchedness of this world, and was quite wilHng to do now what one must do some time, sooner or later. Of course this wail afforded Manon an opportunity to play the role, very earnestly and sweetly, of con- soler, and, of course, soon after Roland found himself in the nuns' bare little parlor before the grating, and behind it Manon, pale and tearful, "triumphed in her retreat," as the captive Roland sorrowfully acknowl- edged. She was so lonely and unhappy; she believed, or seemed to believe, that his family had arranged a marriage for him, and that he was hesitating as usual between his affection for her and his desire to satisfy them. "I need so much that you should be happy," she wrote him, the next day (January 20, 1780), that she could, like Regulus, beg him to ignore her own fate if his felicity required it. The next paragraph of her letter softens the sternness of her comparison: COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 203 "Evening is the most favorable time for us to see each other, even on Sundays." Poor, prudent Roland ! He struggled no more. He again offered his hand formally through his brother, Dom Pierre, and a few days afterwards (February 4, 1780) there was a quiet wedding at the church of Saint Barthelemy. The dear little Uncle Bimont was the officiating priest, and Selincourt, Sophie's brother, one of the witnesses. The bridegroom, having finally decided to sacrifice himself, was no niggard victim. In his marriage contract he dowered his wife with six thousand francs, in order to swell her scanty por- tion to a respectable size, though his own affairs were far from prosperous. Her courtship and marriage are laconically recounted in Madame Roland's Memoirs. ''Nearly five years [in reality three] after I had made his acquaintance he [Roland] made me a declaration of love. / was not indifferent to it, because I respected him more than any one I had ever known, but I had noticed that both he and his family were not insensible to appearances. I told him frankly that his suit honored me, and that I could consent with pleasure, but that I did not believe that I was a good match for him. I then explained to him unreservedly our financial condition. We were ruined. I had saved, by asking for a settlement from my father at the risk of incurring his dislike, an annual income of five hundred livres, which, with my ward- robe, was all that was left of the apparent affluence in which I had been brought up. My father was young. His indiscretions might tempt him to make debts, which his inability to pay would render dis- graceful. He might contract an unfortunate mar- 204 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND riage, and add to these evils children who would bear my name in wretched poverty, etc., etc. I was too proud to expose myself to the ill will of a family which would not feel honored by an alliance with me, or to depend on the generosity of a husband to whom I should bring only vexations. I advised M. Roland, as a third person would have done, and tried to dis- suade him from thinking of me. He persisted; I was touched, and consented that he should take the necessary steps with my father, but as he [Roland] preferred to express himself in writing, it was settled that he should treat the matter by letter on his return home, and that during the remainder of his stay in Paris we should see each other daily. I considered him as the being to whom I should unite my fate, and I became at- tached to him. As soon as he returned to Amiens he wrote my father to explain his plans and wishes. "My father found the letter dry. He did not like M. Roland's stiffness, and he did not care for a son-in- law who was a strict man, and whom he felt to be a censor. He answered with harshness and imperti- nence, and showed his reply to me after he had sent it. / immediately formed a resolution. I wrote to M. Roland that the event had justified only too well my fears in regard to my father, that I would not occasion him further mortifications, and that I begged him to abandon his project. I announced to my father what his conduct had obliged me to do. I added that after that he need not be surprised if I entered a new situation and retired to a convent. But as I knew he had some pressing debts, I left him the portion of plate that belonged to me to meet them. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 205 T hired a little apartment in the convent of the Con- gregation, to which I retreated, firmly resolved to limit my vi^ants by my means. I did so." A short description of her ascetic life follows. I take up the narrative where Roland enters it again. "M. Roland, astonished and grieved, continued to write to me like a man who had not ceased to love me, but who had been wounded by my father's conduct. He came at the end of five or six months, grew ardent when he saw me behind the grating [in the convent parlor], where, however, I had kept a prosperous air. He wished me to leave the cloister, offered his hand again to me, and urged me through his brother, the Bene- dictine monk, to accept it. / reflected deeply on what I ought to do. I did not hide from myself that a man less than forty-five years of age would not have waited several months to try to make me change my mind, and / readily allowed that this had reduced my feelings to a degree which left nothing to spare for illusion. I considered, on the other hand, that this persistence, also the result of reflection, assured me that I was appreciated, and that if he [Roland] had conquered his dread of the incidental annoyances, which marriage with me might occasion, I should be so much the more convinced of his esteem, which I need be at no pains to justify. Finally, if marriage was, as I believed it to be, a stringent bond, an association in which gen- erally the wife takes charge of the happiness of two individuals, would it not be better for me to exercise my capacities and my courage In this honorable task than in the isolation in which I lived } " CHAPTER X DOM I MANSir—EUDORA Madame Roland's correspondence during the years that followed her marriage forms an almost comic con- trast to that of her girlhood. One would hardly be- lieve, looking over the letters of her early married life, that she possessed literary or intellectual interests. The large horizon of her youth narrowed to the walls of her house, her occupations to the copying and cor- rection of Roland's manuscripts, the care of her baby, and the training of her servants. This correspondence, however, fills a lacuna in her biography, as the Me- moirs pass very cursorily over this period of her life. The Rolands spent the first year of their marriage in Paris. They took furnished rooms in the Hotel de Lyon, in the rue Saint Jacques. Roland had been offered, and had accepted, a position in the govern- ment offices at Paris, to arrange a general recasting of the regulations that controlled the national manu- factures. He strenuously opposed most of these regu- lations, for, in spite of a few concessions, they were as hostile to the interests of the producers, and the prin- ciples of free-trade and open competition, as the old ones had been. This work very naturally excited and depressed him. A more satisfactory task was the revision of his letters on travel, and the rearrange- ment for publication of the monographs on divers in- dustrial and mechanical arts that he had already writ- 206 DOM I M AN SIT— EU DORA 207 ten for the Academy of Sciences. These separate studies formed the preface to the great work, Le Dic- tionnaire des manufactures, undertaken the following year (January, 1781). All these enterprises implied hard labor, into which Manon threw herself with the zeal of a neophyte, for the most practical and advantageous move that Roland ever made was his redoubted marriage. By it he acquired a devoted and indefatigable secretary, a careful and economical housekeeper, a cheerful and loyal companion, as well as an accomplished and wor- shipful young wife. She was Roland's amanuensis and proof-reader, and often his cook and nurse, for his digestion was wretched and he was constantly ailing. No bride ever came to her husband more penetrated with the desire of self-sacrifice than did Manon, and none ever found more ample opportunity for its exer- cise. Roland was overworked, as usual, and he was daily exasperated by the frustration of his projects of reform. He was rigidly attached to his own opinions and intolerant of others' views; he was a stern task- master, exacting, meticulous, impatient; he was an illegible writer, and a prolix and voluminous anno- tator, without method in the arrangement of his notes. Yet his wife's devotion was unfaltering. Her humble- ness and her patience were matched by her industry. She, who had spent her leisure in the best literary societ)'^ of all time, now passed her days in copying and correcting articles on woollens, cotton velvet, and peat, with a seriousness and grave sense of responsi- bility that in later years she found amusing. "But it proceeded from the heart," she explains. "I revered 2o8 MANON PHLIPON ROLAND my husband so absolutely that I supposed he knew everything better than myself, and I so dreaded to see a cloud on his brow, and he was so set in his opin- ions, that it was not until long afterwards that I gained courage enough to contradict him." The monotony of these tasks was relieved by a course of lectures on botany, given by Jussieu in the Jardin des Plantes. To an observer and a nature- lover like Manon, these conferences were a source of enduring pleasure, and in the following lonely years she made a good herbarium of the flora of Picardy. Through Jussieu the Rolands formed a friendship that lasted through their lives, and on his part long after their deaths, with Louis Bosc d'Antic, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and already known through his own researches, though he was but twenty-one in 1780. He was the son of a Huguenot physician and had inherited, with httle else, his father's love of natu- ral science, his disinterestedness, and the friendship of the savants who had been D'Antic's companions. Louis had a good position in the post-office (Secretaire de rintendance des Postes), and devoted his few free hours to scientific study. Roland, then just beginning his Dictionnaire, became especially interested in this young scholar, who, knowing many people and many things, was so ready to serve his new friends. Bosc, unselfish and enthusiastic, was attracted and retained by the unique charm of Madame Roland, and the congenial pursuits of her husband. In Paris they saw each other daily, and when the Rolands went to Amiens their correspondence became ^'presque jour- naliere.*' Roland was always asking for a bit of in- M"' ROLAND. SO-CALLED PHVSIONOTRACE PROFILE OF MADAME ROLAND From a colored engraving lately acquired by the Musee Carnavalet DOMI MANSIT—EUDORA 209 formation, or the verification of a fact, and madame added a few lines at the beginning or end of a letter. Imperceptibly she came to monopolize the writing, and transmitted her husband's questions and mes- sages. The Rolands' letters to each other were sent under cover to Bosc, even when they were of an inti- mate nature, partly because he could frank them, but also to keep him au courant. Perfect confidence and a close communion of ideas, the knowledge that the humdrum details of the res angusta domiy the little happenings of every-day life, would interest the absent friend, make of these letters a journal intime of Ma- dame Roland's early wedded years. Bosc had suc- ceeded to Sophie. For poor Sophie had been gently dislodged from Manon's heart. Roland was a monopolist in his wife's affections. Sophie did not decamp without many struggles. The end of the long correspondence is rather melancholy reading. Manon's poor excuses for her silences, her references to her absorbing new duties and occupations, the exclusive nature of marital affection — e tutte quante ; reasons which were no rea- sons, and which the exile met with arguments and reproaches. After the banishment of the unfortunate female friend, Madame Roland's affections became virilized. Her correspondence was henceforward with men, with Bosc, Bancal des Issarts, Champagneux, Brissot, and her colleagues and comrades in political Hfe. For several years Roland's duties took him much from home, and his wife's daily letters to him and her con- stant though often interrupted work on the Diction- 2IO MANON PHLIPON ROLAND naire filled many hours daily. But there was always a spare half-hour for a few lines to Bosc, and he kept the Rolands in touch with the affairs of the capital. Another less faithful friend who entered Madame Roland's life soon after her marriage was Doctor Francois Lanthenas. His father, a wealthy wax mer- chant, had obliged him, against his will, to enter busi- ness in Lyons. He had already travelled as an agent for silks and laces in Holland and Germany when he met Roland in Florence. Though Lanthenas was twenty years younger than the strict, elderly inspector, they became friends there, and looked forward to meeting again. Lanthenas returned from Italy, "ill, laden with books, engravings," an intense dislike for a shopkeeper's life, and a strong desire to study natural sciences. Perhaps his talks with Roland had con- firmed these inclinations. Finally, after having dem- onstrated his incapacity for business, in 1780 Lan- thenas obtained his father's permission to study medicine. He went to Paris and lodged in the Hotel de Lyon, where the Rolands had been living for several months. Before long he was on a fraternal footing with them. Madame called him *7(? -petit frere" and he addresses her as "/<2 sorella." When the classical Roland takes up the pen the little brother is "le fidele Achate y^ though sometimes more simply *'/' * AT "^ • C. «P if > .^ OOBBSBROS. O V LlgRAIIY BIMOIMO - 4t.august.ne,.„^ ^^^ •-• <^^ V-o^ ^9^ %.^^