tions, that she threw herself at her parents' feet, and, with torrents of tears, begged them to allow her to go to a convent to prepare for the great event. Her request was granted; and her gravity, her devotion, and her great quickness in learning, soon made her a favourite among the community in which she was placed. Upon the day when she was to take the sacrament for which she had prepared, by her seclusion, long prayers, and meditation, her excited imagination, and her excessive devotion, made it necessary for her to be almost carried to the altar by one of the nuns. In this retreat she formed a friendship with a young girl of her own age, Sophie Canet, which lasted during her whole life. Though the religious sentiments she then experienced yielded at a later period to the scepticisms of the age, their purifying influence is to be traced through every stage of her existence. The philosophic and popular spirit which had been gradually descending through every class of the nation, began to pervade the bourgeoise, and, in spite of the obscurity of her birth and station, Manon could not feel indifferent to the welfare of her country; she adopted eagerly the popular doctrines of equality and brotherhood.
She was not insensible to the charms of pomp and splendour, but she was indignant that its chief object was to elevate still higher persons already too powerful, and who had nothing commendable in themselves. In a visit she paid to the court, she soon became disgusted with it. "If I remain much longer," said she to her mother, while using her to depart, "I shall soon detest the people I see so much, that I shall not be able to control my hatred." "What injury have they done you?" "They make me feel their injustice and their absurdity." These republican sentiments increased the stoical nature of her character; she looked upon life as a struggle and a duty. Her beauty attracted many admirers, but she refused all offers; her superiority to those of her own rank rendering her naturally repugnant to marriage.
M. Philipon was not kind to his wife. The ascendency which his daughter had over him enabled her to control his ebullitions of temper, so that after she was grown, her mother was in a great measure protected from them. In 1775 she lost this adored mother, and her grief on the occasion nearly cost her her life. For two weeks she lay in terrible convulsions, struggling all the time with a sense of suffocation. A letter from her friend, Sophie Canet, at length enabled her to weep—an effect the physicians had been trying in vain to produce, and she recovered.
After her mother's death, her father became careless and dissipated, and nearly ruined himself. Mademoiselle Philipon took refuge in her books from her troubles; the works of Rousseau especially interested her. At the same time, Sophie Canet wrote to her often about a man whom she had met in the society near Amiens, where she resided; and when this gentleman, M. Roland, went to Paris, she gave him a letter to Mademoiselle Philipon. They were mutually pleased with each other, and corresponded from that time till their marriage, five years after, in 1789.
M. Roland was a manufacturer of Lyons, a grave, severe man, then on the verge of fifty. Reserved and abrupt in his manners, few would have thought him likely to fascinate a young and beautiful woman. Nor was it love that attracted her to him. Love she looked upon—it was thought through the influence of
