who conceived the greatest affection for her charge, and never lost sight of her in after life. At the age of two Manon was taken home by her parents, a thorough little rustic brimming over with health and spirits. She was never taught to read, but had mastered that accomplishment at the mature age of four, when, according to her, the chief business of her education might be regarded as finished, so assiduously did she thenceforth devote herself to study. Let her only have books and flowers, and she wanted nothing else. She was a thoughtful, affectionate child, lively without being boisterous, and easily amenable to reason; but, however tractable, violence or threats made her proportionately obstinate. The severest punishment her mother ever found it necessary to inflict was to address her as "Mademoiselle," accompanying the word by a certain look and tone of voice. Not so her father. A man of hasty and violent temper, he sometimes had recourse to physical chastisement, which never failed to raise a spirit of intense resistance in his daughter.
One such scene made an indelible impression on the future Madame Roland. She was then six years old, and happened to be suffering from some childish ailment. Her mother had poured out the prescribed dose of physic, and was holding it to her lips. Disgusted by the smell, the child involuntarily drew back, but, at the mother's gentle remonstrance, made ineffectual efforts to swallow the unsavoury draught. In the meanwhile the father had come in, and taking Manon's aversion for obstinacy, he got very angry, seized hold of the whip, and began beating her. From that moment she lost all desire to obey, and declared that she would not take the
