“He seemed to me to have an honest heart, much love for literature and science, art and knowledge. In fact, if he had a secure position, was older, had a cooler head, a little more solidity, he would not have displeased me. Now he has gone and without doubt thinks as little of me as I do about him.”
This was nearly two years before Madame Phlipon’s death and Manon saw almost nothing of La Blancherie until some four months after her loss, when he came unexpectedly one evening to see her, pale and changed by a long illness. The sight of the young man agitated her violently. It recalled her mother, recalled, too, the fact that he alone of all her suitors had seemed worthy of her. Her agitation embarrassed him. With tears she told him her grief. He tried to console her and confided to her the proof-sheets of his forthcoming book.
Manon described the meeting to Sophie and added her appreciation of the book. “You know my Loisirs,[[1]] do you not? Here are the same principles. It is my whole soul. He is not a Rousseau, doubtless, but he is never tiresome. It is a beautiful morality, agreeably presented, supported by facts and an infinite number of historic allusions and of quotations from many authors. I dare not judge the young man because we are too much alike, but I can say of him what I said to Greuze of his picture, ‘if I did not love virtue, he would give me a taste for it.’”
[1]. Manon Phlipon wrote before her marriage a series of philosophical and literary essays which she called Œuvres de loisir or Mes Loisirs. They are reflections on a great variety of subjects, generally following closely the books she read. Fragments from many of these essays are found in the letters to Sophie Cannet. It was Mademoiselle Phlipon’s habit to lend the manuscript of her productions to her intimate friends and Sophie, of course, was familiar with them all. The greatest part of the Loisirs were published in 1800 in the edition of Madame Roland’s works prepared by Champagneux.
Manon’s imagination was violently excited by this interview and she received La Blancherie’s visits with delight. Her father, however, was displeased and insisted that the young man cease coming to the house. This was all that was needed for Manon to persuade herself that she was in love. She went farther—she was convinced La Blancherie loved her, was suffering over their separation, and she shed tears of sympathy for him. She comforted herself with dreams of his noble efforts to better his situation and to win her in spite of her cruel father. She wrote Sophie long letters describing their mutual efforts to be worthy of each other, letters drawn entirely from her own fancy.
THE PONT NEUF IN 1895.
The house in which Madame Roland lived as a girl is the second of the two to the right of the picture.
“We are trying to make each other happy by making ourselves better, and in this sweet emulation virtue becomes stronger, hope remains. If he has an opportunity to do a good action, I am sure that he will do it more gladly when he thinks that it is the sweetest and the only homage that he can render me.” All this she assumed, but she thought she had sufficient reason for her opinion. “I judge him by my own heart, nothing else is so like him. We do not see each other, but we know we love each other without ever having avowed it. We count on each other. We hasten along the path of virtue and of sacrifice that we have chosen; there at least we shall be eternally together.”
She wrote him a fervent letter, which Sophie delivered, telling him that it was not her will that he was forbidden the house. She saw that he had a card for the Mass celebrating her mother’s death. She idealized him in a manner worthy of Julie herself, without knowing anything in particular of him, and without his ever having made her any declaration.
A sentimental young woman rarely conceives her lover as he is. Certainly the actual La Blancherie was a very different young man from the paragon of stern virtue Mademoiselle Phlipon pictured, and when the creation of her imagination was brought face to face, one day in the Luxembourg, with the flesh and blood original, the latter made a poor showing. To begin with, he had a feather in his cap, a common enough thing in that day—“Ah, you would not believe how this cursed plume has tormented me,” she wrote Sophie. “I have tried in every way to reconcile this frivolous ornament with that philosophy, with that taste for the simple, with that manner of thinking which made D. L. B. [it is thus that she designates La Blancherie in her letters] so dear to me.” But she did not succeed. No doubt her inability to forgive the feather was made greater by a bit of gossip repeated to her the same day by a friend who was walking with her, that La Blancherie had been forbidden the house of one of her friends because he had boasted that he was going to marry one of the daughters, and that he was commonly known among their friends as “the lover of the eleven thousand virgins.”