Not all of her visits were so unsuccessful, as her description of one to Greuze shows:
“Last Thursday, Sophie, I recalled tenderly the pleasure that we had two years ago, at Greuze’s. I was there on the same errand. The subject of his picture is the Paternal Curse. I shall not attempt to give you a full description of it; that would be too long. I shall simply content myself with saying that, in spite of the number and the variety of the passions expressed by the artist with force and truthfulness, the work, as a whole, does not produce the touching impression which we both felt in considering the other. The reason of this difference seems to me to be in the nature of the subject. Greuze can be reproached for making his coloring a little too gray, and I should accuse him of doing this in all his pictures if I had not seen this same day a picture of quite another style, which he showed me with especial kindness. It is a little girl, naïve, fresh, charming, who has just broken her pitcher. She holds it in her arms near the fountain, where the accident has just happened; her eyes are not too open; her mouth is still half-agape. She is trying to see how the misfortune happened, and to decide if she was at fault. Nothing prettier and more piquant could be seen. No fault can be found with Greuze here except, perhaps, for not having made his little one sorrowful enough to prevent her going back to the fountain. I told him that and the pleasantry amused us.
“He did not criticise Rubens this year. I was better pleased with him personally. He told me complacently certain flattering things that the Emperor said to him.... I stayed three-quarters of an hour with him. I was there with Mignonne [her bonne] simply. There were not many people. I had him almost to myself.
“I wanted to add to the praises that I gave him:
On dit, Greuze, que ton pinceau
N’est pas celui de la vertu romaine;
Mais il peint la nature humaine:
C’est le plus sublime tableau.
I kept still, and that was the best thing I did.”
In the quiet life Manon was leading her habits of study and writing served her to good purpose, and the little room overlooking the Pont Neuf, where she had worked since a child, was still her favorite shrine. Almost every day she added something to the collection of reflections she had begun under the title of Mes loisirs, or prepared something for the letters to Sophie; for these letters to her friend, outside of the gossip and narrative portions, were anything but spontaneous. Her habit was to copy into them the long digests she had made of books she read and of her reflections on these books. Among the manuscript lent me by M. Marillier I found several evidences of the preparations she made of her letters.