In spite of friends, visits, books, and letters, however, Manon was sad at this period. Her father was leading an irregular life, which shocked and irritated her. No two persons could have been more poorly prepared for entertaining each other than M. Phlipon and his daughter. He was proud of her, but he had no sympathy with the sentiments which made her refuse the rich husband her accomplishments would have won her. He found no pleasure in talking with her of other than ordinary events. He recognized that she felt herself superior to him in many ways, and though he probably cared very little whether she was or not, he was annoyed that she felt so.
Manon, on her part, lacked a little in loyalty towards her father, as well as in tenderness. She considered him an inferior and always had. When he took to dissipation, after her mother’s death, in spite of the honest effort she made to keep his house pleasant and to be agreeable to him, her pride, as well as her affection, was hurt, and she sometimes took a censorious tone which could not fail to aggravate the case. There were often disagreeable scenes between them, after which M. Phlipon went about with averted eyes and gloomy brow.
Manon complained to her relatives of the condition of her home, and the private lectures M. Phlipon received from them only made him more sullen. Sometimes, to be sure, there were returns to good feeling and Manon felt hopeful, but soon an extravagant or petty act of her father brought back her worry. In her despair she was even tempted to give up her philosopher and marry one of the ordinary but honest and well-to-do young men her friends and relatives presented.
Manon was thus occupied and annoyed when M. Roland came back from Italy in the spring of 1778. As he was much in Paris, the relation between them soon became very friendly, and he was often at the Quai de l’Horloge. But we hear almost nothing of him in the letters to Sophie. The reason was simply that M. Roland had requested his new friend to say nothing to the Cannets about his visits. Probably he foresaw gossip in Amiens if it was known he saw much of Mademoiselle Phlipon. Then, too, Henriette, an older sister of Sophie, was interested in him and he feared an unpleasant complication in case she knew of his attentions. Manon carried out his wishes implicitly in spite of her habit of writing everything to her friend. She even practised some clever little shifts to make Sophie believe that she did not see M. Roland often and then only on business connected with his manuscript, or to ask him some questions about Italian, which she had begun to study.
The frankness on which she prided herself was completely set aside—a thing of which she would not have been capable if she had not been more anxious to please her new friend than she was to keep faith with the old. Probably, too, she was very well pleased to have an opportunity to give Roland this proof of her feeling for him.
In the winter of 1778–79 Roland told her that he loved her. Manon, “en héroine de la délicatesse,” as she puts it, felt that in the state of her fortune, which her father was threatening to finish soon, and with the danger there was of M. Phlipon bringing a scandal on the family, it was not right for her to marry. She told all this to Roland, who agreed with her, and they hit on a sort of a Platonic arrangement which went on very well for a time. They openly declared their affection to each other; they worked and studied together; they confessed to each other that the happiness of their lives lay in this mutual confidence and sympathy. But love is stronger than philosophy, and Roland was ardent. Manon became unhappy. Was her dream going to fade? Restless and uncertain, she wrote Roland, who had returned to Amiens, of her fears, and a correspondence began which soon put an end to their Platonic idyl, and landed them amid the irritating details which attend a French betrothal. As this correspondence has never been published, and as it throws much light on the sentimental side of Manon Phlipon’s life, it is quoted from rather fully in the following pages.
Roland had laughed at her first letter complaining of his fervor. In answer she wrote him a voluminous epistle in which she traced the birth and growth of her sentimental nature.
“You laugh at my sermon, now listen to my complaints. I am sad, discontented, ill. My heart is heavy, and burning tears fall without giving me relief ... I do not understand myself ... but let me tell you once for all what I am and wish always to be.
“It is almost twenty-five years since I received life from a mother whose gentleness, wisdom, and goodness would be an eternal reproach if they were not an inspiration. The death of this loved mother caused the deepest grief I have ever known. By nature I am sensitive (should I pity or congratulate myself?); a solitary education concentrated my affections, made them more fervid and profound. I felt happiness and sorrow before I could call them by name. It was on them that I first reflected. I was active and isolated.... I was meditating when usually a child is busy with toys.
“I have often told you how I was stirred by religious ideas, and how the restless and vague sentiments which had oppressed me were finally fixed on certain determined objects. Soon I awoke to the joy of friendship, and before one would have supposed that I knew I had a heart, it was overflowing. Young, ardent, happily situated, unconscious of the clash of interests which makes men wicked, love of duty became a passion with me and the mere name of virtue aroused my enthusiasm.