During the first days at the convent, a novice took the veil,—one of the most touching ceremonies of the Church. The young girl appeared before the altar, dressed like a bride, and in a tone of joyous exaltation sang the wonderful strain, “Here I have chosen my dwelling-place, here I establish myself forever.” Then her white garments were taken from her, and cruel shears cut her long hair, which fell in masses to the floor; she prostrated herself before the altar, and in sign of her eternal separation from the world a black cloth was spread over her. Even to the experienced and unbelieving the sight is profoundly affecting. Manon, sensitive and overstrung, was seized with the terrible, death-in-life meaning of the sacrifice; she fancied herself in the place of the young dévouée and fell to the floor in violent convulsions.
Under the influence of such emotions, intensified by long prayers, retreats, meditation, exhortations, from curé and sisters, she took her first communion. So penetrated was she by the solemnity and the joy of the act that she was unable to walk alone to the altar. The report of her piety went abroad in the convent and in the parish, and many a good old woman whom she met afterwards, mindful of this extraordinary exaltation, asked her prayers.
Fortunately for the child’s development, this excessive mysticism, which was developing a melancholy, sweet to begin with, but not unlikely to become unhealthy, was relieved a few months after she entered the convent by a friendship with a young girl from Amiens, Sophie Cannet by name.
When Sophie first appeared at the Congrégation, Manon had been deeply touched by her grief at parting from her mother. Here was a sensibility which approached her own. She soon saw, too, that the new pensionnaire avoided the noisy groups of the garden, that she loved solitude and revery. She sought her and almost at once there sprang up between the two a warm friendship. Sophie was three years older than Manon; she was more self-contained, colder, more reasonable. She loved to discuss as well as to meditate, to analyze as well as to read. She talked well, too, and Manon had not learned as yet the pretty French accomplishment of causerie, and she delighted to listen to her new friend.
If the girls were different, they were companionable. Their work, their study, their walks, were soon together. They opened their hearts to each other, confided their desires, and decided to travel together the path to perfection upon which each had resolved.
To Manon Phlipon this new friendship was a revelation equal to the vision of nobility aroused by Plutarch; or to that of mystic purity found in the Church. So far in life she had had no opportunity for healthy expression. Her excessive sensibility, the emotions which frightened and stifled her, the aspirations which floated, indefinite and glorious, before her, all that she felt, had been suppressed. She could not tell her mother, her curé, the good sisters. Even if they understood her, she felt vaguely that they would check her, calm her, try to turn her attention to her lessons, to the practice of good deeds, to pious exercises. She did not want this. She wanted to feel, to preserve this tormenting sensibility which was her terror and her joy.
To Sophie she could tell everything. Sophie, too, was sensitive, devout, and understood joy and sorrow. The two girls shared the most secret experiences of their souls. There grew up between them a form of Platonic love which is not uncommon between idealistic and sensitive young girls, a relation in which all that is most intimate, most profound, most sincere in the intellectual and spiritual lives of the two is exchanged; under its influence the most obscure and indefinite impressions take form, the most subtile emotions materialize, and vague and indefinite thoughts shape themselves.
The effect of this relation on the emotional nature of Manon was generally wholesome. Her affection for Sophie gave a new coloring to the pleasure she found in her work, and it dispelled the melancholy which hitherto had tinged her solitude. More important, it compelled her to define her feelings so that her friend could understand them: to do this she was forced to study her own moods and gradually her intelligence came to be for something in all that she felt.
When the year which Manon’s parents had given her for the convent was up, she was obliged to leave her friend. For some time after the parting Sophie remained at the Congrégation, so that they saw each other often; but, afterwards, it was by letters that their friendship was kept up. Never were more ardent love letters written than those of Manon to Sophie. She commiserated all the world who did not know the joys of friendship. She suffered tortures when Sophie’s letters were delayed, and, like every lover since the beginning of the postal service, evolved plans for improving its promptness and its exactness. She read and re-read the letters which always filled her pockets, and she rose from her bed at midnight to fill pages with declarations of her fondness. This correspondence became one of the great joys of her life. All that she thought, felt, and saw, she put into her letters. The effort to express all of herself clearly compelled her to a greater degree of reflection and crystallized her notions wonderfully. Beside making her think, it awakened in her a passion for the pen which never left her. Indeed, it became an imperative need for her to express in writing whatever she thought or felt. Her emotions and ideas seemed to her incomplete if they had not been written out. In her early letters there is a full account of all the influences which were acting on her life, and of the transformation and evolution they produced.
When Manon left the Congrégation, it was with the determination to preserve not only her friend, but her piety. To do the latter, she had made up her mind to fit herself secretly to return to a convent life when she reached her majority. She had even chosen already the order which she should join, and had selected Saint François de Sales, “one of the most amiable saints of Paradise,” as she rightly characterized him, as her patron.