For the time being, however, not a little of the world was mixed with her preparations for religious retirement. When she came back to the Quai de l’Horloge,—her first year out of the convent was spent on the Île Saint Louis with her grandmother Phlipon,—her father and mother began gradually to initiate her into the round of life which presumably would be hers in the future. M. Phlipon took especial pride in his fresh, bright-faced daughter. By his wish she was always dressed with elegance, and she attracted attention everywhere. The tenderness with which he introduced her always touched Manon in spite of the fact that she was often embarrassed by his too evident pride in her. The two went together to all the Salons and the expositions of art objects, and M. Phlipon carefully directed her taste here where he was so thoroughly at home. It was the only real point of contact between them.
Sundays and fête days were usually devoted to promenades by the Phlipons. The gayest paths, gardens, and boulevards were always chosen by M. Phlipon. He enjoyed the crowd and the mirth; and, above all, he enjoyed showing off his pretty daughter. But she, stern little moralist, when she discovered that her holiday toilette really gave her pleasure, that she actually felt flattered when people turned to look at her, that she found compliments sweet and admiring glances gratifying, trembled with apprehension. She might forgive her father’s vanity, but she could not forgive such a feeling in herself. Was it to walk in gardens and to be admired that she had been born? She gradually convinced herself that these promenades were inconsistent with her ideal of what was “beautiful and wise and grand,” and she urged her parents to the country, where all was in harmony with her thoughts and feelings. Meudon, still one of the loveliest of all the lovely forests in the environs of Paris, was her favorite spot. Its quiet, its naturalness, its variety, pleased her better than the movement and the artificiality of such a place as Saint-Cloud. In the forest of Meudon her passion for nature was fully satisfied; here she could study flower and tree, light and shade.
In her love for nature Manon was in harmony with one of the curious phases of the sentimental life of the eighteenth century in France. Nature as food for sentiment seems to have never been discovered until then by the French people. One searches in vain in French literature before Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau for anything which resembles a comprehension of and feeling for the external world—yet unaided Manon Phlipon became naturalist and pantheist. Never did Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau, in their tramps in the environs of Paris, rejoice more profoundly over the beauties of the world, enter more deeply into its mysteries, than did she when in her girlhood she wandered in the allées of the forest of Meudon or of the Bois de Vincennes.
But Manon was to see still another side of life,—people in their relations to one another and to herself. Thus far she had been easily first in her little world. She had never known the time when she was not praised for her superiority. Whatever notions of equality she entertained it is certain that she had not yet discovered that Manon Phlipon was secondary to anybody else.
It was on the visits which she began to make with her relatives, that she first discovered that in the world men are not graded according to their wisdom and their love for and practice of virtue. She went one day with her grandmother Phlipon to visit a rich and would-be-great lady, Madame de Boismorel, in whose house Madame Phlipon had, for many years after her husband’s death, acted as a kind of governess. She was wounded on entering by a sentiment not purely democratic—the servants, who loved the old governess and wished to please her, crowded about the little girl and complimented her freely. She was offended. These people might, of course, look at her, but it was not their business to compliment her. Once in the grand salon she found a typical little old Frenchwoman, pretentious, vain, exacting. Her chiffons, her rouge, her false hair, her lofty manner with the beloved grandmamma Phlipon whom she addressed as Mademoiselle,—Mademoiselle to her grandmother, one of the great personages of her life so far,—her assumption of superiority, her frivolous talk, revolted this Spartan maid. She lowered her eyes and blushed before the cold cynicism of the old lady. When she was asked questions, she replied with amusing sententiousness. “You must have a lucky hand, my little friend, have you ever tried it in a lottery?”
“Never, Madame, I do not believe in games of chance.”
“What a voice! how sweet and full it is, but how grave! Are you not a little devout?”
“I know my duty and I try to do it.”
“Ah! You desire to become a nun, do you not?”
“I am ignorant of my destiny, I do not seek to penetrate it.”