cast in a free state, which she had
persuaded herself was the only nursery of virtue, generosity, and
wisdom. She contrasted the state of society, as she saw it around her,
with the ideal state of its existence in ancient Greece and Rome. She
had once paid a visit of eight days to Versailles, and witnessed the
routine of the court. How different were the weak and dissolute actors
upon that tinsel and tawdry stage from the heroes and philosophers
with whom she was wont, in imagination, to associate! She "sorrowfully
compared the Asiatic luxury, the insolent pomp, with the abject misery
of the degraded people, who ran after the idols of their own creating,
and stupidly applauded the brilliant shows for which they paid out of
their own absolute necessaries." Sometimes she was taken to visit
certain ladies who called themselves noble, and who, looking upon her
as an inferior, sent her to dine with the servants. But their airs of
condescending kindness were even yet more offensive, and made her
bosom swell with indignant emotion. She acknowledges that this feeling
made her hail the revolution with greater transport.

The daughter of a prosperous tradesman, she had many suitors of her
own rank; but she had formed to herself a _beau ideal_ of wedded life
which none but a man of education could satisfy; they were all
rejected. A physician proposed; more refinement and knowledge was to
be expected in the learned professions; she hesitated, but he also was
rejected. In the mean time, her father's habits began to change; he
became a speculator, fond of pleasure and careless of his business.
His speculations failed, and his customers left him. Her mother
witnessed the approach of poverty with anxiety; she feared for her
daughter alone, for her own health was so feeble, that she could look
only for a short term of life. She wished to see her daughter's
happiness made as secure as possible, and tried to persuade her to
accept the addresses of a young jeweller who had health and a good
character to recommend him; but Manon wished to find in her husband a
companion and a guide.

Her mother died; and intense grief overwhelmed the daughter, both body
and mind. It was long before she could be roused to any exertion from
that melancholy "which made her a burden to herself and others." At
this moment, the "Nouvelle Heloise" was placed in her hands; it
excited her attention, and called her thoughts from her loss. "I was
twenty-one," she s