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?”