conversation was a great resource to her, while the habit he indulged of seeing her often, at last rendered her society necessary to him, and love--slow and chill, but of deep growth--arose in his heart. Five years after the commencement of their acquaintance he disclosed his sentiments. She was flattered by the proposal--his good birth during the old regime was a tangible good, to which she was by no means insensible, but her pride led her to represent to him that she was a bad match--her family ignoble, and she herself, instead of being an heiress, ruined through her father's imprudence. Roland persisted in his address, and she permitted him to apply to her only surviving parent, which he did by letter from Amiens. Phlipon did not like his austerity, and was not pleased by the tone of his letter; thinking only of his own feelings, and without consulting his daughter, he sent a rejection couched in rude and even impertinent terms. His daughter, when informed of what he had done, was a good deal shocked; for the last few months she had looked on Roland as her future husband, and attached herself to him. She wrote to him saying, that the event had justified her fears with regard to her father, and that he had better abandon his pursuit. At the same time she resolved to render herself independent--that if Roland persisted, he should not again be annoyed. It was on this occasion that she retired to a convent, and bound herself to subsist on the scanty income which was all that she possessed. At first Roland wrote to complain of her father's treatment, and though still expressing attachment, appeared to regard the paternal rejection as putting an end to his hopes. Six months afterwards he visited Paris; the sight of his friend at the convent grate renewed the feelings which absence and disappointment had blunted; he pressed his offer, and sent his brother, the benedictine, to persuade her. I reflected deeply," she writes, "on what I ought to do. I could not conceal from myself that a younger man would not have delayed, for several months, entreating me to change my resolution, and I confess that this circumstance had deprived my feelings of every illusion. I considered, on the other hand, that this deliberation was an assurance that I was appreciated; and that if he had overcome his pride, which shrunk from the disagreeable circumstances that accompanied his marrying me, I was the more secure of an esteem I could not fail to preserve. In short, if marriage was, as I thought, an austere union, an association in which the woman usually burdens herself with the happiness of two individuals, it were better that I should exert my abilities and my courage in so honourable a task, than in the solitude in which I lived." [Sidenote: 1780. Ætat. 26.]