Nor had she at this time any bitterness towards the existing order of government. If she “would have chosen a republic if she had been allowed a choice before coming into the world,” she had so far no idea of rejecting the rule under which she was born. Indeed, she was a very loyal subject of Louis XVI. When that prince came to the throne she wrote to her friend: “The ministers are enlightened and well disposed, the young prince docile and eager for good, the Queen amiable and beneficent, the Court kind and respectable, the legislative body honorable, the people obedient, wishing only to love their master, the kingdom full of resources. Ah, but we are going to be happy!” Nor did her ideas of equality at this period make her see in the mass of the common people equals of those who by training, education, and birth had been fitted to govern. “Truly human nature is not very respectable when one considers it in a mass,” she reflected one day, as she saw the people of Paris swarming even to the roofs to watch a poor wretch tortured on the wheel. In describing a bread riot in 1775, she condemned the people as impatient, called the measures of the ministers wise, and excused the government by recalling Sully’s reflection: “With all our enlightenment and good-will it is still difficult to do well.” And again, apropos of similar disturbances, she said: “The King talks like a father, but the people do not understand him; the people are hungry—it is the only thing which touches them.” Nothing in all this of contempt of the monarchy, of the sovereignty of the people, of the divine right of insurrection. Manon Phlipon had in fact become, by the time she was twenty years of age, a thoroughly intelligent and reflective young woman. Instead of extravagant and impulsive opinions, results of excessive emotionalism and idealism, which her first twelve years seemed to prophesy, we have from her intelligent judgments. If it was not a question of some one she loved, she could be trusted to look at any subject in a rational and self-controlled way. This change had been brought about largely by the reading and reflecting she had done since leaving the convent. For some time what she read had depended on what she could get. Her resolution to enter a convent eventually had made her at first prefer religious books, and she read Saint Augustine and Saint François de Sales with fervor and joy. With them she combined, helter-skelter, volumes from the _bouquinistes_, mainly travels, letters, and mythology. Fortunately she happened on Madame de Sévigné. Manon appreciated thoroughly the charming style of this most agreeable French letter-writer, and her taste was influenced by it, though her style was but little changed.