Whatever her mental vagaries, she never altered her religious practices. She did not wish to torment her mother, or to set a bad example to those who took her as a model; for instance, there was her _bonne_ whom she desired should keep her faith. “I should blame myself for weakening it,” she said, “as I should for taking away her bread.” Only two months before the end of her life Madame Roland summed up her religious and philosophical life in a passage of her Memoirs. It is simply a résumé of what in her girlhood she wrote at different times to Sophie. The main points of this philosophy have been given above. II LOVERS AND MARRIAGE Until she was twenty-one years of age, Manon Phlipon’s life was singularly free from care. Her studies, her letters to Sophie, her hours with her mother, her promenades, filled it full. Suddenly in 1775 its peace was broken by the death of Madame Phlipon. Manon’s veneration and affection for her mother were sincere and passionate, her dependence upon her complete. Her death left the girl groping pitifully. The support and the joy of her life seemed to have been taken from her. But the necessity of action, her obligations to her father, the kindness of her friends, her own philosophy, finally calmed her, and she made a brave effort to adjust herself to her new duties. Her real restoration, however,—that is, her return to happiness and to enthusiasm, was wrought by a book—the _Nouvelle Héloïse_, of Jean Jacques Rousseau. In the middle and in the latter half of the eighteenth century France passed through a paroxysm of sentiment. Man was acknowledged a reasoning being, to be sure, but it was because he was a sensitive one that he was extolled. His mission was to escape pain and seek happiness. To laugh, to weep, to vibrate with feeling, was the ideal of happiness. This sensitiveness to sentiment was shown in the most extravagant ways. Words ran out in the efforts to paint emotion. Friends no longer saluted, they fell into each other’s arms. Tears were no longer sufficient for grief, they were needed for joy. Convulsions and spasms alone expressed sorrow adequately. At the least provocation women were in a faint and men trembling. Acute sensibility was cultivated as an Anglo-Saxon cultivates reserve.