The first of these was a M. de Sainte-Lettre, a man sixty years of age, who, after thirteen years’ government service in Louisiana with the savages, had been given a place in Pondicherry. He was in Paris for a year, and having brought a letter of introduction to M. Phlipon, soon became a constant visitor of his daughter. His wealth of observation and experience was fully drawn upon by this curious young philosopher, and probably M. de Sainte-Lettre found a certain piquancy in relating his traveller’s tales to a fresh and beautiful young girl whose intelligence was only surpassed by her sentimentality, and whose frankness was as great as her self-complacency. At all events they passed some happy hours together. “I see him three or four times a week,” she wrote Sophie; “when he dines at the house, he remains from noon until nine o’clock. There is perfect freedom between us. This man, taciturn in society, is confiding and gay with me. We talk on all sorts of subjects. When I am not up, I question him, I listen, I reflect, I object. When we do not wish to talk, we keep silent without troubling ourselves, but that does not last long. Sometimes we read a fragment suggested by our conversation, something well known and classic, whose beauties we love to review. The last was a song of the poet Rousseau and some verses of Voltaire. They awakened a veritable enthusiasm,—we both wept and re-read the same thing ten times.” To this odd pair of philosophers a third was added,—a M. Roland de la Platière, of whom we are to hear much more later on. Manon began at once to effervesce. “These two men spoil me,” she declared to Sophie; “I find in them the qualities that I consider most worthy my esteem.” But Roland and de Sainte-Lettre both left Paris, the latter retiring to Pondicherry, where he died some six weeks after his arrival. Before going away, however, he had put Mademoiselle Phlipon into relation with an intimate friend of his, a M. de Sévelinges, of Soissons, a widower some fifty-two years of age, of small fortune but excellent family and wide culture. This acquaintance was kept up by letter, and in a few months M. de Sévelinges asked her hand. Now Mademoiselle Phlipon had but a small dot and that was fast disappearing through the dissipation of her father, who, since her mother’s death, had taken to amusing himself in expensive ways. M. de Sévelinges had children who did not like the idea of his marrying a young wife without fortune. It was to imperil their expected inheritance. Manon appreciated this and refused M. de Sévelinges. But he insisted and they hit upon a quixotic arrangement which Mademoiselle Phlipon describes thus to Sophie: