“His project is simply to secure a sister and a friend, under a perfectly proper title. I thank him for a plan that my reason justifies, that I find honorable for both, and that I feel myself capable of carrying out.... My sentiments, my situation, everything drives me to celibacy. In keeping it voluntarily while apparently living in an opposite state, I do not change the destiny which circumstances have forced upon me, and at least I contribute by a close relation to the happiness of an estimable man who is dear to me.... How chimerical this idea would be for three-fourths of my kind! It seems as if nobody but M. de Sévelinges and I could have conceived it, and that you are the only one to whom I could confide it. The realisation of this dream would be delightful it seems to me. I can imagine nothing more flattering and more agreeable to one’s delicacy and confidence than this perfect devotion to pure friendship. Can you conceive of a more delicate joy than that of sacrificing oneself entirely to the happiness of an appreciative man?” The affair with M. de Sévelinges came to nothing, and as Manon gradually ceased to think of him she became more and more interested in the M. Roland already mentioned. M. Roland de la Platière was a man about forty-two years of age when he first met Mademoiselle Phlipon, in 1776. He held the important position of Inspector-General of Commerce in Picardy, and lived in Amiens, the chief town of the province. In his specialty he was one of the best known men in France. His career had been one of energy and patience. Leaving his home in the Lyonnais when but a boy of eighteen, rather than to take orders or to go into business as his family proposed, he had spent two years studying manufacture and commerce in Lyons, and then had gone to Rouen, where, through the influence of a relative, he had passed ten years in familiarizing himself with the methods of the factories of Normandy, at that time one of the busiest manufacturing provinces in France. M. Roland’s work at Rouen had not been of a simple, unintelligent kind. He had studied seriously the whole subject of manufacturing in its relations to commerce, to government, to society, and had worked out a most positive set of opinions on what was necessary to be done in France in order to revive her industries. He had already begun to write, and his pamphlets had attracted the attention of the ablest men in his department of science.