Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/17

Rh her for a long while. This happy find belonged to one of her father's apprentices named Courson, who in the course of time became tutor to the pages at Versailles. This studious young man always kept a certain number of volumes in a little hiding-place of his own in her father's atelier. Now this atelier adjoined a good-sized room, resplendent with looking-glasses and pictures, where Manon was in the habit of having her lessons. A recess on one side of the mantel-piece admitted of a closet being fenced off from the main room, furnished with bedstead, table, chair, and a few shelves, which till within a year of her marriage served her at once for bedroom and study. From this nook, as a mouse from its hole, the child would noiselessly sally forth when work was at a stand-still, and, seizing one of the precious books, would quickly dart back to her retreat. Here, elbow on table and cheek resting on her left hand, what wonderful voyages of discovery did she not make into far lands and backward centuries! Descriptions of travel were her delight, pathetic stories deeply touched her; but one day there fell into her hands a book that kindled in her a new life.

This book was Plutarch. The humble little closet on the Quai de l'Horloge was changed into a temple where the best and bravest of men again became incarnate in the shaping imagination of a visionary child. Who can precisely explain or define that strong historic grasp, which is almost like a sixth sense, and seems inborn with some children. Give to such a one a history of Rome, and it comes with a power and a passion and a haunting reality as of memories called up from an obliterated past. Plutarch became a landmark in the life of Manon Phlipon. She carried the volume about with her everywhere; she absorbed its