Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/24

14 There was another inmate of the convent who contracted a genuine and lifelong attachment for Manon. This was Angélique Boufflers, who, being dowerless, had perforce taken vows at seventeen. She was one of the lay sisters, under the name of Sister Agathe. Although the most menial tasks devolved on her, she performed them all with zeal and cheerfulness, while in mind and heart she was far superior to most of the ladies of the choir. With quick penetration she singled out the little Phlipon as her pet boarder, and never lost an opportunity of anticipating her wishes, even secretly giving her a key to her cell, that in her absence she might pore over the poems and writings of the Mystics—to the shrill singing of her canary bird. This good soul, whose repressed affection seems to have been concentrated on the extraordinary child that for a while gladdened her monotonous existence, never quite lost sight of Madame Roland. And years later, when convents were abolished, poor Sister Agathe, living penuriously in a garret near her ancient haunts, forgot the vicissitudes of her own lot in lamenting those of her "daughter," as she was wont to call her darling Manon.

But these days lay unsuspected in the future. We are as yet only in the summer of 1766, when Manon, having passed her appointed time at the convent, was taken to spend a year with her paternal grandmother. Her father, having been appointed to some parochial office, was taken much from home, and the supervision of the apprentices devolved to a great extent on her mother, who might thus not have been able to devote herself so much to her daughter as she would have wished. So it was judged better to place her under her grandmother's care. Old Madame Phlipon, who