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Rh follow her studious bent. Placed in a provincial capital, and a higher social sphere, she was expected to go into society with its trivial round of visitings, balls, and whist parties. It is amusing to note how often Marie Phlipon compassionates her for this drudgery of pleasure, and how vehemently she inveighs against dancing, when a man's mind, she says, is in his legs, and a woman's head turned by insipid compliments. "Ah!" she exclaims, "you give me a very amusing description of those young ladies drawn up under arms in the prescribed uniform, that their judges may review them. A comic picture which may entertain, but I am shocked at that servitude forged by the chains of opinion, of which they make themselves the willing slaves. How foolish women are! They would exercise a genuine empire over men if their reason reinforced that of their charms, and if they would persist in retaining the right of disposing of their hearts in favour of merit sanctioned by duty."

But Manon could not entirely steel herself to the pleasing sensations of vanity. She was now in the early bloom of youth, a rich exuberant bloom in no wise dimmed by her midnight studies. She was tall and well proportioned, with a womanly fulness of contour. The ample development of her figure partook more of the robustness of the people than of the delicately-reared ladies, who pay for their delicacy with vapeurs in one age and neuralgia in another. Languor and weariness never came near her. In her erect carriage and light easy walk, the elasticity of her nature showed itself. She had soft, dark, abundant hair, eyes of almost transparent darkness, where the white is so pure as to appear almost blue, and a brilliant complexion, midway between fair and brunette, the quick