Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/59

Rh of her other wooers is very clear from her letters to her confidante Sophie. She could see nothing so wild in the young man's proposition to her father—to let them marry at once, live in his house for a few years, and, by means of her dowry, assist him to purchase a place in the magistracy, and so start them for life. She nevertheless acquiesced in M. Phlipon's decision; and now, after the lapse of a few years, behold! Lablancherie made his appearance again, at a time when her mother's death had made a sad vacuity in her heart, and when the interesting pallor of her lover seemed to indicate that he had suffered much on her account.

There is no doubt that her feelings were touched at last, that she was in love, even if that love partook more of a fancy than a passion, was more of the head than the heart. If she had not been in love, would she have thought of saying that, though he was not a Rousseau, "his moral sentiments were beautiful and well expressed"? If she had been more in love, would she have laid stress on his "infinite historical allusions and quotations from authors without end"? At any rate, such as it was, it had some of the effects by which we can tell the highest kind of love, it kindled a very passion of perfection in her in order to make herself worthy of this exalted being, whom she had fashioned in the image of her ideal; and whenever she did a generous action (and she did many), she naïvely laid it to the account of Lablancherie. She did not at this time contemplate marriage. It sufficed her that she was beloved of this "virtuous" young man, that they saw each other occasionally, that they could think of each other in absence. This state of affairs by no means suited the father's views. After his wife's