Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/60

50 death he had considered it incumbent on himself to be always present when his daughter saw visitors; but he very soon grew restive, ill-tempered, finally intimating to Lablancherie to discontinue his visits.

Here was a sad complication, a dire perplexity! Filial obedience in conflict with pity for an unhappy man, dying apparently for love of her!—duty and affection pulling her heart in contrary directions! While suffering less on her own account than on that of her lover, she is equally loth to speak and to keep silence, till at last, driven to desperation at the thought of what Lablancherie must endure, she bursts out to her friend, in January 1776, being then in her twenty-second year:—"Sophie, Sophie, my friend! I am passing through the most violent crisis; I am in the most cruel conflict with myself. I have only strength enough left to throw myself into the arms of friendship. In another moment the letter I enclose would have been despatched to its address. Only by a great effort have I restrained myself. I wish to delude myself by sending it to you. My soul longs to unburden itself—I think it necessary for the life of him I love; but then prejudice—custom—my father! O God! how I suffer!"

The letter alluded to in the above lines is one which Manon, after much inward trepidation, had at last penned to her lover, in which she tells him that, bound by her father's wish, she is obliged to give up her intercourse with him, and that he must henceforth try and forget her.

The letter was sent by Sophie, and the result was that Lablancherie discontinued his visits entirely. Manon repeatedly expresses admiration for a lover who could thus respect her wishes and act up to