possible inquiries concerning his future son-in-law, wrote off to the doctor's friends in Provence, made nice inquiries of the tradesmen he dealt with, and of his servants, and, having discovered that he had quarrelled with an influential person in his province, began lecturing him with the airs of the prospective father-in-law. The choleric doctor, having already heard of some of these proceedings, was so much ruffled in temper as to show his discontent to the relative who had first been instrumental in bringing the parties together. Whereupon this lady, no less fiery, considered her cousin slighted, and the affair was broken off. On the ladies return from the country, nothing further was said of the suitor; Manon felt intensely relieved, the mother not sorry, and the father too crestfallen to say a word.
In fact, he had now given up pressing Manon to get married, and, as time went on, was less anxious about the matter than his wife. He began enjoying the sense of his importance in having so admired a daughter. He now always showed her the various written demands for her hand that reached him, and his daughter would dictate the answer, couched in the most judicious terms, in the name of her papa.
In the meanwhile Madame Phlipon had died; Marie was keeping house for her father, when there called on her a young man, whom she had known some years ago, and who, on seeing her, asked, much moved, whether someone were ill. "Someone is dead," was her scarce audible reply. She then told what had happened, and read his sympathy in his silent emotion.
This young man was a certain Pahin de Lablancherie, who, two years later, in 1778, acquired some reputation
