Suitors, she writes, came numerously from her fifteenth year.  She marches them off en masse in her memoirs.  As is the custom in France, the first overture was made to her father, and usually by letter.  Her music teacher was her first devotee.  He was followed by her dancing master, who, as a propitiatory preparation had a wen cut out of his cheek; then came a wealthy butcher; then a man of rank; then a dissolute physician, from marrying whom she narrowly escaped; then a jeweler, and many others.  The merits of these gentlemen—­particularly those of the energetic butcher—–­were warmly commended by their female friends, who, in France, are brokers in this business on a very extensive scale.  It is a unique proof of her ascendancy over every person near her that the letters which her father received, requesting his permission to address her, were submitted by him to her to draft the answer he was to send.  So she placed herself loco parentis, and wrote the most paternal letters of refusal; all of which her father dutifully copied and sent, with many a pang when she let riches and rank pass by her.  The suitors were dismissed, one and all, and she resumed her books and studies.

Her mother died in 1775.  She became the mistress of the house.  Her father formed disreputable connections.  Late in that year her future husband, Roland de la Platiere, presented himself, with a letter from a friend of her girlhood.  He was forty years old; he was a student; his form was awkward and his manners were stiff; his morals were irreproachable, his disposition was exacting, but his ability was great.  He was capable of instructing even her on many subjects, and they became well acquainted by the elective sympathy of scholarship.  She became the critic and depositary of his manuscripts.  Finally, one day, after asking leave, in her father’s presence the worthy man actually kissed her, on his departure for Italy.  Her father, sinking lower and lower, squandered her little fortune of about three thousand dollars, wasted his own business, and then treated her with brutality.  Her only amusement at this time was playing the violin, accompanied by an old priest who tortured a bass viol, while her uncle made a flute complain.

Finally, after an acquaintance of five years, Roland, by letter to her father, proposed marriage.  The purity of Roland’s life was esteemed by Phlipon such a reproach to his own dissoluteness that he revenged himself by an insulting refusal.  He then made his daughter’s life at home so insupportable that she took lodgings in a convent.  She was visited there by Roland, and they were finally married, without again consulting her father.  During the year next succeeding their marriage they remained at Paris.  From Paris they went to Amiens, and lived there four years, where her daughter was born.  She assisted her husband in the preparation of several statistical and scientific articles for the Encyclopedic.  She made a hortus siccus of the plants of Picardy.