convent school. Her peers were the French elite who provide a model of "female intelligence, capacity, and energy" and experienced the "rich pageantry of Roman Catholic liturgies". It gave her the ability to conduct witty, intelligent conversation and thought about how she would manage the education of her future children. When she socialized at the Abbey, she learned about women's role in political affairs, the dissension leading to the French Revolution, and palace intrique. Her father had influenced the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in France. Randolph said of her time in France was "the brightest part of a life much shaded & saddened by care & sorrows." Mary traveled with Sally Hemings to Paris and joined her sister at the convent school in July 1787. Randolph and her sister Mary contracted typhus during the winter of 1788 and lived with their father until they regained their health. They returned to the convent in spring of 1789. After Randolph expressed a desire to convert to Catholicism and said she was considering religious orders, Jefferson quickly withdrew her and her younger sister Polly from the school. Over the course of her studies, Randolph learned to speak four languages. Randolph socialized with "free thinking" European women and accomplished women of the French Enlightenment, like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Germaine de Staël. She also met world leaders while in France. She enjoyed a social life that included balls and concerts during the summer. Wayson says that she was able "to observe firsthand the collective power of French women as they marched to the king's palace at Versailles and forced the royal couple's return to Paris under the escort of the Marquis de Lafayette, a Jefferson family friend." In September 1789, after the beginning of the French Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, his daughters, and James and Sally Hemings sailed for America, arriving in 1790. Marriage and family On February 23, 1790, at the age of 17, she married Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., a planter, at Monticello. He was her third cousin, and a descendant of Pocahontas. Her husband, the son of Thomas Jefferson's friend Thomas Mann Randolph Sr., was in many ways a good candidate as her husband, but his family was subject to scandal. Some of the Randolphs were accused but later acquitted of killing a child believed to have been fathered by Richard Randolph. Randolph was a witness