MADAME ROLAND.
BY
MATHILDE BLIND.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
i8o8.
Copyright, 1886,
By Roberts Brothers.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. Childhood i
II. Sophie 15
III. Two Queens 31
IV. Mother and Daughter 40
V. Manon's Suitors 49
VI. Flight to the Convent, and Marriage . 72
VII. The Clos de la Platiere. — Journeys to
England and Switzerland 94
VIII. France before the Revolution .... 113
IX. The Rights of Man 134
X. Madame Roland reveals Herself. ... 147
XI. The Roland Administration 173
XII. Dies Ir,e 191
XIII. The Republic 205
XIV. Madame Roland at the Bar of the Con-
vention 216
XV. Struggle between Mountain and Gironde 224
XVI. Fling us into the Abyss 235
XVII. Love in a Prison 249
XVIII. In Outlawry 278
XIX. Ave Libertas Morituri te salutant. . . 298
LIST OF AUTHORITIES.
Memoires de Madame Roland, revues et completes
sur les MS. autographes et accompagnees de notes et
pieces inddites, par M. P. Faugere. 1864.
Lettres en partie inedites de Madame Roland
(Mademoiselle Phlipon) aux Demoiselles
Cannet, etc., par C. A. Dauban. 1867.
Lettres de Madame Roland A Bancal des Issarts,
publides par Henriette des Issarts, et prece'ddes d'une
introduction par M. Sainte-Beuve. 1835.
£tude sur Madame Roland et son temps, suivie
des lettres a Buzot, par C. A. Dauban. 1864.
Memoires de Buzot, publiees par M. Gaudet. 1883.
Memoires de Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville.
Quelques Notices pour l'Histoire et le Recit
de mes Perils, depuis le 31 Mai, par Jean Baptiste
Louvet.
Memoires du Comte Beugnot, Ancien Ministre (1783-
181 5), publiees par le Comte Albert Beugnot son petit
fils. Deuxieme Edition, 1868.
Les Femmes C£lebres de 1789-95, et leur influ-
ence dans la Revolution, par E. Lairtullier.
Portraits de Femmes, par Sainte-Beuve. 1876.
Histoire de Girondins, par Alphonse de Lamartine.
1847
viii LIST OF AUTHORITIES.
Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, par Jules
Michelet. 9 torn. 1877-83.
The French Revolution : a History in 3 vols., by
Thomas Carlyle. 1837.
Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, par M. Louis
Blanc. 10 torn. 1847-62.
Arthur Young: Travels during the years 1787-
89. 1793-
DlCTIONNAIRE BlOGRAPHIQUE ET HlSTORIQUE DES
HOMMES MARQUANS DE LA FIN DU DlX-HUITIEME
Siecle. Rddigd par une Socie'te' de gens des lettres.
1800.
Du Contrat Social, par Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Les Confessions, par Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Critical Miscellanies, by John Morley. Second se-
ries, 1877.
Deux Femmes Celebres, par Victor Lamy. 1884.
MADAME ROLAND.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD.
Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, renowned as Madame
Roland, was born in Paris, March 17, 1754, in a
house on the Quai de l'Horloge, near the Pont
Neuf. She was thus just the same age as Louis
XVI., and about a year older than Marie Antoin-
ette. It would be difficult to find more common-
place surroundings than those amid which one
of the greatest of Frenchwomen was ushered into
the world.
That a daughter of shepherds and rustics should
have become the savior of her country is not sur-
prising. For the primitive simplicity of those
occupations seems the proper nursery of heroism.
But it is surprising that in the Paris of Louis
XV., from the unimaginative class of small shop-
keepers, there should suddenly spring a child, in
soul the heiress of the great men of antiquity.
l
2: \ MADAaJJL, ROLAND.
But the actual parents were far from suspecting
the native land of the little traveller that was born
to them. They had probably never heard of
Aristides the Just and Brutus the Tyrannicide.
Gatien Phlipon, a chaser and worker in enamel,
carried on a pretty thriving business ; for this was
the time when elaborately engraved watches,
snuff-boxes, and shoe-buckles were so much
sought after, the designs often being works of
art in their way. M. Phlipon employed several
apprentices, and was successful as long as he ap-
plied himself steadily to his calling. A restless
wish to make money and rise in the world was,
however, attended with the opposite results.
Constantly engaged in speculation, — such as
buying diamonds to resell at a profit, — he neg-
lected his business only to lose money in that
as also in his other ventures. He was tall and
good-looking, proud of his personal advantages,
and in every way a gay, vain, quick-witted, and
pleasure-loving Parisian.
Marguerite Bimont, his wife, in most respects
his exact opposite, was a woman of the highest
rectitude, and of an almost saintly purity of life.
Firm yet gentle, of reserved and dignified man-
ners, her retiring habits formed a strong contrast
to those of her neighbors. She rarely received
visitors, and never stirred from home except to
visit her aged mother or her husband's relatives,
CHILDHOOD. 3
or to go to church. No doubt that her example
exercised a powerful influence on her daughter's
character.
Marie-Jeanne — or Manon, as she was famil-
iarly called — was the second of seven children,
of whom all but herself died in infancy. Ac-
cording to French custom she was put out to
nurse, and the first two years of her life were
passed in the neighborhood of Arpajon, in the
care of a buxom, kindly young country-woman,
who conceived the greatest affection for her
charge, and never lost sight of her in after life.
At the age of two Manon was taken home by her
parents, a thorough little rustic brimming over
with health and spirits. She was never taught
to read, but had mastered that accomplishment
at the mature age of four, when, according to her,
the chief business of her education might be re-
garded as finished, so assiduously did she thence-
forth devote herself to study. Let her only have
books and flowers, and she wanted nothing else.
She was a thoughtful, affectionate child, lively
without being boisterous, and easily amenable to
reason ; but, however tractable, violence or threats
made her proportionately obstinate. The sever-
est punishment her mother ever found it neces-
sary to inflict was to address her as " Mademoi-
selle," accompanying the word by a certain look
and tone of voice. Not so her father. A man
4 MADAME ROLAND.
of hasty and violent temper, he sometimes had
recourse to physical chastisement, which never
failed to raise a spirit of intense resistance in his
daughter.
One such scene made an indelible impression
on the future Madame Roland. She was then
six years old, and happened to be suffering from
some childish ailment. Her mother had poured
out the prescribed dose of physic, and was hold-
ing it to her lips. Disgusted by the smell,
the child involuntarily drew back, but, at the
mother's gentle remonstrance, made ineffectual
efforts to swallow the unsavory draught. In the
mean while the father had come in ; and taking
Manon's aversion for obstinacy, he got very
angry, seized hold of the whip, and began beat-
ing her. from that moment she lost all desire
to obey, and declared that she would not take
the medicine. Her father administered whip-
ping the second ; uttering loud screams, she now
tried to upset the glass. A movement betraying
this intention enraged her father completely, and
he threatened to whip her for the third time.
From that moment a sudden and violent revul-
sion of feeling took place in Manon. Her sobs
ceased, she dried her tears, all her faculties
became concentrated in an intense effort of will.
She rose from her bed, turned to the wall, and
nerved herself to receive the blows in silence.
CHILDHOOD. 5
" They might have killed me on the spot," she
says in her famous Memoirs, penned in a prison
within a stone's-throw of the scaffold, "without
my uttering so much as a sigh ; nor will it cost
me more to-day to ascend the guillotine than it
did then to yield to a barbarous treatment which
might have killed but not conquered me."
This was her father's last effort at education.
Not that he was habitually unkind or cruel in his
treatment of his only child ; on the contrary, he
idolized his daughter, especially in her early girl-
hood, when his susceptible vanity was flattered
by the attention she attracted. His method of
dealing with her must be laid to the charge of
the manners of the times, severe and harsh to
children, where not modified by exceptional
refinement of nature. However, as we have said,
M. Phlipon henceforth wisely avoided pitting
his will against his daughter's, and entirely left
her guidance to the wise and loving hands of his
wife. But he was very proud of the child's pre-
cocious intelligence, and for her station and
years she had an array of masters which goes
far to prove that her parents must have consid-
ered hers a very exceptional nature.
At seven years of age Manon was sent every
Sunday to attend catechism, as it was called, in
order to prepare her for confirmation. This
examination was commonly held in a church or
6 MADAME ROLAND.
chapel, where a few benches were placed in a
corner, and was principally held for children of
the poorer classes ; but as her uncle the Abbe*
Bimont, an amiable, kind-hearted priest, was at
that time in charge of this class, her mother
judged it well for her to attend, especially as she
felt sure that her daughter's memory would
always secure her the first place.
On one of these occasions the rector put in an
appearance ; and in order to show off his superior
theological learning, he asked Manon, with ill-
concealed triumph, how many orders of spirits
there were in the celestial hierarchy. And the
terrible child answered, nothing daunted, that
there were nine, — as might be learned from the
preface to the Missal, — as angels, archangels,
thrones, dominions, etc. She was already deeply
versed in the Bible as well as in the Psalter, the
only books to be found at her grandmother's
house. This old lady, whom her mother took
her to see every Sunday after vespers, was in
her dotage, to the poor child's bewilderment.
She invariably sat in the same chair, — by the
window in summer, and in winter near the
fire-place, — and gave no signs of animation
except such as might emanate from a vindictive
old fairy. For instance, when her grandchild,
in high spirits, skipped about the room, she
invariably burst into tears ; but no sooner did
CHILDHOOD. 7
she have a fall or knock herself, than the palsied
dame showed her merriment by a hoarse, chuck-
ling laugh. Such conduct was naturally calcu-
lated to hurt Manon's feelings ; but her mother
eventually made her understand that these visits
were a duty not to be dispensed with.
Manon's love of reading and thirst for knowl-
edge used to hurry her out .of bed at five in the
morning. Barefooted, she would steal to her
mother's room where her books lay on a table,
and do her lessons with such eagerness that her
progress took her masters by surprise. Among
these we hear of an anomalous sort of personage
who had successively figured as chorister-boy,
soldier, deserter, capuchin, and discharged clerk,
and had come up penniless from the country
with a wife and three children. This Jack-of-all-
trades, who rejoiced in a fine falsetto voice, was
employed to teach her singing, freely borrowing
money of her parents the while, and finally dis-
appearing in Russia. Her dancing-master, a
Savoyard, was wizened, snub-nosed, frightfully
ugly, and with a wen on his cheek which showed
to advantage as with his chin he nipped his
pocket viol. Fourthly, there was a gigantic
Spaniard, with hairy hands like Esau, who gave
her lessons on the guitar ; ' and, finally, a timid
man of fifty, with rubicund face, who taught her
to play on the violoncello. As the latter only
8 MADAME ROLAND.
instructed her for a short time, a Reverend
Father Colomb enters on the scene, who, to con-
sole her, occasionally used to send over his vio-
loncello to accompany her guitar. Besides all
this, her uncle used to teach her some Latin ;
while her father, to complete the curriculum,
made her learn drawing and the use of the
graving tool.
But the real business of education, as before
mentioned, consisted not so much in these les-
sons as in her insatiable reading of all the books
she could find, consisting chiefly of standard
works, few in number but of excellent quality.
After having devoured all those belonging to her
parents, she came one day, while ferreting about
the house, on a fresh store, which lasted her for
a long while. This happy find belonged to one
of her father's apprentices named Courson, who
in the course of time became tutor to the pages
at Versailles. This studious young man always
kept a certain number of volumes in a little
hiding-place of his own in her father's atelier.
Now, this atelier adjoined a good-sized room,
resplendent with looking-glasses and pictures,
where Manon was in the habit of having her
lessons. A recess on one side of the mantel-
piece admitted of a closet being fenced off from
the main room, furnished with bedstead, table,
chair, and a few shelves, which till within a year
CHILDHOOD. 9
of her marriage served her at once for bedroom
and study. From this nook, as a mouse from its
hole, the child would noiselessly sally forth when
work was at a stand-still, and, seizing one of the
precious books, would quickly dart back to her
retreat. Here, elbow on table and cheek resting
on her left hand, what wonderful voyages of dis-
covery did she not make into far lands and
backward centuries ! Descriptions of travel
were her delight, pathetic stories deeply touched
her ; but one day there fell into her hands a book
that kindled in her a new life.
This book was Plutarch. The humble little
closet on the Quai de l'Horloge was changed into
a temple where the best and bravest of men
again became incarnate in the shaping imagina-
tion of a visionary child. Who can precisely
explain or define that strong historic grasp,
which is almost like a sixth sense, and seems
inborn with some children ? Give to such a one
a history of Rome, and it comes with a power
and a passion and a haunting reality as of mem-
ories called up from an obliterated past. Plu-
tarch became a landmark in the life of Manon
Phlipon. She carried the volume about with
her everywhere ; she absorbed its contents ; she
took it to church with her. This was in Lent,
1763, when she was barely nine. Without know-
ing it she had become a Republican, and would
IO MADAME ROLAND.
often weep at not being a native of Sparta or
of Rome. Henceforth Manon was ripe for the
Revolution.
By-and-by she became absorbed in " Telema-
chus " and in Tasso's " Jerusalem Delivered." She
used to put herself in the place of the fictitious
heroines ; and while fancying herself Eucharis
or Erminia, her heart used to beat and her voice
to falter with emotion. Sometimes her mother
would request her to read from one or other of
these books ; but there were certain passages
which she felt so acutely that no entreaties
would have prevailed on her to utter them aloud.
Having on one occasion observed her mother
reading one of the identical works which she
had previously perused with considerable inward
misgivings, she now went more openly to work
in her studies, and the obliging young appren-
tice seemed to buy books on purpose for her to
read.
Voltaire followed next in order; and on one
occasion the little girl was discovered by a
stout, forbidding old lady, who had come to call
on her mother, deeply engrossed in " Candide " !
Solemn remonstrances being addressed by this
officious visitor to Madame Phlipon, the child
was ordered to put the book back in its place.
In spite of this momentary prohibition, her
parents never in any way interfered with her
CHILDHOOD. 1 1
reading, unless the mother kept Rousseau out
of her reach, — which Madame Roland thought
possible, as, with the former's deep knowledge of
her daughter, she would apprehend no really bad
influence from the writings of Voltaire, while
dreading that of Rousseau on her susceptible
temperament. Whether from design or accident,
Manon only became acquainted with the latter's
works after her mother's death ; and they made
as great an epoch in her life at one-and-twenty
as Plutarch had done at nine.
These grave studies were occasionally varied
by a walk in the Tuileries Gardens on Sunday
afternoons. Her mother loved to dress her as
if she had been a doll. Though herself very
simply attired, she spared no expense in the
little girl's bravery, and would deck her out in a
fashionable silk corps-de-robe, fitting tightly and
displaying the figure to advantage, while made
full below the waist and sweeping in a long train
behind. These gala days were anything but fes-
tive to the studious Manon ; for she used to
shrink from the hair-dressing operations which
often forced tears from her eyes. On such occa-
sions her dark abundant locks would be pulled
about and put into curl-papers, and frizzed and
burned with hot irons according to the custom
of the day. These silken splendors and hair-
crimpings were only displayed on Sundays,
12 MADAME ROLAND.
holidays, and birthdays ; on ordinary occasions
Manon wore a plain linen frock, in which she
frequently accompanied her mother to market,
or was even sent across the way to buy a little
salad or parsley. And the future heroine of the
Gironde would infuse so much courtesy and dig-
nity into her manner of making these purchases,
that the astonished fruiterer always served her
before his other customers. She was also at
times called into the kitchen, where her mother
taught her to make omelettes and other dishes, —
an acquirement which proved useful afterwards,
when her husband's delicate digestion frequently
induced her to prepare with her own hands the
food he took.
Madame Phlipon, who was pious without
being a bigot, had unobtrusively instilled her
religious principles into her daughter's mind.
Although Manon's infant reason had been trou-
bled by the idea that God should have permitted
the transformation of the Devil into a serpent,
her feelings were gradually touched by the moral
beauty of Christianity ; and after her first con-
firmation, the teachings of the New Testament
took deep and deeper hold of her. She now
began to meditate on the mysteries of faith and
eternal salvation, and felt that she was but ill-
prepared for her first communion. Thereupon
she became convinced that she ought to enter a
CHILDHOOD. 13
convent, where her devotion would be entirely
untrammelled ; and while daily studying the folio
" Lives of the Saints," she deplored those happy
days of martyrdom when persecuted Christians
triumphantly proclaimed their creed in the very
fangs of death. Alas ! the child's wish was
granted to the woman : to her was indeed given
the martyr's death and the martyr's crown. Nor
did she, in the fulness of time, falter in her new
faith beneath the knife of the guillotine.
In this solemn state of mind she at last, one
evening, took courage to proffer her request to
her parents. " I fell at their feet," she says,
" shedding at the same time a torrent of tears
which almost deprived me of speech. Troubled
and surprised, they asked me the reason of my
strange excitement. ' I am going to beg of you,'
I said, sobbing, ' to do something which grieves
me sorely, but which conscience demands. Send
me to a nunnery.' They raised me from the
ground. My good mother was much moved.
While it was pointed out to me that I never had
been refused any reasonable request, they asked
me what had put me into this frame of mind.
I replied that I wished to prepare for my first
communion in the deepest possible seclusion."
As her parents expressed themselves ready to
comply with her desire, she was presently placed
in the Sisterhood of the Congregation, in the Rue
14 MADAME ROLAND.
Neuve St. fitienne, Faubourg St. Marceau. This
happened on the 7th of May, 1765, when she
was eleven years old. By a curious coincidence,
the convent where she then passed one of the
happiest years of childhood was touching the
prison where she came to be confined in her
prime.
CHAPTER II.
SOPHIE.
Shut in by high walls, the hushed green convent
garden lay, amid the stir and noise of ever rest-
less Paris, like a little oasis of peace and prayer
and ecstatic absorption in God. Here, noiselessly
moving along ancient avenues, now touched with
the living green of spring, walked the sober
nuns, standing out in mournful relief against the
flowering glory of May. The impression of this
secluded spot, of the regulated contemplative life,
of the religious services, where the full organ-
tones mingled with the soaring voices of the
nuns as they chanted their anthems, filled the
young devotee with rapture. In spite of her in-
tense affection for her mother, Manon dreamed
of taking the veil, though well aware that as an
only child she would meet with the strongest
opposition from her parents. In the mean while
she assiduously applied herself to devotional ex-
ercises, and became a favorite with the nuns.
They soon felt how such a pupil would redound
to their credit, and lavished praises and caresses
on her. Within a few months of her entrance,
\6 MADAME ROLAND.
by the unanimous consent of the superiors and
the director, she was allowed to receive her first
communion.
This year spent by Manon at the convent was
marked by the beginning of an intimacy which
never knew break or interruption for thirteen
years ; and to the correspondence which it eli-
cited we owe the knowledge of Madame Roland's
daily thoughts, habits, and surroundings while
she still lived in the peaceful obscurity of pri-
vate life.
In the summer months of 1765 some new
boarders, young ladies from Amiens, were ex-
pected at the convent : great excitement in con-
sequence among the pupils pending their arrival !
At last the strangers made their appearance, and
happened at supper to be seated at the same
table with Manon Phlipon. They were Henri-
ette and Sophie Can net. The eldest was a
well-grown girl of eighteen, whose countenance
indicated a mixture of sensitiveness, pride, and
discontent. The fact being, that, as she was of a
very joyous and lively disposition, she did not
relish being sent back to convent life in order
to mitigate her sister's grief at leaving home.
Sophie seemed of a much more equable temper,
though her charming countenance was just then
stained with tears. She was a gentle, demure,
affectionate young damsel of fourteen, with a
SOPHIE. 17
prematurely reflective turn of mind. Manon was
taken at first sight by her young neighbor,
though she could see her but indistinctly, her
face being covered by a veil of white gauze.
They soon became inseparable. They worked,
read, walked together, and being both in a deeply
religious frame of mind, enjoyed the closest com-
munity of sentiment. In the fresh delight of
uttering their thoughts for the first time, they
often sauntered arm-in-arm down the fragrant
avenues of old lime-trees, and the year which
they thus passed together remained one of the
most pleasant memories of their lives.
There was another inmate of the convent who
contracted a genuine and lifelong attachment for
Manon. This was Angelique Boufflers, who,
being dowerless, had perforce taken vows at
seventeen. She was one of the lay sisters, under
the name of Sister Agathe. Although the most
menial tasks devolved on her, she performed
them all with zeal and cheerfulness, while in
mind and heart she was far superior to most of
the ladies of the choir. With quick penetration
she singled out the little Phlipon as her pet
boarder, and never lost an opportunity of antici-
pating her wishes, even secretly giving her a
key to her cell, that in her absence she might
pore over the poems and writings of the Mystics
— to the shrill singing of her canary bird. This
2
18 MADAME ROLAND.
good soul, whose repressed affection seems to
have been concentrated on the extraordinary
child that for a while gladdened her monotonous
existence, never quite lost sight of Madame
Roland. And years later, when convents were
abolished, poor Sister Agathe, living penuriously
in a garret near her ancient haunts, forgot the
vicissitudes of her own lot in lamenting those of
her " daughter," as she was wont to call her
darling Manon.
But these days lay unsuspected in the future.
We are as yet only in the summer of 1766, when
Manon, having passed her appointed time at the
convent, was taken to spend a year with her pa-
ternal grandmother. Her father, having been
appointed to some parochial office, was taken
much from home, and the supervision of the
apprentices devolved to a great extent on her
mother, who might thus not have been able to
devote herself so much to her daughter as she
would have wished. So it was judged better to
place her under her grandmother's care. Old
Madame Phlipon, who lived with a maiden sis-
ter in a decent apartment in the quiet lie Saint
Louis, was a portly good-humored little woman,,
whose winning laugh, agreeable manners, and
roguish twinkle showed her at sixty-six not in-
different to her appearance. Left a widow after
one year's marriage, she seems to have lived in
SOPHIE. 19
the character of help and governess in the family
of some rich and distant relatives, but was now
taking her ease on a little legacy, reverentially
waited on by her maiden sister Angelique, with
pale face, poked-out chin, and spectacles on nose.
The jovial Madame Phlipon was very fond of
young people, and initiated her grandchild in the
mysteries of fine needle-work and sentimental
conversation, not unenlivened by wit.
Manon Phlipon, now in her teens, returned
once more to her parents and to her small closet,
narrower than any nun's cell. "My father's
house had not," she writes, "the solitary tran-
quillity of that of my grandmother ; still, plenty
of air and a wide space on the roof overlooking
the Pont Neuf were before my dreamy and ro-
mantic imagination. How many times from my
window, which looked northward, have I contem-
plated with emotion the vast desert of heaven,
from the blue dawn of morning behind the Pont
du Change until the golden sunset, when the glo-
rious purple faded away behind the trees of the
Champs Elysees and the houses of Chaillot ! I
rarely failed to employ thus some moments of a
fine day ; and quiet tears frequently stole deli-
ciously from my eyes, while my heart, throbbing
with an inexpressible sentiment, happy thus to
beat, and grateful to exist, offered to the Being
of beings a homage pure and worthy of Him."
20 MADAME ROLAND.
Her father, seeing her remarkable aptitude for
almost every pursuit, had not given up the idea
of making her, to some extent, his assistant, and
again induced her to handle the graving tool.
He would set her to engrave the edge of a watch-
case or to ornament a box ; and in order to give
her an interest in this work, he induced her to
keep an account book, and divided the profits of
these little jobs between them. But the pleasure
of purchasing a ribbon or girlish trinket did not
compensate her for the time lost to serious study,
and she presently put away the graver and never
touched it again.
Her life in those days was of unvarying regu-
larity. Every morning she and her mother went
to Mass, and then to do a little shopping. Les-
sons from some of the masters already mentioned
filled up the rest of the forenoon. In the retire-
ment of her closet she would afterwards study
until evening, when her mother read some in-
structive book to her, she being engaged the
while in needle-work.
Outwardly, no existence could be more monoto-
nous than was Manon Phlipon's at this time ; but
what a glow of feeling, what a moving panorama
of ever fresh images, what an eager reaching
out after self-improvement filled the inward life
with a stir of passionate activity ! To this power
of mental concentration she joined a plenitude
SOPHIE. 21
of sensations that even in youth it is given
to but few to feel ; for she had a magnificent
physique, and her highly-strung sensitive nerves
did not impair a vigor that would not have dis-
graced an Amazon. This accounts for her being
able to study till far into the night, and yet re-
awaken with something of the joyous feeling of
a bird. Every morning, indeed, was like the
spring of the day to her.
This varied intellectual life was poured forth in
long letters to Sophie, now returned to Amiens.
In those letters, often carried on from day to day,
and sent once or twice a week, one almost seems
to hear her thinking aloud. In them she hits off
every occurrence of the day, giving an analysis
of every book she had read, and discussing the
religious meditations and philosophical ponderings
that succeeded them. The published correspon-
dence opens in the year 1771. The precocious
habits of thought and fluency of style of this girl
of seventeen are most surprising, especially when
one bears her surroundings in mind. Of course
we meet with the sententiousness of the eigh-
teenth century, with its high-sounding phrases
and idyllic sentimentality ; but when we remem-
ber that the people who wrote so complacently
about the abstract virtues were, in the fulness of
time, ready to sacrifice everything to their con-
victions, we must acknowledge that what now
22 MADAME ROLAND.
sounds affected to us, once had the fulness of
reality.
In one of the earliest letters we meet with this
striking passage : —
" The knowledge of ourselves is no doubt the most use-
ful of the sciences. Everything tends to turn towards that
object the desire to know which is born with us, a desire
we try to satisfy by acquainting ourselves with the histories
of all past nations. This is by no means a useless habit,
if we know how to avail ourselves of it. My views on
reading are already very different from those I entertained
a few years ago ; for I am less anxious to know facts than
men ; in the history of nations and empires I look for the
human heart, and I think that I discover it too. Man is
the epitome of the universe ; the revolutions in the world
without are an image of those which take place in his own
soul."
The girl thinker, lost in meditation in her little
cell, while outside the din and roar of the mighty-
city were lulled for awhile, actually hit upon one
of those truths which we are wont to consider as
the mature fruit and last result of Goethe's phi-
losophy of life. It is not knowledge or power or
literary fame that this child of the Seine asks for
(though they were all within reach of her) ; no,
what she would learn is the art to live, — that
most difficult of all the arts, according to the au-
thor of Faust For in 1772 we hear the humble
enameller's daughter writing : " Let us endeavor
to know ourselves ; let us not be that factitious
SOPHIE. 23
thing which can only exist by the help of others.
Let us be ourselves. Soyons nous" Here we
have the note of the highest originality, — of
genius. Instead of a slavish following of cus-
tom, instead of trying to digest the old dough
of superannuated ideas, which has spoiled the
digestion of so many generations, let us dare to
solve the problems of life in our own way and
day ; let us try and see for ourselves, not take it
for granted that all our thinking has been done
for us by our ancestors. If in these thoughts of
the young student there is something of the lofty
calm of the sage, there is likewise a tone of prac-
tical sagacity and daring, indicative of a nature
eminently fitted for mixing in and controlling
affairs.
How far Sophie Cannet herself may have been
able to enter into her friend's abstract reasonings
we have but little means of ascertaining ; but
from many allusions in these letters we infer that
she was of a serious turn of mind, and fond of
keeping pace with the studies of Manon, who in
the course of a year or two outsped her, how-
ever, so completely that she gave up the attempt.
Sophie, moreover, was not free to follow her studi-
ous bent. Placed in a provincial capital and a
higher social sphere, she was expected to go into
society with its trivial round of visitings, balls,
and whist parties. It is amusing to note how
24 MADAME ROLAND.
often Marie Phlipon compassionates her for this
drudgery of pleasure, and how vehemently she
inveighs against dancing, — when a man's mind,
she says, is in his legs, and a woman's head
turned by insipid compliments. "Ah!" she ex-
claims, "you give me a very amusing description
of those young ladies drawn up under arms in
the prescribed uniform, that their judges may
review them. A comic picture which may enter-
tain ; but I am shocked at that servitude forged
by the chains of opinion, of which they make
themselves the willing slaves. How foolish wo-
men are ! They would exercise a genuine em-
pire over men if their reason reinforced that of
their charms, and if they would persist in retain-
ing the right of disposing of their hearts in favor
of merit sanctioned by duty."
But Manon could not entirely steel herself to
the pleasing sensations of vanity. She was now
in the early bloom of youth, — a rich exuberant
bloom in no wise dimmed by her midnight studies.
She was tall and well proportioned, with a wo-
manly fulness of contour. The ample develop-
ment of her figure partook more of the robustness
of the people than of the delicately-reared ladies,
who pay for their delicacy with vapeurs in one
age and neuralgia in another. Languor and
weariness never came near her. In her erect
carriage and light easy walk the elasticity of
SOPHIE. 25
her nature showed itself. She had soft, dark,
abundant hair ; eyes of almost transparent dark-
ness, where the white is so pure as to appear
almost blue ; and a brilliant complexion, midway
between fair and brunette, the quick blood com-
ing in flushes with every passing emotion. In
spite of her philosophy, Manon sometimes criti-
cally surveyed her nose in the glass, and heaved
an involuntary sigh at its tip being too clumsy.
Her mouth also, like that of all born speakers,
was large for the strict rules of beauty, but showed
fair white teeth when she talked or smiled. The
strength and energy of her character revealed it-
self in the bold turn of her prominent chin ; while
her richly modulated voice, changing with every
variation of feeling, resembled one of those subtly-
stringed instruments whose vibrations are capable
of expressing all moods, from the faintest sugges-
tions of tenderness to the most fervid accents of
indignation or daring.
Such being her appearance, she could not walk
abroad with impunity, — certainly not in the streets
of Paris, where, from the ouvrier in his blouse to
the flaneur on the Boulevards, every man looks
upon a handsome woman as fair game for his flat-
tering comments. Of course, in French fashion,
Manon never went out unaccompanied. But when
on a Sunday her father took her to the Tuileries
Gardens, or to the picture gaileries, which he
26 MADAME ROLAND.
delighted to frequent with her, there would often
come about her the buzz of admiring remarks not
altogether unpleasant in her ears.
But these very harmless diversions were not
without their after-effects. They left behind them
a certain elation of vanity and an increased desire
to please. On the other hand, these mundane
thoughts but ill accorded with her philosophical
tenets and religious principles. These and other
promptings of an " unregenerate " heart began to
trouble her considerably ; shocked at certain un-
accountable stirrings in her nature, she used to
leap out of bed in the middle of winter, stand
with naked feet on the tiled floor of her bed-
room, and, by way of penance, sprinkle her head
with ashes, — a frame of mind probably induced
by her reading " The Lives of the Saints." In
going to confession at this time, she once accused
herself of " having had emotions contrary to the
chastity of a Christian ; " but the Abbe Morel not
finding very much to say, she concluded that she
was not so criminal as she had supposed. This
phase of mind belonged to her fifteenth year, for
in the course of a few years she began to inquire
more deeply into her religious principles ; and the
first shock her belief sustained had its origin in
her revolting from the idea of a " Creator who de-
votes to eternal torments those innumerable be-
ings, the frail works of His hands, cast on the earth
SOPHIE. 27
in the midst of so many perils, and lost in a night
of ignorance, from which they have already had so
much to suffer." In the warmth of her heart she
would have re-echoed Diderot's resounding cry,
" Enlarge your God." With fearless truthfulness,
Manon's first impulse on becoming conscious of
her nascent doubts was to confide them to her
confessor, — a little man not wanting in sense,
and of unimpeachable conduct. Anxious to re-
establish her shaken faith, he lent her a number
of works by the champions of Christianity. The
curious part of this transaction was, that, on learn-
ing the names of the authors attacked in these
controversial writings, she took care to procure
them also, and thus came to read Diderot, D'Alem-
bert, Raynal's " Systeme de la Nature," — passing
in course of time through many intellectual stages,
in which she was in turn Jansenist, Stoic, Scep-
tic, Atheist, and Deist. She finally landed in a
frame of mind much resembling that of the mod-
ern Agnostic ; content to admit that there is an
Unknowable, and that there " are many things in
heaven and earth " insoluble by the best patented
philosophies, whether material or otherwise. For
the rest, she says that at one time, while intent
on the study of Descartes and Malebranche, she
used curiously to watch her kitten, considering it
as a piece of mechanism going through its evolu-
tions. But it seemed to her that in separating
28 MADAME ROLAND.
feeling from its manifestations she was dissecting
the world and robbing it of all its charms ; and
she would sooner have adopted Spinoza's view,
and ascribed a soul to everything, rather than go
without the belief in one. But on the whole,
whenever her feelings were deeply moved she
willingly recurred to the belief in a beneficent
Creator and the immortality of the soul. While
these thoughts were agitating her inwardly, she
was fearful of communicating them to Sophie, for
fear of exposing her to like mental disturbances.
But what was her surprise on learning from her
friend's letter that, without any prompting from
without, she had been passing through a similar
crisis ! In her delight at this news, she writes in
May, 1772 : —
" By what strange coincidence of mutual similarity do
you always trace my story in writing your own ? Or rather,
why does the openness with which you show me your heart
reproach me for having hidden from you what was passing
in mine ? Without wishing to excuse my silence, you shall
know its reason."
Superfluous to enter into her explanation. She
confesses that a high self-esteem is her besetting
sin, ingenuously exclaiming, " I am evidently so
conceited that this same self-esteem hinders me
from seeing the many faults which must of course
be mine." But in reality she was not so far wrong,
and had hit her one cardinal failing : for her physi-
SOPHIE. 29
cal, moral, and intellectual attributes were so finely-
balanced as to make her an exceptionally complete
human being; nor was she so much mistaken in
her estimate of Sophie. Her instinctive hesitation
in disturbing her friend's convictions shows a fine
insight into character; for this young lady, cut
adrift from her old moorings, tossed violently from
opinion to opinion, and after much mental pertur-
bation lapsed again into Catholicism. Manon's
epistolary tone during these mental distresses is
gentle, as towards a sick child. With much phil-
osophy, she is equally ready to utter her thoughts
as frankly as heretofore, or to hold her tongue,
whichever may best suit her friend's mood. But
outspoken sincerity or tolerant silence were alike
intolerable to Sophie. Nothing would content
her but that her friend should retrace her steps
and re-enter the fold. This being impossible, the
old effusiveness at times suffered some constraint,
which, however, disappeared when the Cannets
paid an occasional visit to Paris.
Manon's natural bias became gradually more
manifest, and preoccupations with man's social
well-being engaged her in preference to theologi-
cal and metaphysical subjects. During her mother's
lifetime she must also have observed a certain re-
serve as regards some topics, for she dreaded
nothing more than hurting her feelings. Deeply
as she loved her mother, a subtle reticence had
30 MADAME ROLAND.
sprung up between them, especially since Manon
had emerged from childhood. Madame Phlipon's
deep but undemonstrative feelings did not call forth
that full flow of confidence which the daughter,
with some encouragement, would have been pre-
pared to indulge in. In order to know what was
passing in Manon's mind, the copious epistles to
Sophie were usually left unsealed on the table for
a while ; and, without any explicit understanding,
Madame Phlipon could make herself acquainted
with their contents. Outwardly Manon not only
conformed to her mother's religious practices dur-
ing the latter's lifetime, but she held that a woman
was bound to do so, whatever her opinions, for the
sake of those "weaker brethren" whose conduct
would be modelled on her own. So that after her
mother's death she still continued attending divine
service for the sake of their trusty old domestic
Mignonne, whose highest wish was to die in the
service of her young mistress.
CHAPTER III.
TWO QUEENS.
The announcement of Louis XV.'s mortal illness
found an echo even in the secluded life of the
humble engraver's family. Writing to her friend
at Amiens on the 9th May, 1774, Manon remarks :
" Although the obscurity of my birth, name, and position
seem to preclude me from taking any interest in the Govern-
ment, yet I feel that the common weal touches me in spite
of it. My country is something to me, and the love I bear
it is most unquestionable. How could it be otherwise, since
nothing in the world is indifferent to me ? I am something
of a cosmopolitan, and a love of humanity unites me to
everything that breathes. A Caribbean interests me ; the
fate of a Kaffir goes to my heart. Alexander wished for
more worlds to conquer ; I could wish for others to love."
Magnificent humanitarian cry to have burst from
the lips of this lovely recluse of twenty !
And while a young girl on the Quai de l'Hor-
loge felt the deep stirrings of a woman's heart for
a people whose suffering condition she had not
apprehended as yet, another girl — also in her
first bewitching bloom — ascended the throne of
France, and was hailed by Burke, as "just above
the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated
32 MADAME ROLAND.
sphere she just began to move in, glittering like
the morning star, full of life and splendor and
joy."
It is curious to remember that these two women,
born in such opposite ranks, — the one on a throne,
the other in a workshop, — destined one day to
play such opposite parts in the approaching politi-
cal tragedy, both destined to perish amid the clash
of warring social forces, were for a short time at
this the spring-time of their lives lodged in the
same palace, where Marie Antoinette reigned in
the lustre of royalty, while Marie Jeanne looked
on critically from the back-stairs. It gives one
some food for reflection to compare these two
natures, and to observe that the daughter of a
long line of sovereigns was a mere giddy, frivo-
lous, -thoughtless school-girl, while the daughter
of the enameller had matured her mind by long
hours of study and meditation, and even at this
early age showed an irrepressible interest in pub-
lic affairs whenever they came within her ken. If
faculty demand function, surely one of these two
girls was by nature anointed Queen of France, —
and that one was not Marie Antoinette. But from
the round men stuck into three-cornered holes,
and three-cornered men jammed into round holes,
springs half the mischief of the world. Marie
Jeanne might have made an incomparable ruler ;
Marie Antoinette's cravings for pleasure might
TWO QUEENS. 33
have remained the harmless vagaries of a beautiful
woman. But these vagaries, in the position to
which circumstances had condemned her, assumed
the proportions of a crime. So far from any yearn-
ing of compassion for Kaffirs or Caribbeans, what
cared Marie Antoinette for the French people,
who, ground down by a system of infamous taxa-
tion, toiled and moiled in semi-starvation that
Court and nobles might enjoy the greater luxury ?
What cared she for the peasants who, sooner than
cultivate the fruitful champaigns, chose to uproot
their vines because of the exorbitant dues which
made hard work as useless as idleness ? She could
care nothing for these things, since she knew noth-
ing whatever of the condition of the people whose
Queen she was.
Her peep at this royal show must have been
not a little suggestive to Marie Phlipon, when
taken by her mother to pass a week at Versailles
in the autumn of 1774. Accompanied by the
Abbe Bimont and his housekeeper, they were
lodged in the attics, one of the female servants
of the palace being a friend of theirs. The
sumptuous repasts, receptions, plays, balls, card-
parties, and what not, passing in succession be-
fore the eyes of Plutarch's disciple, shocked her
sense of justice and hurt her pride. While she
stood there among the crowd, she must often
from a distance have seen the radiant young
34 MADAME ROLAND.
queen, brightly blazing amid her favorite attend-
ants, and recognized Louis XVI. *s bluff, un-
gainly bearing amid the obsequious swarm of
elegant courtiers. And as the dazzling pictures
of court-life were passing before her, did she
foresee that presently, as in a play, the scene
would be shifted, and that this same brilliant
Court would quake to the tramp of an infuriated
mob of women, — menacing, haggard, dishevelled,
half-starved, — till under the very walls of the
Palace of Versailles, with its daintily-fed inmates,
rang out the terrible cry for bread ? And that,
again, presently King and Queen, courtiers and
all, would be swept in the revolutionary tornado
from the very face of the earth ? No, these
things were as yet only darkly brewing in the
future; but Manon, disgusted with the Court,
and impatiently awaiting the moment of depar-
ture, took more pleasure in looking at the statues
in the gardens than at the personages in the
palace. To her mother's inquiry if she were
pleased with her visit, she answered, " Provided
it is soon over ; otherwise I shall detest these
people so heartily that I shall not know what to
do with my hatred." And to the question of
what harm they had done, she replied, " To make
me feel injustice and see absurdity." "A benev-
olent monarch," she wrote afterwards to Sophie,
u appears to me almost adorable ; but if, before
TWO QUEENS. 35
my birth, I had been given the choice of a Gov-
ernment, I would have declared in favor of a
Republic."
Once at home, Manon turned with renewed
zest to her books. She became so interested in
the study of geometry, that, being too poor to buy
a certain treatise which had been lent her, she
actually copied the whole of it. Presently a
fresh disturbance from without was not without
exercising a permanent influence on her mind.
One day she was startled from her studies by
the tramping of an excited crowd hurrying to
the Place de la Greve (the place of execution),
where two young parricides were condemned to
.suffer death by the wheel and the stake. People
had crowded to the very roofs of houses to wit-
ness this appalling punishment. However much
the girl shrank from the abominable sight, she
could not shut out the shrieks of the wretches
nor the smell of the burning fagots ! Their
cries were heard from her mother's bed, for one
of the criminals lived for twelve hours on the
wheel. All night this hideous occurrence racked
her. However shocked at the crime, she was
even more so at people who could find pleasure
in such a sight She writes : —
" In truth, human nature is not at all estimable con-
sidered en masse. I cannot conceive what can thus
excite the curiosity of thousands to see two of their fellow-
36 MADAME ROLAND.
creatures die. The popularity of the gladiatorial fights in
Rome no longer surprises me. A kind of ferocity, a cer-
tain taste for blood, must be latent in the human heart.
But, no! that I cannot believe. I imagine that we all of
us love strong impressions, because they give us a lively
sense of existence ; and the same taste which takes the
educated people to the theatres carries the populace to the
Place de la Greve. Yes, the pitiless mob applauded the tor-
tures of the criminal as if at a play. Of course his crime
was horrible ; but at such instants one forgets the criminal
and his crime, only to feel the agony of a fellow- being, and
suffering nature makes herself one with pain. I confess
that I feel contempt for men, as well as love ; they are so
bad or so mad that it is impossible not to despise them.
On the other hand, they are so wretched that it is just as
impossible to help pitying and loving them. Ah ! I was
not prepared for these strange and violent impressions
which have come to trouble my ideas, and to modify my
whole being in quite a new manner."
Here, then, we have the first heart-throb of pity
and yearning over the suffering multitudes, which
was never to cease till her own heart ceased to
beat. Descending from the serene heights of
placid philosophical meditations, she looked at
-the world she lived in, and what she saw filled
her soul with a shuddering awe. Louis Blanc is
surely mistaken when he avers, in one passage
of his " History of the French Revolution," that
Madame Roland, unlike Rousseau, had no feel-
ing for the common people. On the contrary,
she felt the strongest love and commiseration
TWO QUEENS. 37
for them. The reasons on which he bases this
assertion are, her speaking rather contemptuously
of shop-keepers, and her aversion to taking a hus-
band from that class in marriage. The reasons
which she herself gives for her dislike show that
it arose from a strong democratic feeling, as will
be seen in a subsequent chapter. Certain it is
that henceforth she begins to be more and more
preoccupied with the social condition of men, for,
in one of her letters to Sophie, she says that in
her eyes the first and most beautiful of all the
virtues is the care for the common weal, the
love of the unfortunate, and the desire to help
them.
And already there were many signs and por-
tents of the coming events. Like that little cloud
which, no bigger than a man's hand in a seem-
ingly windless sky, is seen weirdly flying across
the heavens, and known by mariners to forebode
the gathering of the hurricane, there were sudden
outbreaks and bread-riots, from which those who
can read signs augured the brewing tempest.
In 1775 Marie alludes to a popular agitation
which breaks out, now in one spot and now in
another, owing to the scarcity of provisions. In
the May of that year, she wrote that, in spite of
certain edicts of the Ministry with regard to im-
portation of grain from abroad, high prices have
ruled in the markets ; and that the people, spurred
38 MADAME ROLAND.
on by want, have raised loud outcries, in some
instances forcing the shop-keepers to sell their
provisions at a lower price, or else plundering
their premises. Crowd after crowd assembled
before the bakers' shops, and the wisest closed
their shutters and threw the loaves out of win-
dow. She draws a most moving picture of these
famished wretches, cadaverous with hunger, beat-
ing a devil's tattoo on the shutters, jostling and
pressing each other in their need, and with greedy
eyes watching the loaves, as they stumble over
each other in their hot haste to catch them !
This disturbance was at last allayed by a reduc-
tion of the price of bread to a loaf of two sous,
and Manon dilates on the singular appearance of
the crowd, now appeased, if only for the present.
" Some of the people," she writes, " caper about
with loaves hugged in their arms, carrying them
in triumph, and manifesting the pleasure of satis-
fied hunger by the most energetic gestures. In
many quarters," she continues, " the disturbance
would hardly have been perceived had it not been
for the pusillanimity of the shop-keepers, who all
closed their shutters." She herself was a witness
of one of these panics. On entering a church to
hear Mass, three or four children came running
in to seek shelter from a mob that was making
for a neighboring baker. Great alarm on the
part of the beadles and the female chair-hirers,
TWO QUEENS. 39
who, violently shutting the doors, would naturally
have led the otherwise unsuspecting congregation
to think that enraged ravishers were coming to
violate the most sacred of shrines. "The poor
people only wanted bread, and thought not of
altars," she says ; adding significantly, " the sight
of these things gives one quite a new kind of
feeling, and awakens a host of thoughts."
CHAPTER IV.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
Manon's life was not always darkened by images
of fearful punishments and famished crowds, nor
did she perpetually pore over the Greek classics
and modern encyclopaedists. She sometimes went
to Christmas and birthday gatherings, given by
one or other of her many relatives, and would
draw a half ironical picture of herself to her friend
as gliding along a room in floating pink draperies
trimmed with roses. But her gravity did not re-
sist the infection of pleasure when at a ball, and
she seems to have footed it on " the light fantastic
toe" with the merriest madcap of them all. At
other times, although but rarely, she and her
mother would attend what we should now call
" Musical At-Homes." At the house of a certain
Madame Lcpine, Manon got a glimpse of some of
the lesser litterateurs of Paris, who, she says, used
to meet in a dingy room up three flights of stairs,
and, lit up by tallow candles in dirty brass candle-
sticks, would recite their verses or play their com-
positions. But this glimpse of literary society —
third-rate it is true — had no attraction for Marie,
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 4 1
who, although born and bred in Paris, always pre-
ferred a country to a town life. To live on your
own plot of ground, to grow your own fruits and
vegetables, to taste the living sweetness of the air,
seemed to her the most exquisite lot ; and when-
ever there was any question as to where the family
should go for their Sunday excursion, she pleaded
for Meudon. One of the most charming passages
in her Memoirs is the description of such a trip :
" We went often to Meudon, it was my favorite walk ; I
preferred its wild woods, its solitary ponds, its avenues of
pines, its towering trees, to the crowded paths and monoto-
nous groves of the Bois de Boulogne, to the ornamental
gardens of Bellevue, or the clipped alleys of St. Cloud.
1 Where shall we go to-morrow ? ' quoth my father, on the
Saturday evenings during summer-time ; ' the fountains
are to play ; there will be a world of company.' ' Oh,
Papa ! If you would only go to Meudon, I should like it
so much better.' At five o'clock on a Sunday morning
everybody was astir. A fresh simple muslin frock, a few
flowers and a gauze veil, showed the plans of the day.
The Odes of Rousseau, a play by Corneille, or some other
author, formed my only baggage. Then the three of us set
off and embarked at the Pont Royal (which I could see
from my window) on board a little boat, which carried us
with delightful rapidity to the shores of Bellevue, not far
from the glassworks, the dense black smoke of which is
seen from a great distance. Thence by a steep ascent we
proceeded to the avenue of Meudon, about the middle of
which we had noticed a little house on the right, which be-
came one of our halting places. . . .
42 MADAME ROLAND.
" One day, after having rambled about for a long time In
an unfrequented part of the wood, we reached an open and
solitary spot, at the end of an avenue of tall trees, where
promenaders were but rarely seen ; a few more trees,
scattered on a charming lawn, seemed to screen a prettily-
built cottage, two stories high. Ah ! what have we here ?
Two pretty children were playing before the door. They
had neither a town-bred air, nor those signs of misery so
common to the country ; on drawing nearer we noticed a
kitchen-garden, where an old man was at work. To walk
in and enter into conversation with him was the affair of
an instant. We learned that the place was called Ville
Bonne ; that its inhabitant was the water-bailiff of the
Moulin-Rouge, whose office it was to see that the canals
conveying water to the different parts of the park were
kept in repair ; that the slender salary of this place helped
to support a young couple, the parents of the children
we had seen, and of whom the old man was the grand-
father; that the wife was engaged in the cares of the
household, while the old man cultivated the garden, the
produce of which his son in leisure moments went to sell
in town. This garden was a long square, divided into four
parts, round each of which was a good-sized walk ; a pond
in the centre facilitated irrigation; and at the farther end an
arbor of yews, with a large stone seat, afforded rest and
shelter. Flowers, intermixed with vegetables, gave the
garden a gay and agreeable appearance ; while the robust
and contented gardener reminded me of the old man on
the banks of the Galesus, whom Virgil has sung. We in-
quired whether they were not in the habit of receiving
strangers. ' Few come this way,' replied the old man ;
i the place is little known ; but if by chance any come, we
never refuse such fare as our farm-yard and kitchen-garden
afford.' We begged something for dinner, and were pres-
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 43
ently served with new-laid eggs, vegetables, and salads,
in a delicious arbor of honeysuckle behind the house. I
never made so agreeable a meal ; my heart expanded in
the innocent enjoyment of this charming situation. I fon-
dled the little children and showed my veneration for the
old man. The young woman seemed pleased to have given
us accommodation ; there was some talk of two rooms
which might be let to persons desirous of taking them for
three months ; and we had an idea of doing so. This de-
lightful intention was never destined to be realized ; nor
have I ever again revisited Ville Bonne."
About this time Madame Phlipon's health be-
gan gradually to decline. She grew more serious
and taciturn, and stirred less from home than for-
merly. Grief and anxiety may also have helped the
ravages of disease ; for her husband had insensi-
bly begun to neglect his business, to go frequently
abroad, and to have fits of irritability and ill-tem-
per, which his wife bore with invariable patience
and good-humor. If they happened to differ on
any subject, although she was his superior in
every respect, she gave up her own opinion with
the greatest willingness for the sake of domestic
peace. So that her daughter never suspected till
she was grown up that her mother's life might
not possibly be as smooth as it appeared on the
surface. When she was older, she often noticed
her father's weak points in these conjugal argu-
ments, and, availing herself of the ascendancy
she at this time had over him, always took her
44 MADAME ROLAND.
mother's part, and not inaptly called herself her
watch-dog.
Madame Phlipon, no doubt, felt that her strength
was failing, and her experience must have warned
her of some of the trials that were in store for her
daughter when she should be no more. Her eyes
used to follow the girl about everywhere with a
wistful tenderness, and she seemed, as it were, to
envelop her with the brooding intensity of mater-
nal love, — a love that yearned to see her child
sheltered in some home of her own before death
snatched from her a mother's care. Without ex-
actly daring to utter all she thought and feared,
she would often urge Manon to accept one of the
many suitors who sought her in marriage. At
first she did not particularly press the matter, but
when Manon was twenty-one she entreated her
earnestly to accept a certain respectable jeweller
who had proposed to her. She represented to
her daughter that here was a man in a comfortable
position, honest, upright, and of good reputation,
who had the highest regard for her, and was quite
willing to follow her lead. The following dia-
logue, given in the Memoirs brings the situation
vividly before one. Quoth Manon : —
" But, Mamma, I don't want a husband whom I am to
guide : he would be too big a child for me."
11 Do you know that you are a very whimsical girl, for you
would certainly not like a master ? "
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 45
" Let us understand each other, dear Mamma ; I should
not like a husband to order me about, he would only teach
me to resist him ; but neither do I wish to rule my husband.
Either I am much mistaken, or those creatures six feet high,
with beards on their chins, seldom fail to make us feel they
are the stronger ; now, if the good man should suddenly
bethink himself to remind me of his strength, he would pro-
voke me, and if he submitted to me I should be ashamed
of my own power."
" I see ; you would like a man to think himself the master
while obeying you in everything."
Thus the pair argued without any decisive re-
sult ; till Madame Phlipon, hinting at the possi-
bility of being taken from her daughter, pointed
out that, more than twenty as she was, suitors
would no longer be as plentiful as during the last
five years, and begged her therefore not to reject
a man who if he were not her equal in intellect
and taste would at least love her, and with whom
she might be happy. " Yes, Mamma," cried she,
with a deep sigh, "happy as you have been!"
Her mother was disconcerted, and made no reply ;
nor from that moment did she open her lips again
on that or any other match, at least in a pressing
manner. The exclamation had escaped the daugh-
ter without premeditation ; its effect convinced
her she had touched a sore spot.
In the spring of 1775 Madame Phlipon's health
had grown so much worse that they resolved on
trying a short stay at Meudon during the Whitsun
46 MADAME ROLAND.
holidays, and by it she was much benefited.
Returned to Paris, her daughter left her for a few
hours, fairly well as it seemed, to pay a visit to
Sister Agathe ; but no sooner had she reached
the convent than an unaccountable anxiety hur-
ried her home again.
Madame Roland says that these presentiments
of a coming trouble were never by her laid to the
account of superstition, but that, loving her mother
above everything on earth, she had, without know-
ing it, noticed certain slight changes in manner
and appearance which served vaguely to disturb
her. On this particular occasion she felt such a
sinking of the heart that she impatiently hurried
home, to find the street-door standing wide open,
while a young neighbor exclaimed on seeing her,
" Oh ! Miss, your Mamma is very ill ; she has
sent for. my mother, who is up in the bed-room
with her." To utter an inarticulate cry, to fly up
the stairs, hurry into the room, and find her
mother lying back in her easy-chair, with arms
helplessly hanging over it, wildly-rolling eyes,
mouth wide open, was the affair of an instant. At
the sight of Manon some animation returned to
her face ; she made ineffectual efforts to speak,
tried to lift her arms, and with a supreme effort of
will raised her hand, and gently stroking the girl's
cheeks as if to calm her, wiped the streaming
tears from her face. With that last upflickering
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 47
of love, her limbs grew rigid ; she would fain have
smiled, have spoken some parting words of con-
solation, but it was in vain.
Her daughter seemed to multiply herself to
assist in saving her dying mother. She sent for
the doctor, for her father ; she flew to the apothe-
cary and back ; she administered an emetic ; she
helped her mother to bed ; but nothing availed.
Her eyes closed, her head fell forward on her
breast, her breathing became increasingly painful,
and at ten o'clock in the evening, as in a dream,
Manon heard the doctor and her father sending
for a priest to administer extreme unction. Stand-
ing at the foot of the bed, mechanically holding a
candle in her hand while the priest was praying,
with eyes fixed on her mother, she never stirred,
till suddenly the light dropped from her grasp
and she fell senseless on the floor. When she
came back to consciousness her mother was no
more. The sighs and tears of those around, her
father's livid face, the whispers and muffled inqui-
ries, the efforts of the bystanders to withhold her
entrance into the room, whence she had been
carried, served but too clearly to tell the tale.
Presently she managed to escape unperceived, and
rushing back to her mother flung herself on the
bed in a transport of grief, and pressing her mouth
to the cold, livid lips, tried to inhale death and
perish with her.
48 MADAME ROLAND.
With that mother ended the careless, sweet,
happy spring-time of Manon's life. It was she
who had shielded her from all rough contact with
the world, down to those trivial interruptions of
domestic life which eat out the heart of time ; it
was she who had created around her an atmos-
phere of exquisite peace and purity, interposing
as a shield between her and the tainted manners of
the time ; and now that the young tree had grown
tall and lusty, the fencing shelter was removed,
and adverse winds were presently to try what it
was made of.
CHAPTER V.
manon's suitors.
After her mother's death, Manon passed a fort-
night in a very precarious state between convul-
sive fits and hours of mute prostration, unrelieved
by tears. To divert her thoughts from constantly
brooding on her loss, an abb6, who sometimes
came to see her, bethought him of lending her
the " Nouvelle Heloi'se." This book was an era
in Madame Roland's life. If Plutarch had in-
spired her with a love of republican institutions,
the "Nouvelle HeloYse" showed her the ideal of
domestic life, and she now eagerly read and re-read
Rousseau's works : he became her breviary. Like
other devout worshippers of this oracle of the
eighteenth century, she burned to tender her
homage to The Master, as Boswell and as Gib-
bon and hundreds of others had done, — among
whom the redoubtable Robespierre is said to
have been one. Chance seemed to favor Ma-
non's wishes ; for among her acquaintances there
happened to be a Swiss gentleman, to whom, as
was her habit with friends, she had given a nick-
4
50 MADAME ROLAND.
name, labelling him the " Philosophical Repub-
lican." This abstraction of a man — human
enough, however, to be presently much in love
with the fair Manon — was sufficiently obliging
to make over to her a commission he had been
entrusted with, — that of proposing to the im-
pecunious Rousseau the composition of some
musical airs. Marie Phlipon, delighted at this
opportunity of seeing Rousseau, immediately in-
dited an elegant epistle, setting forth its object,
adding that she would do herself the honor of
fetching the answer in person at the stated
time. Behold her then sallying forth in com-
pany with the faithful Mignonne, in a flutter of
trepidation, hurrying through the streets of Paris,
and arriving at last in the Rue Platriere, where
Rousseau then lived. With the reverence with
which one enters a temple she knocked at the
humble door, and thus she afterwards described
her sensations to Sophie : —
" It was opened by a woman of at least fifty, in a round
cap, a clean and simple morning gown and a large apron.
She looked severe and even a little hard.
"'Madame, may I ask, does not M. Rousseau live
here ? »
" ' Certainly, Mademoiselle.'
" ' Could I see him ?'
" * What is it you want of him ?'
" ' I came for an answer to a letter which I wrote him a
few days ago.'
MANON'S SUITORS. 5 1
" * Mademoiselle, he admits no one; but you can tell the
people who have dictated your letter — for, of course, you
never wrote such a letter as that — '
" ' Excuse me,' I interrupted.
" ' The handwriting alone shows it to be by a man.'
" ' Would you like to see me write ? ' I asked, laughing.
" She shook her head, adding : ' All that I am empow-
ered to tell you is that my husband has absolutely given u$
doing things of that sort ; he would wish nothing better
than to be of service, but he is of an age to take some
rest.'
" ' I know it, but I would have felt flattered to have had
my answer from his own lips ; and I will, at least, seize this
occasion to express my veneration for the man whom I es-
teem the most in all the world. Pray accept it, Madame.'
" She thanked me by keeping her hand on the lock as I
went downstairs."
And so while everywhere young hearts were
yearning to do him homage, Rousseau himself,
shrinking from contact with his kind, was gnawed,
cankered, by that worst disease of the mind, —
the dreadful horror of imagining an enemy in
every one who sought to approach him. Perhaps,
while outside the ardent girl waited eagerly to tell
the author of the " Nouvelle Hcloi'se " what an
unpayable debt she owed him, the man, whose
burning thoughts were now alive within her, hid
himself like some dumb, wounded animal. He
did not know, alas ! that at his door, vainly knock-
ing for admittance, stood his very own daughter
(for we are not only born in the flesh but in the
52 MADAME ROLAND.
spirit) ; that there, young and strong, beautiful
and impassioned with thought, there waited one
ready to render back to him in his old age the
spiritual glow he had once emitted — he did not
know — and, with only a wall between, they
crossed each other unseen, never to meet on
earth. But while the poor, time-battered body
of the man was dragging out the last few years
of abject wretchedness, his spirit had gone forth
from him, swaying thousands of minds, as the
vivifying west wind stirs the boughs of a vernal
forest. Like Jubal — the inventor of the lyre —
in George Eliot's fine conception, who dies broken-
hearted by the wayside while the people pass on
triumphantly chanting his praises, Rousseau too
was miserably perishing, even while his thought
was becoming a living force which
" Set the world in flame,
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more."
In 1776 and also in 1777, the year preced-
ing that of both Voltaire's and Rousseau's death,
Madame Roland was intently studying the latter's
works, and continually alluding to him in her cor-
respondence, especially to the "Discours " and the
" Contrat Social," — "a book to be studied, not
read," she remarked, " because, although very
clearly written, it is too full of matter for the
connection of the whole to be seized without
effort."
MANON'S SUITORS. 53
The whole of Rousseau's works were given
her by the " Republican Philosopher," who had
fallen in love with her. In touching on this
Chapter of Suitors, we must retrace our steps
and begin with those who had appeared on the
scene before the mother's death. For Manon did
not belong to that class of shabbily treated young
women who can at most boast of but one or two
strings to their bow, being in that, as in some
other respects, so favored by nature as to be be-
set by a legion of wooers. These importunate
creatures became the plague of her life, and she
at last dreaded the addresses of a new aspirant as
much as some young ladies rejoice in receiving
them. It is curious enough to mark how these
pretenders to Mademoiselle Phlipon's hand rise in
the social scale in proportion as her personality
gradually triumphs over her surroundings. The
reader may remember that Spanish Colossus who
taught her the guitar, and who in turn conceived
the wild idea of asking this girl of fourteen or
fifteen in marriage of her father. In his foot-
steps followed another of her teachers, the wiz-
ened little dancing-master, who, for the second
time a widower, had had his huge wen operated
upon before proceeding to the more delicate oper-
ation of proposing for her in marriage.
M. Phlipon, who prided himself not a little on
his personal appearance, enjoyed the joke heartily,
54 MADAME ROLAND.
and without precisely telling his daughter of these
curious wooers, threw out so many sly hints,
that she could not help knowing all about it. As
has been said, Manon used to go shopping with
her mother, or occasionally with the maid, and in
her dealings with a neighboring butcher was al-
ways particularly well served. To her surprise,
this identical butcher, whom she used to see on
week-days cutting up joints, was always meeting
them on their Sunday walks in a handsome suit
of black and lace ruffles. Moreover, when she
fell ill once, he sent round every morning to in-
quire after her health, enforcing the message with
the choicest titbits of his shop. Thereat her
father smiled, joked, rubbed his hands, and one
day gravely introduced her to a certain Made-
moiselle Michon, who had come ceremoniously
in the butcher's name (a rich widower) to ask her
hand. Her father having maliciously let her in
for this interview, she found means to evade giv-
ing an offensive refusal, by saying that she was so
fond of her present way of life as to be resolved
not to change her state for years to come. This
reply did not precisely suit the views of her father,
who exclaimed, " Why, here is an answer, forsooth,
to frighten away all future lovers ! "
Presently, however, there came an offer from a
man her parents deemed not at all unsuited to
her. This was in 1771, when she was seventeen ;
MANON'S SUITORS. 55
and it is curious to note how, before she had really
thought much about marriage, she mechanically
viewed it after the conventional French fashion.
This man — a jeweller, who had already lost two
wives, and who had a good business, an excellent
reputation, and an amiable disposition — seems
chiefly to have desired the connection because
Manon's unusually serious turn of mind led him
to think she would make a capital housewife and
accountant. She herself seemed quite without
illusions ! In writing to Sophie she reveals her
inmost thoughts, and one can see that at this
youthful age she felt almost as much bound to
abide by her parents' choice as did Portia by the
fateful caskets. Begging her friend's assistance
on this " terrible occasion," she says she has had
one interview with the gentleman, without being
able to recall precisely " whether he was dark or
fair," though it seems to her that "he was of a sal-
low complexion, with a long thin face, much pitted
with the small-pox ; hesitating of speech, and with,
nothing in his manners to attract or repel."
This affair, to her infinite relief, came to noth-
ing; but one suit had no sooner been refused
than a fresh wooer straightway started up, chiefly
recruited from the tradesmen of "the quarter."
These were by no means love-suits, in our Eng-
lish sense, but business-like proposals, made by
the relatives of would-be husbands to the lady's
56 MADAME ROLAND.
relatives, who first of all went to work in a round-
about way, inquiring into the respective fortunes,
character, disposition of the pair. To be so per-
sistently sought after for years, not only shows
that Marie Phlipon must have been considered
the beauty of her quarter, but that her character
and manners inspired the highest regard ; not to
forget that, being an only child, she was supposed
to be an heiress in her small way.
Another batch of suitors having been sent
about their business, Gatien Phlipon began to
show signs of restiveness. He could sympathize
with his daughter's aversion to ally herself with a
pastry-cook ; but when it came to her refusing a
thriving woollen-draper or goldsmith, he lost all
patience. He began to rate her soundly for her
dislike to shop-keepers ; and Louis Blanc, as we
have before hinted, seems inclined to accuse her
of wanting in love for the people because she
scouted the proposed matches. But what are the
reasons she gave her father for this dislike ?
Why, antipathy for those very bourgeois failings
of which this eminent historian accuses her. She
will not marry a rich tradesman because, forsooth,
she has observed that the only way of making
money in trade is by selling dear what has been
bought cheap, " by overcharging customers and
beating down the poor workman. I should nevei
be able to descend to such practices," she told
MANON' S SUITORS. $7
Phlipon, " nor to respect a man who made them
his daily occupations."
The next suitor that presented himself belonged
to a different class ; he was a promising young
doctor from Provence, ambitious of rising in his
profession, and looking out for a wife with some
fortune. The preliminaries of this match had
literally been all settled before Manon knew a
word of the matter. As it is not customary in
France for young men to visit at a house where
there are young ladies, the girl was one day taken
by her parents, as if casually — a shower of rain
being the ostensible excuse — to. the house of
a certain lady, a distant relative, where they
were hospitably entertained. In the mean while
Dr. Gardanne also dropped in, as if by acci-
dent. "The first impression was not enchant-
ing," Manon wrote to her friend. "A man,
above middle height, in wig and doctor's gown,
dark, coarse-featured, with small eyes, glittering
under bushy black eyebrows, and an imperious
air. However, he grew animated in conversa-
tion, did ample justice to the sweetmeats," which
he cracked in talking, and, with a gallantry smack-
ing of the school, said to the young lady that he
was very fond of sweets, — to which the latter,
not without a smile and a blush, replied timidly,
" that men were accused of loving sweet things,
because in dealing with them one required great
58 MADAME ROLAND.
sweetness." The cunning doctor appeared en-
chanted with the epigram. Her father would
willingly have given them his benediction on the
spot. This politeness enraged his daughter.
Nothing was definitely settled on that occa-
sion ; but Madame Phlipon, tender and pensive,
began seriously expatiating on the advantages of
this match ; and Manon herself did not see any
valid reason for refusal, save for the objection
that as she had had no opportunities of knowing,
she could not well love, this doctor. This was,
of course, not taken into account, and a formal
offer being presently made, a second interview
took place. Without being prepossessed in his
favor, Manon told her friend that there was a
good deal to be said in favor of this match.
Some of her incidental remarks afford curious
glimpses into the manners of the time. " M. Gar-
danne," she says, " does not wish for one of those
women who in marrying expect a lady's-maid, a
second footman, a private sitting-room, — one of
those women, in short, who pass the night at
parties and the day at cards, as is the custom
with doctors' wives." These seem great expecta-
tions for the wife of a doctor of but eight years'
practice. Dr. Gardanne having already a well-
furnished house, it seemed as if the marriage
must be concluded instantly ; and mother and
daughter went to pass a week in the country,
MANON'S SUITORS. 59
during which the necessary formalities were to be
arranged.
Manon's dowry was to be, on this occasion,
eight hundred and eighty-three pounds, — worth
treble the amount that it would be now. Mean-
while, M. Phlipon, busy, inquisitive, elated, lost
no time in making all possible inquiries concern-
ing his future son-in-law ; wrote off to the doc-
tor'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 al-
ready 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 re-
lieved, 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
60 MADAME ROLAND.
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 mean while 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 some one were ill.
" Some one 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 La-
blancherie, who two years later, in 1778, acquired
some reputation by starting, in concert with Bris-
sot, a " General Correspondence on the Arts and
Sciences ; or, News of the Republic of Letters."
This ambitious scheme, intended as an interna-
tional association of scientific and literary men,
looks like a germ of our British Associations and
Social Science Congresses ; and the man who
planned them must have had some far-reaching
ideas and good intentions, if nothing more. Cer-
tain it is that he was the first suitor of modern
views who crossed Madame Roland's path, and
the first who in any way touched her feelings.
Pie was also a man of literary proclivities, and
in 1776 published a work entitled, " Extracts
from a Journal of my Travels ; or, the History
MANON'S SUITORS. 6l
of a Young Man : a Lesson to Fathers and
Mothers." There is frequent mention of this
book in Manon's correspondence, and an inter-
esting review of it by her, written for her friend's
behalf. She speaks of it with the impartiality of
a critic, though admitting that she is afraid to
mention it to others for fear they should suspect
her interest in the author. It was a dull, moral-
izing work, yet containing shocking descriptions
of the licentiousness prevalent in the seminaries
and colleges of the time ; and it may have in-
spired Manon with some of that recoil from " the
innate ferocity" of man which is a noticeable
feature in her.
Lablancherie had proposed for Manon some
years before ; but considering that he was only
two-and-twenty, penniless, and studying for the
Bar, with no definite prospects of advancement,
the father considered such a marriage out of the
question, and would not even hear of a correspond-
ence, for which L. had begged before returning
to Orleans. That Manon regarded his suit with
very different eyes from those 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
62 MADAME ROLAND.
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, u his moral senti-
ments 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 naively 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
MANOWS SUITORS. 63
could think of each other in absence. This state
of affairs by no means suited the father's views.
After his wife's death he had considered it in-
cumbent 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 un-
happy man, dying apparently for love of her ! —
duty and affection pulling her heart in contrary
directions ! While suffering less on her own ac-
count than on that of her lover, she is equally
loath 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 ! howl
suffer ! "
The letter alluded to in the above lines is one
which Manon, after much inward trepidation, had
64 MADAME ROLAND.
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 to forget her.
The letter was sent by Sophie, and the result
was that Lablancherie discontinued his visits en-
tirely. Manon repeatedly expresses admiration
for a lover who could thus respect her wishes and
act up to the highest principles ; but whether she
really liked it, those must decide who understand
a woman's heart.
Months thus elapsed, and the lovers saw and
heard nothing of each other. Preoccupied though
Manon was, she used to enjoy walking out on a
Sunday afternoon with her father ; and on one
such occasion she diverted herself in the Tuile-
ries Gardens by inwardly criticising every person
they passed, for she was, as she sometimes ac-
cused herself, something of a quiz. Among a
group of ladies she caught sight of one, however,
who struck her as so pretty and charming that
she could find no fault with her. Suddenly she
saw her father bowing to some one, and, behold !
by the side of this very pretty lady she caught
sight of Lablancherie, who, while meeting her
smile of surprise, from deep respect cast down
his eyes. She was pleased at this unexpected
meeting, — or professed herself pleased. But a
month afterwards, on walking in the Luxem-
MANON'S SUITORS. 65
bourg with a lady friend, she again encountered
him ; and this time the grave, philosophic, love-
sick Lablancherie was actually seen walking with
an ostrich feather in his hat! 1
"My poor heart," she writes to Sophie, "has been
greatly perplexed and fatigued of late in consequence of
a number of insignificant little events. Imagine that I
have met D. L — b — e ; that he wore a feather in his hat.
Ah ! you cannot imagine how this cursed little feather has
tormented me. I have turned and twisted in every direc-
tion to reconcile so futile an ornament with that high phil-
osophy, that rigid simplicity of taste, that noble way of
thinking, which have endeared him to me. I can only see
excuses, and am feeling cruelly what great significance
little things acquire when they make us suspect the nature
of a beloved object."
Was it really the little feather that was in fault,
or was it a look, an air, a something that like a
flash sometimes reveals unsuspected qualities in
an intimately-known person ? At any rate, it
proved "the little rift within the lute." Manon
learned that day from her companion that La-
blancherie had lately proposed to a rich, lovely
young lady ; was known to have done so in sev-
eral other cases of heiresses, and — oh, horror ! —
went by the name of " the lover of the eleven
thousand virgins." How much to believe of this
gossip the girl hardly knew ; but it shattered the
ideal she had formed of him. It had been so
1 Then the height of fashion.
5
66 MADAME ROLAND.
much more an ideal she had loved than a man,
that she did not suffer very deeply. She had
lost faith in Lablancherie, and with her faith all
desire to marry him ; but she declared that
she would only marry the man who was what
Lablancherie appeared to be.
The remarkable girl, however, was gradually
attracting round her men of literary distinction
and high social position, only too proud to come
and chat with her. Among these was a Mon-
sieur de Sainte Lette, a deputy from the Colony
of Pondicherry to the French Court. This gen-
tleman, who had travelled over all the world, and
who had amassed a vast fund of knowledge and
observation, came to the Phlipons with a letter of
introduction from a certain Demontchery, a cap-
tain of sepoys in India, who before leaving Paris
had also unsuccessfully proposed for the fair
Manon. On returning to France after some
years, he intended renewing his proposal, but
learned that the lady had become Roland's wife
within the fortnight. The society of Sainte
Lette, a man of about sixty, but full of fire and
intellect, a friend of Helvetius and an enthusias-
tic humanitarian, was a rare intellectual treat to
Manon. In his vivacious, glowing manner he
satisfied her craving for knowledge by enlarging
her ideas of society and government. Some-
times, about this time, Manon would preside over
MANON'S SUITORS. 67
little dinners given to four or five friends, when
the sociable, jovial M. Phlipon, flattered at seeing
such distinguished guests at his table, would
only show himself from his most amiable side.
The conversational powers of the future Madame
Roland were now for the first time called into
play.
Among several highly-cultivated men whose ac-
quaintance she made through Sainte Lette, there
was a M. de Sevelinges, — a gentleman who had
recently lost a beloved wife, and was plunged in
grief when first Manon saw him. He was of an
ancient family, of restricted means, and lived at
Soissons, where he held some financial post, giv-
ing the rest of his time to the study of literature.
Whereas Sainte Lette's nature seemed "com-
pacted of fire and sulphur," his Pylades was of a
gentle and melancholy temperament, and of the
most refined sensibility. He too, little by little,
came under Manon's irresistible charm. After
corresponding with her for a considerable time,
there crept a something tender and insinuating
into his letters ; he seemed to find his solitude
irksome, and to feel grieved at her position. He
often dilated on the charms of a thoughtful com-
panionship, finally writing a letter which, though
somewhat ambiguously couched, had every ap-
pearance of a proposal of marriage.
The idea of marrying M. de Sevelinges was
68 MADAME ROLAND.
not repugnant to Manon, and though she was not
the least in love with the gentleman, she may
possibly have considered herself disillusioned in
that respect, while in reality she was very heart-
whole, as Sainte Lette had once said to her, —
so heart-whole that she now formed a plan, which,
however startling, reveals the simplicity and eleva-
tion of her nature. No sooner had she received
Sevelinges' letter than she grasped the whole sit-
uation of affairs. Here was a highly-refined, cul-
tivated man, tender-hearted, intellectual, learned,
subtle, a man with whom she could have that
community of ideas which was to her the sine
qud 11011 of married life, — a man who led a lonely,
depressed, isolated existence, while she at home
felt more and more in her father's way, between
whom and herself the breach had been gradually
widening. Trouble, discord, ruin, were threaten-
ing her domestic horizon, while the pleasing pros-
pect of a peaceful home beckoned to her from
Soissons. On the other hand, her high sense of
justice warned her that M. de Sevelinges' means
were extremely limited, his income not exceed-
ing four hundred pounds per annum. His means
such as they were, partly proceeding from his first
wife's fortune, seemed naturally to belong to his
sons, — two young men in the army, who would
have just cause to complain, she considered, if
by the advent of a young family they should be
MA NO ATS SUITORS. 69
still further stinted in their expenses. Had she
herself possessed a more ample dowry, her way
would have been clear enough ; but under the cir-
cumstances she could not reconcile such a mar-
riage with her conscience. But an idea struck
her, and to her faithful confidante Sophie she con-
fesses that she thinks De Sevelinges must have
been cherishing a similar notion, — that of gain-
ing a sister and companion, under a title which
the custom of society rendered indispensable.
This vision of passing her life by the side of a
man to whom she would minister with an abso-
lutely unselfish devotion quite enchanted Manon's
benevolent heart. In her protestations of being
free from all passion, one cannot help feeling the
vibrations of a nature that had never yet sounded
its own depths, — that was ready to pledge itself
to, it knew not what, in the very ecstasy of self-
sacrifice.
But the girl's dream was not destined to be
carried into practice. Either M. de Sevelinges
did not understand her, or she did not understand
him ; and they both expressed themselves in such
very guarded, delicate, and ambiguous terms, that
they wrote apparently quite at cross-purposes.
For, as these wavering seniors frequently do, he
seems to have backed out of the negotiation ; and
Manon's last word to Sophie was, that she hardly
70 MADAME ROLAND.
knew whether to be offended or not, but ended
with a hearty laugh.
To enumerate the many other suitors who came
forward one after another to propose for Made-
moiselle Phlipon would sound too like the fairy
tale of the proud king's daughter, who used to have
the claimants to her hand marshalled before her
in a row, and refuse them in turn by pronouncing
one to be as thin as a pole, another as fat as a
barrel, and a third bearded like a goat, till her
enraged sire declared that the first vagrant who
came begging alms at his gates should have her,
whether or no. M. Phlipon at one moment be-
haved not unlike this incensed monarch. Seeing
that a " martial young Apollo," a thriving Greffier
des Batiments, and a certain M. Coquin, — a
round-faced, beaming young man, "a good paste
of a husband," young and wealthy, if not wise, —
had all been rejected in turn, he was actually for
marrying her to a man who, as she was entering
her door, met her casually, and asked whether
she could direct him to a certain house, and in
the course of a day or two proposed for her to M.
Phlipon, through the intervention of friends. " My
father," she writes, "did not find it so absurd;
what more shall I say ? With a little good-will
on my part, I might have found myself become a
vendor of lemonade, and been gloriously installed
MANON'S SUITORS. 7 1
in a cafe. . . . Oh," she adds, after a few more
comic remarks, " was it worth while to have such
a variety of paths to choose from to keep obsti-
nately on the solitary road of celibacy ? "
Single she was not destined to remain long,
however ; but before we follow up the story of her
acquaintance with Roland, let us cast a glance at
the kind of life she now led with her father.
CHAPTER VI.
FLIGHT TO THE CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE.
While all sorts and conditions of men were thus
courting the hand of the magnificent Marie Phlipon,
was her life so sweet a one as to make her averse
to exchange it for a home of her own ? On the
contrary ; the serenity of her studious days be-
came more and more clouded by anxieties, cares,
and fears for the future. Her father, the vain-
glorious, fickle Parisian, had loved his daughter
as long as their interests seemed identical ; but
they no sooner began to clash than he was ready
to sacrifice her future to his caprice. In spite of
Manon's efforts to make the house pleasant to
him, and to while away his evenings by taking a
hand at cards, he found these pleasures tame to
those that awaited him abroad. He began absent-
ing himself more and more, formed connections
at coffee-houses, lost his business habits, con-
tracted a passion for gaming, and began by spend-
ing not only his own savings, but the money which
according to French law belonged of right to
his daughter. Manon, with her shrewd common-
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 73
sense, saw that as her father's custom fell off he
tried to retrieve himself by gambling ; she sus-
pected, besides, that he was squandering his money
on an illicit connection. To add to her perplexi-
ties, she feared that she herself was the innocent
cause of his demoralization, and that but for her
he might marry again, and once more take to
orderly habits.
The event was not one to be desired for her
own sake, for she was mistress of the house and
herself in a way quite unusual for French girls ;
but the hope of rescuing her father from profli-
gacy, improvidence, and an indigent old age de-
cided her. There is something not a little comic
in this reversal of the mutual relations of parent
and child, — the wise daughter pondering how
she may suitably marry the flighty papa of fifty-
five, and not daring to let him guess her plans,
lest he should set himself tooth and nail against
them. A suitable woman was discovered, too,
and the parties seemed mutually willing ; but the
lady being of an undecided turn of mind, nothing
came of the affair.
Her uncles, more especially her great-uncle and
godfather who was devoted to her, found it neces-
sary to insist on M. Phlipon's taking an inventory
of his property, previous to letting his daughter
have the share which rightfully belonged to her ;
but they did it in such a bungling and dilatory
74 MADAME ROLAND.
fashion that months and years elapsed before any
effective steps were taken, and in the mean while
he had not only frittered away his capital, but
come to regard Manon as the cause of these trou-
bles, — so that sometimes he hardly came near
his house, or, if he did, avoided speaking to her.
Her life, however, was an exceedingly busy one,
for while persistently carrying on her studies she
was a most punctilious housekeeper, looked after
her father's diminishing custom in his absence,
was frequently engaged on some charitable errand
or other, and at one time, in order to procure a
holiday for a hard-worked cousin, she offered to
serve behind the counter of the husband's shop in
her absence. Behold, then, the woman who was
to play so momentous a part in one of the most
momentous periods of history trudging backwards
and forwards between her house and the Rue
Montmartre, in the dusty August weather, dili-
gently selling spectacles and watch-glasses, with
a head stuffed full of Socrates and Plato.
Her position was no doubt a unique one ; for
while sometimes relegated to the servants' hall
when she went visiting with her relatives, she
was at others the friend and correspondent of
men of high rank and abilities. She took it all
very philosophically, and attached herself to right
action, she says, " with the zeal and desperation
of a man who in a shipwreck clings with all his
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 7$
might to the only plank that is left him." But
what wrung a cry from that strong soul was
neither unkindness, nor loneliness, nor impend-
ing destitution ; it was the sense of a great force
wasted, of potential powers doomed to perish un-
used. Once only she bursts forth with, —
" In truth I am not a little annoyed at being a woman.
I ought either to have had another sex, another soul, or
another country. 1 ought to have been a Spartan or a
Roman woman, or at least a Frenchman. As the latter I
should have chosen the Republic of Letters for my coun-
try, or one of those States where one may dare be a man
and obey the law only. My displeasure looks very insane ;
but I feel as if riveted to a manner of existence not prop-
erly my own. I am like those animals transplanted to our
menageries from the torrid soil of Africa, who, intended to
develop in a tropical climate, are shut up in a narrow cage
hardly able to contain them. My mind and heart are ham-
pered on all sides by the obstacles of custom and the chains
of prejudice, and I exhaust my strength in vainly shak-
ing my fetters. To what use can I turn my enthusiasm
for the public good, when I can do absolutely nothing to
serve it ? "
Yes ; in spite of stoicism, philosophy, and a
wise reflection on the noble functions of wife-
hood and motherhood, was it possible for such a
nature as that not to rebel against the tyranny of
petticoats ? One cannot but be surprised that
with such a sense of native power, predilection
for literary pursuits, and facility of expression,
Manon should not have turned her pen to prac-
76 MADAME ROLAND.
tical account. Michelet somewhat captiously
makes it a reproach, both to Madame Roland
and to Robespierre, that they were born scrib-
blers, and were unable to see, think, feel anything
without straightway pulling out their tablets."
It was so, no doubt ; and from a very tender
age Madame Roland had begun, in her letters to
Sophie, chronicling every incident in her inner
or outer life. On first opening the two bulky vol-
umes of this correspondence (carefully edited by
M. Dauban), written by a young girl leading an
uneventful life amid seemingly commonplace sur-
roundings, the prospect of their perusal is rather
appalling. But this strong nature, through which
life continually rushes with a torrent of thoughts,
sensations, and feelings, invests the most trivial
incidents with fresh dramatic interest. A Sun-
day afternoon walk to the Jardin du Roi becomes
an idyl ; midnight vigils, passed in the study of
some ancient philosopher, grow astir with action;
girlish friendship is invested with the glamour of
romance. The more one reads, the more fully
does this powerful nature unfold itself ; and such
as she is at fourteen shall we find her still at
thirty-eight.
Besides her letters to Sophie and Henriette
Cannet, often complete little essays in themselves,
Marie Phlipon wrote a number of detached pieces,
entitled, Mcs Loisiis (' Leisure Hours"). Most
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 77
of these have been published in her collected
works. They are short prose essays, of a re-
flective and elegiac character, — " On the Soul,"
" On Melancholy," " On Friendship," " On the
Close of Day," " Reverie in the Wood of Vin-
cennes," "On the Multiplication of Men being the
Cause of Despotism, and of the Corruption of
Morals," and so forth. They possess less bio-
graphical and even literary interest than the let-
ters, then her favorite style of composition.
But a young lady who was capable of express-
ing herself clearly and concisely on some of the
questions which have exercised the powers of
the most robust thinkers, questions which lay at
the very root of the approaching crisis, should
have been in no perplexity as to her future vo-
cation. Nature had endowed her with a great
gift ; the trammels of opinion forbade her to
make use of it. She rattled her chains, and
yet had no heart to break them asunder. It was
only when by an unforeseen concurrence of cir-
cumstances fate had cast her in the very focus
of action, when by her daily contact with men at
the head of affairs she gradually learned to mea-
sure her powers with theirs, that she came fully
to realize the extent of her own abilities. But,
indeed, at this time she held avowed authorship
in horror ; and on being urged by a friend to de-
vote herself seriously to composition, her outburst
?8 MADAME ROLAND.
was that she would sooner cut off her right hand
than turn authoress. '* If a woman writes a good
book," she said, "a male writer invariably gets the
credit of it ; if a bad one, she incurs the full ridi-
cule of failure." She did not perceive that she
was one of the few women who could have vindi-
cated the claims of her sex ; and in this respect
she showed less originality than Mary Wollstone-
craft and Madame de Stael, her juniors by a de-
cade or so. In later life she considerably modified
her views, and bitterly regretted having no time
left to write, as, "if she could not be the Tacitus,
she might, perhaps, have aspired to be the Mrs.
Macaulay of the French Revolution."
At the same time we must bear in mind that it
was not the literary or aesthetic, but the moral
side of life which possessed the greatest attraction
for Madame Roland. In her judgment the life of
woman as wife and mother always appeared the
highest and best. She perceived that every con-
centrated effort of the imagination tends to iso-
late the individual, and to disturb that equilibrium
of the faculties which essentially constitutes the
harmony of life. She considered no function
more important than that of the woman of fine
nature and cultivated faculties regulating a house-
hold or estate, with many people depending on
her care and management, bringing up children
in the consciousness that in them her soul is
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 79
moulding the future of the race. Because, in the
exercise of these duties the most diversified at-
tributes are called into play, love itself being its
guiding principle. This was Manon's ideal of life
for a woman, and it is practically that of the states-
man and ruler in miniature.
But the very strength of her convictions as to
the duties of wifehood and motherhood rendered
marriage more difficult to her. Her decided views
as to the bringing up of children made her very
critical as to the partner who wished to share this
responsibility. About all this she spoke in the
frankest way to her friends. It seemed, there-
fore, that she would soon be reduced to teach-
ing or needle-work, that last resource of destitute
women. Her father's dishonest waste had now
reduced the savings of thirty years' labor to about
five hundred and eighty pounds. Worse than
this, M. Phlipon had lost all his custom, and,
what was a greater affliction to his daughter, his
honesty into the bargain. " I don't know how it
is," she tells Sophie, " but every time my father
gives me a fresh cause of annoyance, I feel an
impulse of tenderness towards him, which seems
to be there on purpose to enhance my suffering."
Her friend, in trying to comfort her, remarks that
the faults of our children are more humiliating to
us than those of our parents ; but added a remark
calculated to cut Manon to the quick, that " from
80 MADAME ROLAND.
our birth we are destined to wear the moral liver-
ies of our parents ! "
Poor Manon's best anodyne was an increase of
benevolent activity. She was always at this time
engaged in some active work of charity or other ;
now visiting some destitute woman, or spending
her dress-money on some deeply-indebted father
of a family. She was now approaching the time
of her majority, fixed at twenty-five by the French
law. Even her dilatory relatives felt it necessary
to take some decisive steps to bring about a divi
sion of property in favor of the daughter. But
these steps, by humiliating M. Phlipon, only ag-
gravated the position of affairs. In consequence
of this he became so irritated that at last, in June,
1779, ne bade his daughter leave his house once
and forever.
This violent threat was not a little calculated
to upset Manon's equanimity. Practical and
sagacious as she was, she could not help seeing
the insurmountable obstacles which confronted a
young unmarried woman the moment she should
be cut adrift from her family. For such an one
there seemed to be no inch of standing room on
her native soil, and she must either be prepared
to bow her neck beneath the yoke, or seek
shelter in the tomb-like isolation of conventual
life. English women, even at that time, were
already acting with considerably more independ-
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 8l
ence ; and the brave and beautiful Mary Woll-
stonecraft, not many years from the present date,
settled as a female author in London, " to be the
first of a new genus." But Madame Roland's
heroism did not consist in braving public opinion;
on the contrary, she considered a certain confor-
mity to it as part of the duty which the in-
dividual owed to the social compact, — duty to
which was, from first to last, the motive spring
of her actions.
A reconciliation having been effected between
M. Phlipon and his daughter, the latter wrote to
Sophie: —
" The cares and worries of housekeeping are not repug-
nant to me. With a lively taste for the acquisition of
knowledge, I yet feel that I could pass the remainder of
my life without opening a book or being bored by not doing
so. Let only the home I live in be embellished by order,
peace, and harmony ; let me only feel that I have helped
towards making it so, and be able to tell myself at the close
of each day that it has been usefully spent for the good of
a few, — and I shall value existence and daily bless the
rising of the sun."
With her high conception of the responsibilities,
of marriage, it cannot surprise us that Marie
Phlipon could not make up her mind to accept
one of the many wooers who had asked for her
hand, in spite of her forlorn position, feeling, as
she did, a stumbling-block in her father's way.
Yet outlet, save in a makeshift marriage, there
6
82 MADAME ROLAND.
seemed none for this grandly-organized creature.
At first, as we have seen, she had been ready to
take the conventional middle-class French view
of marriage. Provided that positions were suit-
able, parents agreed, the man not too repulsive, it
seemed as if, in spite of inward misgivings, she
must subordinate her own wishes in the matter to
what was expected of her. But the more she
reflected on the marriage state, the more clearly
she came to see that no one had a right to de-
mand of her that she should enter into so close
and life-long a union with any person for whom
she did not feel love, or at least entertain the
highest regard ; and after a while she was con-
vinced that her duty lay, not in contracting such
a marriage, but in opposing it, — and then she
stood firm as a rock, determined to do the hum-
blest work, the most menial drudgery, to take
service if need be, rather than sell herself in mar-
riage for a mess of pottage. At the same time,
in spite of her admiration of the " Nouvelle
HeloYse," which had made her realize the ex-
quisiteness of domestic joys, she was not haunted
by visions of romantic love, and had but few
illusions in regard to men. According to the
severe Roman ideal, she regarded marriage as a
union to be entered into from duty more than
passion, and from a high devotion to the family,
because on the family depended the welfare of
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 83
the State. But nothing seemed more improbable
than that in her circle of acquaintances she
should ever have a suitor to meet so stern an
ideal.
One day, however, there presented himself,
with a letter of introduction from the faithful
Amiens friend, a tall, meagre, rigorous gentleman,
of a sallow complexion, already worn-looking, and
scant of hair about the temples, but with the un-
mistakable stamp of character about him. He
had the air and manners of a scholar, was care-
less in his dress, and spoke in an unmodulated
voice (Manon was peculiarly susceptible to the
sound of voices), with chopped-up sentences, as
if he were scant of breath. But as he warmed
up in conversation a benevolent smile lit up his
countenance, and the range and thoroughness of
his acquirements lent a keen interest to his so-
ciety. This was Roland de la Platiere, of whom
Lavater, who saw him some years afterwards in
Zurich, exclaimed warmly : " You reconcile me to
French travellers." Inspector of Manufactures
at Amiens, he had often heard the Cannets speak
of their remarkable friend at Paris, had seen her
portrait hanging up in the drawing-room, and
at last volunteered to play the postman to this
phoenix of girls. On the other hand, Roland's
praises had frequently been sung by Sophie, who
said in introducing him: —
84 MADAME ROLAND.
" You will receive this letter by the hand of the philoso-
pher of whom I have spoken to you already, — M. Roland,
an enlightened man of antique manners, without reproach,
except for his passion for the ancients, his contempt of his
age, and his too high estimation of his own virtue."
The first interview took place as early as Jan-
uary, 1776, and Manon was impressed by the
dignity, uprightness, and pride which stamped
his individuality, while his erudition inspired her
with admiration. But the dogmatic narrowness
and pedantry of his nature did not escape her.
He awoke in her neither the tenderness which
she had felt for Lablancherie, nor the intellectual
enthusiasm Sainte Lette had done. As compared
with the latter, she told her friend some weeks
later, " M. Roland is a mere savant!' Never-
theless, she was not altogether indifferent, and a
certain feminine preoccupation peeps out from
the following lines sent to Amiens immediately
after this visit : —
" Our conversation touched on a thousand interesting
topics. I stammered a little, without being too shy ; I re-
ceived him unceremoniously in my baigneuse and white
camisole, in that tiigligi which you used to like in the
summer mornings. [This was in January.] He may have
seen from my manner that I was charmed by his visit, and
has asked my leave to come again, which was willingly
granted."
The leave was not neglected. M. Roland pre-
sented himself again before the fair stammerer
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 85
within the month. This time she was quite con-
vinced that she had made the most unfavorable
of impressions on the critical Roland. Of all the
disenchanting accidents that beauty is liable to,
she was then suffering from a violent cold in the
head, which, next to sea-sickness, has perhaps the
most sobering effect on the raptures of love. To
add to her discomfort, her father, who never left
her on such occasions if he could help it, and to
whom these philosophical talks were caviare, fid-
geted about the room, till she felt so teased that
she had not even sense enough left to put any
questions to M. Roland. Every one knows that
the great art of conversation is to ask people the
right kind of questions. Only give a man the
opportunity of bringing out his pet theories and
favorite stories, and he will pronounce you the most
admirable talker he ever met. Manon, who pos-
sessed the talent of listening, was no doubt mis-
tress of the art of drawing people out ; but whether
she failed on this occasion or not, Roland not
only gave free vent to his opinions, but he startled
and shocked her by his contemptuous mention of
some of her favorite authors.
On the whole this visit left an uncomfortable
impression behind it, and Marie was convinced
that it would be the last. Nevertheless, M. Roland
repeated his calls, undismayed by disfiguring colds
and fuming fathers, — possibly, with the oblivious-
86 MADAME ROLAND.
ness of men to such sublunary trifles, he had
remained in blissful ignorance of them. In May,
1776, Manon wrote to her friend that on this
occasion she has learned to appreciate M. Roland
better. " I have been charmed by the solidity of
his judgment, the interest of his conversation,
and the variety of his acquirements."
In the summer of this year Roland left France
for Italy, where he remained until 1778. He cor-
responded with Mademoiselle Phlipon during his
absence, and these letters, afterwards corrected
and revised by both, were published under the
title u Letters written from Switzerland, Italy,
Sicily, and Malta in 1776, 1777, 1778." This
book of Italian travel is, in Michelet's estimation,
the best work on that subject produced in France
during the eighteenth century.
The manuscripts of which Roland had made
his young friend the depositary, and which con-
sisted in descriptions of travel, sketches of pro-
jected works, and personal anecdotes, gave her a
better opportunity of becoming acquainted with
his mind than a number of personal interviews
would have done. They increased her regard for
Roland, and on his return from Italy she found a
genuine friend in him. Their relations towards
each other were apparently purely those of friend-
ship ; and the fact of Manon classing Roland with
Sainte Lette and a certain Boismorel, two seniors
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 87
whom she venerated for their wisdom and knowl-
edge, shows that the idea of looking at him in
any other light was far from her thoughts. Yet
the staid philosopher could not come thus fre-
quently in contact with the glowing nature of this
magnificent girl without experiencing a stronger
emotion than friendship. His feelings insensibly
changed, and in the beginning of 1779 ne made
Manon an offer of his hand. She, who respected
and honored him more than any man she had
met, felt highly gratified by this mark of affection.
The prospect it opened of passing her life with
one guided by the same lofty notions of duty and
patriotism as herself, had always been the limit of
her aspirations. True, this woman of five-and-
twenty, in the full energy of life, would have been
capable of a very different feeling from that in-
spired in her by the grave, middle-aged Roland,
more than twenty years her senior; nevertheless,
it was a marriage in harmony with her precon-
ceived views, and the consideration which pre-
vented her from accepting him at first was not
one of sentiment but of pride.
The French custom of the woman bringing a
dowry to her husband is so general, that to a
proud nature, such as Manon's, the idea of en-
tering the marriage state empty-handed, owing
everything to the man she wedded, was almost
intolerable. Shrinking from the idea of marrying
88 MADAME ROLAND.
into a family which would consider M. Roland's
choice as one beneath his name and expectations,
she put all these objections before her wooer, with
the cool impartiality of a third party, and advised
him to desist from his suit. To advise a man to
desist usually has the opposite effect of making
him persist the more obstinately. This happened
in Roland's case, rather more self-willed and obsti-
nate than the generality of men. He no doubt
told her that he did not wish to wed her dowry
or her father, but herself alone ; and at last he
obtained her consent formally to write to her
father. But M. Phlipon's conduct on this occa-
sion showed that whatever good-humor and geni-
ality might have originally been his, had now
turned into the most unmitigated scoundrelism.
Not content with beggaring his daughter, his
baseless spite now begrudged her this prospect of
a settled home: probably the idea of finding a
censor in this virtuous son-in-law galled his vanity.
At any rate, after having vainly tried to tease
her and flatter her and scold her into taking a
husband, he now wrote a rude and humiliating
refusal to Roland, of which he only informed his
daughter after the event.
This last drop filled her cup to overflowing.
She considered that her father might possibly
pay more attention to his business if left entirely
to his own devices, and that it would be more
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 89
becoming in herself to make some kind of liveli-
hood than drift into helpless destitution along
with him. No sooner had she come to this reso-
lution than she informed Roland that, fearful of
becoming the source of fresh humiliations to him,
she begged him to desist from his suit. Thus,
without an open rupture, she at the age of five-
and-twenty left the home which had been such
a scene of " carking cares" since her mother's
death.
With her vigorous health and robust frame
Manon could laugh at privations, and there would
have been nothing very painful in her lot, but
that all the avenues to the nobler kinds of work
were closed to her, and that with her incomparable
powers there yet seemed nothing for her to do
but, if possible, to teach " the use of the globes "
and a little feeble music to half a dozen pupils, —
provided always that she could get them in her
rather anomalous position. Young and unpro-
tected, there seemed no course open but refuge
in a nunnery. To a nunnery she went, therefore,
— the same where she had passed such moments
of religious ecstasy in her childhood, but now in
how different a mood and mental attitude ! Per-
mitted to become an inmate without sharing in
the conventual life, she, for twenty <fcus a year,
hired a small apartment, which was perched under
the roof like a swallow's nest.
go MADAME ROLAND.
In the beginning of November, 1779, sne t0 °k
possession of this dwelling-place ; and her pov-
erty was so great that some potatoes, a dish of
rice, or a few haricot beans, prepared by herself
with a little butter and a pinch of salt, were her
sole fare. Insufficiently nourished, poorly clad,
and solitary, she neither lost her courage nor her
gayety, and curled up on a high school-desk to
look out over the snow-covered roofs of Paris,
she from her lofty perch could see the people
moving like midges through the white, narrow
thoroughfares, or at times would seem very near
to the beatified calm when the great, still winter
moon flooded her little garret with a solemn
splendor. The narrow street in which she lived,
the Rue Neuve Saint fitienne, was canonized by
the memories of such men as Pascal, Rollin, and
Bernardin de St. Pierre ; and here, with the clear
chant of the young novices and the loud-resound-
ing organ-peals sometimes floating up to her, she
passed the short bleak days and long cold nights,
"armed with her pen, surrounded by scattered
papers, in the company of a Jean Jacques and a
grand Xenophon," and knew such thoughts as
are only given to strong souls fearlessly breasting
adversity.
Only twice a week did she emerge from the
convent walls, — once to call on her father, whose
linen she took away to mend, and once to pay a
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 91
visit to her aged relatives. For months she
never varied the monotonous tenor of her life,
but trusted that in the course of time she would
get some pupils and be able to reconcile the nuns
to such an unusual proceeding. In the mean
time she tried to fit herself more thoroughly for
this task. Her friends in Amiens entreated her
in vain to come and make her home with them.
They had advanced her a little sum, sufficient to
enable her to move at all, and she was delighted
to owe this to their friendship. But, impercepti-
bly, her confidences to Sophie and Henriette had
grown less expansive. She who had been wont
to descant so freely on everybody and everything
was grown somewhat reticent, and. Sophie felt
and fretted under the change, in spite of Manon's
assurances of her unaltered feelings.
Her tongue was tied in regard to Roland.
She intuitively felt that his proud nature would
resent her enlarging too freely on him in her let-
ters. She was in honor bound to keep the secret
of his offer and rejection. For months now he
had made no further advances, though he knew
of her retirement to the convent, and continued
writing to her. A very ardent lover, guessing,
one would imagine, that the lady he wished to
marry had left her father's house on his account,
would without a moment's hesitation have pre-
sented himself at the convent gates, and, similar
92 MADAME ROLAND.
to the knight in the ancient ballad, have lustily
knocked thereat till his love had perforce come
out to him. Not so M. Roland. No doubt he
would have considered it undignified to do any-
thing in a hurry, or from an impulse of passion.
He had waited four years before he made up his
mind to ask Manon to marry him, and now he
coolly waited six or seven months more to recon-
sider his resolution. Her letter had, perhaps, too
ably put before him all the disadvantages of such
a connection. The fatal cogency of Manon's
arguments seems to have had a sobering effect
on her suitors generally. But certainly Roland
would have been more lover-like if, scattering all
arguments to the winds, he had at once pressed
his suit more hotly than before. The six months'
delay did him an irreparable mischief. Madame
Roland confesses " that it stripped every illusion
from such sentiments as she had entertained for
him." He came at last, however, conversed with
the recluse behind the grating of the convent,
saw her looking more blooming and brilliant than
ever in her sober garb, and felt all his old feel-
ings reviving with increased force at sight of her.
On the 27th of January, 1780, Manon wrote
informing her friends of her engagement. Her
letter, devoid of any vibration of passion, breathes
a spirit of calm content. " A succession of sweet
and manifold duties will henceforth fill my heart
FLIGHT TO CONVENT, AND MARRIAGE. 93
and every moment of my life ; I shall no longer
be this isolated creature, lamenting her useless-
ness and striving to prevent the ills of a morbid
sensitiveness by incessant activity." In her Me-
moirs she says : —
" If marriage, as I considered, were a stringent tie, an
association where the woman undertakes to make the hap-
piness of two people, was it not possible that I should
practise my courage and abilities in this honorable task
rather than in the solitude wherein I lived ?"
These reflections were, no doubt, wise and sen-
sible enough, but, concerning this marriage, one
might say, in the words of Lord Beaconsfield :
" It was not in the nature of things that she
could experience those feelings which still echo
in the heights of Meillerie, and compared with
which all the glittering accidents of fortune sink
into insignificance." Not for any glittering ac-
cidents of fortune, certainly, did Marie-Jeanne
Phlipon wed the austere Roland, but from a
sense of devoting herself to the happiness of an
honorable man, and of making his life sweeter to
him. She was a Julie making an offering of her
life's happiness to Volmar, and yet — she had
never loved !
CHAPTER VII.
THE CLOS DE LA PLATIERE. — JOURNEYS TO
ENGLAND AND SWITZERLAND.
The family into which Gatien Phlipon's daughter
married on February 4, 1780, came of a good old
stock, — many of whose members had had titles
that lapsed with their lifetime, — but which had
gradually become impoverished by extravagance.
Roland, the youngest of five brothers, had been
destined for the Church, but feeling no vocation
for it he fled from his father's house, and was
fortunate enough to obtain a situation in the
office of one of his relatives, who was superin-
tendent of a factory at Rouen. In this house,
which possessed many ramifications, Roland be-
came deeply versed in the different branches of
commerce, in manufactures, and in the principles
of political economy. Scrupulously conscientious,
painstaking, and observant, he steadily rose in
his office, and having been made inspector of
manufactures, part of his time was spent in for-
eign travel, to study the improvements of industry
in the interest of his Government.
THE CLOS DE LA PLATI&RE. 95
Although from youth upwards Roland had been
chiefly mixed up with practical life, he was a
student by nature, of retiring habits, reserved
manners, and a reflective turn of mind. Yet his
philosophy was not incompatible with much irri-
tability of temper, owing in part to derangement
of the digestive functions. Monsieur and Madame
Roland passed the first year of their marriage in
Paris, where the latter's time was quite engrossed
by participation in her husband's work, and the
little cares and vexations incident to a fresh kind
of housekeeping, with slender means in furnished
lodgings. She had less leisure than in her maiden
days for inditing those long epistles to Sophie,
which now gradually shrank, till they ceased
entirely on her husband's return to Amiens.
Madame Roland had looked forward with much
delight to the society of Sophie and Henriette
when she should be in the same town with them ;
but morbidly jealous, at this the beginning of
their union, of any affection not given to him,
Roland exacted a promise that she would see as
little as possible of these dear friends of hers.
She resigned herself to it, and in fact hardly ever
left her husband's side. Living in the same room,
studying the same books, sitting at the same ta-
ble, she wrote to his dictation, copied and revised
his manuscripts, and corrected his proofs. This
life of constant application was only varied by an
96 MADAME ROLAND.
occasional walk out of the gates of Amiens. The
great discrepancy of age between Roland and his
wife gave the former an undue authority in their
relations, and for several years after their mar-
riage Madame Roland never ventured to contra-
dict him for fear of seeing a frown clouding his
brow. But owing to this habit of doing every-
thing in company with his wife, Roland became
at last incapable of doing anything without her,
so that her genius insensibly gained the influence
due to it by nature.
" By dint," says she in her Memoirs, " of occupying my-
self with the happiness of the man with whom I was asso-
ciated, I felt that something was wanting to my own. I
have never for a moment ceased to see in my husband one
of the most estimable persons that exist ; but I often felt
that similarity was wanting between us, — that the ascen-
dancy of a domineering temper, united to that of twenty
years more of age, made one of those superiorities too
much."
They remained four years at Amiens, and it
was there that Madame Roland's only child, Eu-
dora, was born, in October, 178 1. Contrary to
the universal French custom of sending children
out to nurse, she had always considered that
mothers should perform the duty of nursing their
own offspring ; and now, in spite of violent suffer-
ing, she persisted in doing so. During her stay
at Amiens, her dear friend Sophie — whom Henri-
ette, however, seems gradually to have eclipsed in
THE CLOS DE LA PLATI&RE. 97
Madame Roland's affection — married a certain
Chevalier de Gomiecourt. Henriette, although
of a warmer and more impulsive temperament,
eventually united herself to a man of seventy-five,
and in the last days of Madame Roland's life
evinced a heroism of friendship which places her
on a level with her famous friend.
In 1784 Madame Roland, it seems, went to
Paris for the purpose of obtaining lettres d y ano-
blissemeiit, — the grant of permanent, indefeasible,
and hereditary nobility, various members of Ro-
land's family having held offices which made each
of them personally a noble without the title being
hereditary. She failed in this, for Roland's stiff-
necked persistence and rigorousness of principle
had made him very unpopular with his superiors ;
but it was afterwards made one of the accusations
against him by the partisans of the Mountain.
Madame Roland succeeded however, later, in
obtaining her husband's transfer to the inspector-
ship of Lyons.
Before settling in the Beaujolais, — where Ro-
land's family still possessed a remnant of their
property in the Clos de la Platiere, — Roland de-
cided on taking his young wife on a trip to Eng-
land. He himself, an accomplished traveller,
would now enjoy giving her the benefit of his
large experience.
England was at that time the political lode-star
7
98 MADAME ROLAND.
of almost every Frenchman with any share of
public spirit in him. Our Constitution, our rep-
resentative system, our liberty of the Press, our
home life, were all studied with admiring envy by
a nation which, through long-continued misgov-
ernment, seemed almost on the verge of political
dissolution. Towards England were turned the
eyes of statesmen, ministers, pamphleteers, jour-
nalists. To England it was that political writers,
in imminent peril of the Bastile, — such men
as Brissot and Linguet, — came for safety and
shelter. To England, too, came Marat, where,
in 1774, he wrote and published his "Chains of
Slavery." Rousseau alone had not shared his
countrymen's enthusiasm for this country, and
under the trappings of liberty he beheld and
pointed out horrible sores and social wrongs
masked by a semblance of national prosperity.
Madame Roland was eager to see this native
land of liberty. In her girlhood she had studied
De Lolme's " History of the English Constitution,"
and the book had made a lasting impression
on her mind. She came prepared to admire
everything, from the eloquence of the House of
Commons to the powderless yellow curls of cherub-
cheeked children in the parks.
On the first of July, 1784, the Rolands landed
at Dover, and her first remarks on the country
are such as would not occur to women in gen-
JOURNEY TO ENGLAND. 99
eral. In the Journal written on this occasion
she says : —
" The soil of the environs perfectly resembles that of
the Boulonnois ; light, poor lands over a bed of sand and
chalk ; the country hilly, entirely broken into sinuosities,
which diversify its surface in a striking manner ; it is pre-
cisely the same soil on either side the water. But a
traveller may soon observe which is the best understood
and most improved culture. A small breed of sheep were
grazing on the downs ; they are quite different from ours ;
the legs short, the body compact, a great deal of wool, even
underneath them, the head crowned with a ruff, from which
it seems to issue as from a cowl, small ears thrown back
into this tuft of wool, — this is what at once distinguishes
them from other breeds."
The country from Dover to London, by way of
Canterbury, in a stage-coach, delighted Madame
Roland. Nothing escaped her notice, from the
trim-clipped hedges, sleek green fields and hop-
gardens to the snug Kentish villages, where every
cottage boasted its neatly-kept garden, and " every
cabbage had its rose-tree." Some curious glimpses
of English manners, as they were just a hundred
years since, are afforded by Madame Roland's ac-
count of her tour. It sounds very strange and
quaint to hear of " watchmen that walk about
with a rattle, a lantern, and a long white pole,
calling the hours as they struck." These were
the flourishing days of highway and other rob-
beries ; and our traveller remarks that well-to-do
IOO MADAME ROLAND.
persons, leaving town in the summer, "expect
to find their houses robbed on their return ; and
that for precaution's sake they carried what is
called the robber 's purse along with them, intended
to be given up to them in case of an attack. It
is here as it was in Lacedaemonia, to the vigilance
of every individual is left the care of avoiding
these little daily losses ; besides, it would be ap-
prehended that every well-armed guard, every
means of police or of rigor, at first established
for the safety of the citizens, would shortly be-
come an instrument of oppression and tyranny."
To the Republican-minded Frenchwoman, chaf-
ing under the grinding centralization of her own
government, this practice of self-help seemed then
the paradise of public life. Deeply impressed with
the Houses of Parliament, she was present at a
debate on the East India Company, when she
heard the young Prime Minister Pitt, and Fox,
his eloquent antagonist.
Westminster Abbey, with its monuments to
great men, the British Museum, the Royal So-
ciety, — the President of which, Sir Joseph Banks,
the Rolands were very intimate with, — all gave
to Madame Roland the impression of a proud,
vigorous national life. Ranelagh, so charmingly
described in Miss Burney's " Evelina," was then
the rendezvous of fashionable society, and Madame
Roland was as pleased with the tone of quiet good-
JOURNEY TO ENGLAND: :. [Oi
breeding pervading these assemblies as with the
energy and passion displayed in the public meet-
ings. In fact, in her eyes, as in those of so many
of her countrymen, England was then the model
nation. Brissot, who some years afterwards be-
came the intimate friend of the Rolands and
leader of the Girondin party, was about this time
leading a retired yet busy life in the neighbor-
hood of Brompton, delightedly inhaling its pure
country air and congratulating himself on his
happiness in enjoying freedom of thought, in-
stead of living in constant apprehension of the
bolts and bars of the Bastile ! The grim towers
of the Bastile, the impassable moat of the Bastile,
the dumb, dull grip of the walls of the Bastile, —
this was the dreaded object which cast its deadly
shadow on the muzzled thought of France ! This
was the living tomb from which they shrank back
aghast, and which made so many of them, as soon
as they touched English soil, breathe our heavy,
fog-laden, smoke-begrimed atmosphere as if it were
the very elixir of life. Had Burke been bred in
the shadow of the Bastile, and felt the iron of its
chains enter into his flesh, he could never after-
wards have made all Europe re-echo to the de-
clamatory blasts of his vehement invective against
the French people.
In the beginning of August, 1784, the Rolands
returned from the political land of Goshen to their
702 MADAME -ROLAND.
own poor, suffering country, then so miserably
"cabined, cribbed, confined;" and Madame Ro-
land writing of this tour remarks, flatteringly to
English feelings : —
" I shall ever remember with pleasure a country of which
De Lolme taught me to love the Constitution, and where
I have witnessed the happy effects which that Constitution
has produced. Fools may chatter, and slaves may sing,
but you may take my word for it that England contains
men who have a right to laugh at us."
Her admiration of English women is expressed
in glowing terms to Bosc : —
" I wish to heaven I had you in England ! you would
fall in love with all the women. I was very near doing so,
in spite of being one myself. They bear no resemblance
to ours, and have in general that oval form of countenance
which Lavater commends. Take my word for it, that the
individual who does not feel some esteem for the English,
and a degree of affection mixed with admiration for their
women, is either a pitiful coxcomb or an ignorant block-
head who talks about what he does not understand."
A few weeks after their return from England
the Rolands removed from Amiens, and Madame
Roland's correspondence with the excellent and
faithful Bosc, the friend she had made there, con-
tains most of the materials for her life between
1782 and 1790. Bosc, like most men who knew
her, felt the magnetic attraction of this noble
woman, and never swerved in his fidelity to her.
LIFE AT VILLEFRANCHE. 1 03
When she accompanied her husband to Ville-
franche, the severing of their intercourse cast
him into profound dejection ; and it was only
little by little that her friendly letters, pervaded
as they are by a spirit of calm fortitude, restored
him to a state of greater equanimity.
The next few years were passed by her and her
husband either at Lyons, the Clos de la Platiere,
or Villefranche, a provincial town five miles from
Lyons, where the Rolands had a family mansion,
then inhabited by Roland's mother — who was the
same age as the century — and by a very pious
elder brother. Roland, who had been for years
on bad terms with his conservative family, sought
a reconciliation on his marriage, and now came to
live with them, although he and his radical wife
felt like ducks out of water amid the retrograde
society of the place. Villefranche, far removed
from the strong central pulsation of French life,
insignificant even when compared with such a
town as Amiens, was in some respects a little
depressing to the daughter of Paris.
Madame Roland's time at Villefranche was even
less at her own disposal than during any other
period of her life, and she had very little leisure
to devote to the intellectual pursuits so congenial
to her. Owing to her mother-in-law's great age,
the entire charge of a large household devolved
upon her ; and this household had to be ordered,
104 MADAME ROLAND.
not in conformity to her own tastes, but in every
minutest particular according to the whims and
crotchets of a terrible octogenarian lady, whose
tongue and temper more than equalled that of the
typical mother-in-law. The brothers, too, did not
hit it off very amicably, the elder having as great
a passion for domineering as the younger for inde-
pendence. However, Madame Roland did her
best to bring these discordant elements into har-
mony. Her first care in the morning was her
child's and her husband's breakfast ; then, leaving
them both at work in their respective ways, she
went to see after her household affairs. At the
stroke of noon the dinner was bound to be on the
table and they to be dressed for it, or woe betide !
This latter formality, however, was accomplished
by Madame Roland in about ten minutes, after
which she would sit and talk with her amiable
mother-in-law till the arrival of visitors, — for the
old lady was passionately addicted to company.
When thus set at liberty she retired to her hus-
band's study, where she helped him with his liter-
ary work, and collected materials for his articles
in the " Encyclopedic Nouvelle" to which Roland
largely contributed, and for which her beautiful
hand penned many a page on such unattractive
subjects as u Peat," " Furs," " Manure," etc.
This was no doubt a monotonous, sober, if not
sombre, kind of existence for such a glowing
THE CLOS DE LA PLATlkRE. 105
nature as Madame Roland's. Sometimes she
must have yearned for a richer life or even for
the golden leisure of the little closet on the Quai
de l'Horloge, when she could revel at will in the
classics or in the pages of Rousseau. But now
had come more austere days ; literature had to
be laid aside, music and Italian were becoming
rusty, — yet in the fulfilment of all its duties this
fine nature always found the highest satisfaction.
She had consolations, moreover, in the close
and ever closer sympathy which grew between
her husband and herself, and in the ever fresh
interest which she felt in her daughter Eudora
(who hardly ever left her mother's side), described
as being " a pretty little prattler, as full of mis-
chief as a monkey," and who seems to have taken
after her father's family in character and tem-
perament. She showed none of her mother's
precocious passion for books, but was an incor-
rigible romp, whose childish doings, sayings, and
ailments are as minutely retailed to the friendly
Bosc as if he, too, had been a young mother
painfully interested in an infant's growth.
Every autumn M. and Mme. Roland left the
depressing atmosphere of Villefranche to spend
some time at the Clos de la Platiere, that remnant
of ancestral estates. It resembled a farm more
than a manor-house, with a low red-tiled roof and
projecting eaves ; and from its terrace one saw
106 MADAME ROLAND.
the white outline of the Alps, Mont Blanc, called
"The Cat's Mountain" by the peasant folk, tow-
ering above them all. The country, dotted about
with innumerable hillocks, was planted with vines,
and such value as the Clos possessed was due to
its vineyard. To the house itself were attached
a kitchen-garden, an orchard richly stocked with
fruit-trees, a yard and out-houses, barns and gran-
aries for the harvest and vintage, etc. Here, if
anywhere, Madame Roland felt at home in a wide-
reaching activity; for as early as 1778 she had
written in her diary: —
" I never conceived anything more desirable than a life
divided between domestic cares and those of agriculture,
spent on a healthy and plentiful farm, with a small family,
where the example of the master and mistress, and the habit
of work in common, produce peace, good-will, and general
content."
Now she could at times realize this simple ideal,
and her spirits rose visibly whenever she was at
the Clos de la Platiere, — whether in spring,
autumn, or even in severe winter weather, when
the wide-rolling country and valley of the Saone
were clogged with snow, and the howling of
wolves came from the large forests surrounding
them.
Some of the most playful letters ever written
by Madame Roland are dated from the Clos, and
her life there was not altogether so sad and joy-
THE CLOS DE LA PLATI&RE. 107
less as the warm-hearted Michelet would have us
believe. It was more the life of a farmer's wife,
perhaps, than of a lady, — not so much a pleasant
country holiday passed in leisurely rambles and
pleasure excursions, as real unmistakable out-door
work, which left barely any time for more studious
occupations. But such as it was, it suited Madame
Roland's hardy temperament ; and through some
of her epistles to Bosc there pierces a vein of
" sunburnt mirth " quite foreign to her tone in
town. Adapting Lafontaine's well-known " Eh,
bonjour, Monsieur le Corbeau," she begins one of
her letters : —
" And good morning to you, our friend ! It is long,
indeed, since I wrote you last; but then I have not put
pen to paper within the month, and I fancy that I must be
imbibing some of the tastes of the good animal whose milk
is restoring me to health. I am growing asinine by dint of
attending to the little cares of a piggish country life. I am
preserving pears, which will be delicious ; we are drying
raisins and prunes ; are in the midst of a great wash, and
getting up the linen ; we breakfast on white wine, and then
lie on the grass till its fumes have passed off ; after super-
intending the vintage, we take a rest in the shade of the
woods or meadows ; knock down the walnuts, and, after
gathering our stock of fruit for the winter, spread it in the
garrets. Adieu ; there is some talk of breakfasting and
going in a body to gather the almonds."
On another mellow October day, she thus
banteringly addresses the same friend (with a
passing allusion to Henry IV.'s letter) : —
108 MADAME ROLAND.
"'Hang thyself, dainty Crillon ! ' we are making jams
and jellies, and sweet wine and sweetmeats, and you are
not here to taste them ! These, elegant Sir, are my present
occupations. The vintage in the mean time is going on
apace, and very shortly it will only be in the cellar of the
master, and in the cupboard of the mistress of the house
that the wine and the delicious fruit will be found. This
year's wine will be excellent ; but we shall have little of it,
on account of the visit paid us by the hail, — an honor
which always leaves a dear and lasting remembrance be-
hind it. Why, pray, do you not write to us, — you who
have no vintage to attend to? Can there be any other
occupation in the world beside ? "
Madame Roland's industry was by no means
restricted to the care of her own household, where
she was forced by circumstances to practise the
strictest economy. Her bounteous activity over-
flowed the narrow limits of the family circle, and
for miles round her unassuming dwelling the
peasants looked upon her as a kind of Bona Diva,
and turned to her confidingly in trouble or dis-
ease. Before medical women were thought of,
she became the village doctor of her district, and
within a circuit of two, or three leagues the sick
would send for her. Sometimes in urgent cases,
bringing a horse for her to ride, would come a
country yeoman, praying her instantly to save
the life of some dying relative. Madame Roland
deprecates the notion of peasants not being grate-
ful for kindness shown them. She declares, on
JOURNEY TO SWITZERLAND. 109
the contrary, that she met with the greatest affec-
tion in return ; and if the court-yard of her abode
was often thronged on a Sunday with poor in-
valids imploring relief, others came too, bring-
ing loving little presents, — baskets of chestnuts,
goat's-milk, cheeses, or apples from their orchards.
Thus the laborious years passed, marked by
few outward changes. In 1787 Madame Roland's
father died of a catarrh, aged upwards of sixty.
He had never become quite reconciled to his
daughter's marriage, and yet after running through
everything he possessed he had been obliged to
retire on an annuity provided by his son-in-law.
The discrepancy of character between himself
and the latter must have chafed his self-love all
the more that he could not escape the obligations
bestowed on him.
In the same year, 1787, the Rolands paid a
visit to Switzerland, whither Roland, who was
frequently ailing, repaired in search of health.
His wife kept a record of her tour, but for us of
the latter half of the nineteenth century, to whom
Switzerland has become the hackneyed playground
of Europe, it contains nothing that is not already
perfectly familiar. What does strike one as new
and strange is the fact that there were then no
big, barrack-like hotels, defacing with pompous
tastelessness the beautiful solitude of the Alps.
No ; the pupil of Rousseau — whose pulses must
IIO MADAME ROLAND.
have beat higher as she trod the sacred ground
of Clarens, and " measured with her eye the height
of the rocks of Meillerie " — had the good for-
tune to see the Swiss valleys with their peasantry
in their original freshness. So little accommoda-
tion for strangers was to be found in the Bernese
Oberland in those days, that the travellers were
hospitably entertained by a good pastor, who with
his wife and seven children resided in the village
of Lauterbrunnen. These kindly people gave the
wayfarers (nine of them sat down to their homely
fare) of their best, and loaded the flower-loving
Madame Roland, who hardly knew how to be
grateful enough, with a profusion of roses on part-
ing. Her description of this incident reads like
an idyl, as compared with the spirit of greed
which now adulterates even the honey from the
honeycomb.
The rocks and woods, the valleys and water-
falls, the bristling ravines and rushing rivers, the
stillness of the aromatic meadows, only broken by
the rcuiz des vaclies, the star-bright glory of the
Jungfrau and her Silberhorn, — all this new world
of beauty and grandeur burst on the pure soul of
the child of the Seine with a rapture of delight.
Her interest was divided between the natural
beauties of Switzerland and its political consti-
tution, which engrossed her even more. She got
all the information she could concerning the
JOURNEY TO SWITZERLAND. Ill
working of republican institutions, the power
vested in the Senate and the character of the
elections. After visiting many of the Cantons,
she expatiated on the striking differences between
the Roman Catholic and Protestant parts of the
country, and on the much greater morality and
cleanliness prevalent in the latter. The same
contrast, only in a more marked degree, she also
noticed between the inhabitants of the Swiss
Republic and the German Empire, much to the
disadvantage of the latter.
After the death of Madame la Platiere, Madame
Roland passed the greater part of her time at
the Clos, her husband being frequently called to
Lyons and other places by his official duties.
Content apparently to spend the rest of her life
in a remote country place, superintending her
household, attending to the vintage, compiling
articles for her husband, she was what may be
called the highest type of the Frenchwoman, —
that is, of the Frenchwoman of the middle classes,
who so far from being the frail, fair, and frivolous
coquette of the French novelist, is, on the con-
trary, the most active, practical, and sagacious
specimen of her sex. Every traveller in France
is doubtless struck by seeing women taking so
very large a share in trade and commerce ; the
actual management of affairs is continually shifted
from the husband on to the wife, although it may
112 MADAME ROLAND.
not be so to outward appearance. They are the
exact opposite of the constitutional sovereign, of
whom it is said that he reigns but does not gov-
ern ; Frenchwomen govern but do not reign.
Up to this point of Manon Roland's life we
cannot avoid the conviction of a great moral force
frittered away on liliputian tasks : the preparing
of dainty dishes for her husband's delicate diges-
tion, the mending of house-linen, the setting a
child its lessons, — excellent tasks all, but which
affect one with something of the ludicrous dispro-
portion of making use of the fires of Etna to fry
one's eggs by ! It seems, indeed, a curious irony
of destiny that this great woman should have
spent many of her best years on things for which
so much less ability was required, while so many
small people in high places were bungling over
the welfare of millions. But such are at present
the satisfactory arrangements of society ; and in
the remote Clos de la Platiere, her real strength
unsuspected by the world and only half guessed
at by herself, Madame Roland would have led
her resigned and laborious existence, and died
unknown, but for the echoes which, reaching the
arid hill-country of Beaujolais, were reverberated
from homestead to hamlet, from market town to
seaport, from province to province, till France
was shaken from end to end by the thunder of
the storming of the Bastile.
CHAPTER VIII.
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.
As the life of Madame Roland will now become
part of the History of the French Revolution,
let us pause a moment, and briefly review the
political and social condition of a people within
whose capital stood the Bastile, — its fortifica-
tions, bristling with cannon, being a visible em-
bodiment of an invisible idea and a system of
government. Glancing backwards, we find that
the feudal order of the Middle Ages, with its
graduated authority, — vested in the hands of
successive orders of agricultural and military
chiefs, subordinated in their turn to one supreme
chief, the Sovereign of the realm, — had gradu-
ally become absorbed in an absolute monarchy.
Louis XIV. had put the situation in a nutshell
in his famous phrase, " I am the State." The
"right divine" of kings had reached its utmost
limit under the Grand Mouarque, whose prestige
was such that his frown snuffed out the great
poet Racine, and the mere apprehension of
whose frown drove Vatel, the paragon of cooks,
S
114 MADAME ROLAND.
to suicide, because the fish had not arrived in
time for the King's dinner.
This is the serio-comic aspect of a state of
things of unimaginable wretchedness. The bur-
den of taxation laid on the people ruined agricul-
ture and commerce, and when whole provinces
had been driven into rebellion by intolerable ex-
actions, they were reduced to obedience by
means of wholesale slaughter. Madame de S6-
vigne, in the charming epistles addressed to her
daughter, did not dream of attacking the Govern-
ment ; but what a picture of corruption does not
that correspondence reveal ! Lower Brittany,
from sheer inability to pay more taxes, had taken
up arms, but was soon reduced to obedience by
the King's troops, and no punishment was severe
enough for its inhabitants. The brilliant Mar-
quise, in travelling from Paris to her estates there
in 1675, saw " peasants hanging on the trees by
the roadside," and in her budget of news speaks
of "rebels broken on the wheel by hundreds," —
so many hundreds being despatched, indeed, that
she says in one letter, " They have done hang-
ing for want of people to hang." These " poor
Lower Bretons " took it so meekly, too ! asked
" but for something to drink, a pinch of snuff,
and to be despatched quickly ; for, indeed," she
remarks, " hanging seems a kind of deliverance
here from greater evils."
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, IIS
But let the amiable, witty French Marquise
beware of too much sympathy for " the despair
and desolation " of her " poor province of Brit-
tany ; " for even such letters as hers — from
mother to daughter — did not escape the watch-
ful eyes of postal spies, and an ill-considered
word of compassion, nay, a witticism, might
send her to the Bastile despite her marquisate.
Merely for some such trifle, some satirical lines
on Madame de Pompadour, had not a certain
Chevalier de Resseguier been shut up for years
in an iron cage, to endure the torture of neither
being able to stand upright nor of lying down ?
Who, remembering these punishments, those in-
famous Lettres de Cachet, given in blank by
Louis XV. to his minions and mistresses, to be
filled in by them with the name of whomsoever
they chose, — who, I say, remembering this, can
help giving the people absolution if in return its
retribution was terrible ?
The unlimited power of the Sovereign, having
sapped the pride of the French nobles, had gradu-
ally converted them from a body of responsible
landholders into cringing courtiers, who absent-
ing themselves from their estates, — left in the
hands of rapacious stewards and land-agents, —
came to spend their revenues in Versailles, and
to intrigue for place and power by paying court
to the King's reigning mistress. It was while
Il6 MADAME ROLAND.
performing her toilet that Madame de Pompa-
dour received the lords, generals, prelates, and
princes of the blood ; nor were any of them suf-
fered to sit down in her presence. But while
behaving like curs at court, these same nobles
turned into wolves in their dealings with the
peasantry, whom they fleeced as if they were so
many flocks of sheep.
In describing the relations of the nobles to the
French peasantry, it is difficult to speak with
more than approximate correctness ; for as each
province had its separate laws and customs and
fiscal regulations, their conditions were often
widely dissimilar, and the discrepancy between
Provence and Brittany, for example, was so great
that they were more like two separate countries
than provinces of the same empire. Thus al-
though the peasants were everywhere wretchedly
treated, they were worse off in some parts of
France than in others, — emancipated in this
district, while in that they were in the truly pur-
gatorial condition of what was called metayers,
being neither bond nor free, so as to be equally
deprived of the rights of liberty and the privi-
leges of serfdom. In years of scarcity they were
frequently turned adrift by the land-owners, whose
dues they were unable to pay, thus swelling the
appalling host of beggars and vagrants which
was one of the scourges of old France. In order
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. l\J
to protect society from these famishing hordes
infesting the highways and by-ways, the most
stringent edicts were continually published
against them. They were branded like crimi-
nals, and stuffed pell-mell into prisons dignified
by the name of hospitals, where in conformity to
orders they were forced to lie down on straw in
order to take up less room. The indignant Saint
Simon wrote as follows to Cardinal Fleury, in
the first quarter of the eighteenth century : —
"In Normandy they live on the grass of the fields. I
speak in secret and in confidence to a Frenchman, a bishop,
a minister, and to the only man who seems to enjoy the
friendship and the confidence of the King, and is able to
speak in private to him. The King, moreover, can be
called such only while he possesses subjects and a king-
dom ; he is of an age one day to feel the consequences of
our state ; and in spite of being the first King in Europe,
he cannot be a great King if he only rules over wretches
of all sorts and conditions, with his kingdom turned into
one vast infirmary for the desperate and dying."
What a picture is this of the state to which
the country had been reduced ! And it puzzles
one not a little to understand why so rich and
fertile a country as France — a country which,
after its disasters in 1870, recovered with aston-
ishing rapidity from the ravages of an invading
army — should only a century before have been
such a scene of desolation and sterility. But the
cause lay chiefly in the rapacity with which the
Il8 MADAME ROLAND.
privileged classes had cast the whole burden of
taxation on the shoulders of the people. The
theory with which they justified this equitable
arrangement was that u the nobility paid in blood,
the clergy in prayer, and the people in money ! "
Poor people ! whose toil and whose tithes had
in the course of time helped the Gallican Church
to accumulate in lands and money what amounted
to more than half the revenue of the kingdom,
and which, in spite of its tithes and taxes, was
not by any means exempt from shedding its
blood on the battle fields, of which others reaped
the glory and the greatness. In the feudal ages,
when fighting was the badge of knighthood, there
might have been some faint shadow of meaning
in this invidious distinction, which became a
mere farce after the invention of gunpowder ;
and the exemption of the aristocracy and clergy
from taxation showed, in regard to this society,
that it was simply relapsing into a state of natu-
ral anarchy, — that of the strong preying on the
weak without let or hindrance from justice.
Under the closely-woven net-work of this sys-
tem of taxation, agriculture and commerce — the
two lungs of national prosperity — were stifling
for want of room. The ruling powers seemed to
resemble nothing so much as those monstrous
harpies of fable, who, however greedily they fed,
were yet gnawed by insatiable hunger. To wring
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 119
ever fresh subsidies from the body of the people
seemed to be the sole business of government.
Among the most oppressive of these fiscal griev-
ances (for the system was so obscure and com-
plicated that the high financiers themselves only
understood it in portion) may be enumerated the
Gabelle, the Taille, the Corvee, and the Aides.
As is well known, the Gabelle, a tax on salt, was
so oppressively administered, that in some prov-
inces, when this article was scarce, the people,
down to every child, were forced to buy a regu-
lation quantity, whether they wanted it or not ;
whereas, in other provinces, such as Provence,
where salt was naturally formed on the coast,
soldiers were stationed at certain times of the
year to prevent even the cattle from imbibing the
saline properties of the soil. The Taille, a tax
raised on property and income, was equally op-
pressive, because, as must be remembered, it was
a tax raised only on the property and income of
the unprivileged classes. Thirdly, there was the
detested Corvee, the unremunerated service origi-
nally due from serf or tenant to his Seigneur,
copied by the Government in the beginning of
the eighteenth century, when the public Corve'es
were instituted. Then might be seen groups of
peasants — hungry, sullen, wrathful — pressed
like malefactors into the unpaid labor of con-
structing and repairing the public roads ; and
120 MADAME ROLAND.
while they were making the highways for the
easier locomotion of the Grand Seigneur and the
wealthy financier, their own field of grass or patch
of wheat was in the mean while ruined for want
of the requisite labor. Next came the Aides, or
subsidies on all fermented liquors, which bore so
heavily on the wine trade as to check this the
most productive source of wealth in the country.
The vintage was no sooner over than gaugers
appeared, ransacking the cellars and confiscating
what had not been duly registered and declared.
The very owners were taxed for everything but a
very small quantity. On entering and leaving
towns, on entering or leaving provinces, along the
high-road and rivers, under and over bridges, on
entering and leaving wine-shops, the barrel of
wine encountered a fresh obstacle. For a system
of internal custom-houses formed artificial fron-
tiers, impeding all free circulation of provisions ;
so that a measure of wine which in Orleanais was
worth one half-penny, by the time it arrived in
Normandy cost a shilling !
These taxes were not levied by salaried Govern-
ment officials, but were let out to fermiers-gaicraux
(tax-farmers), who again underlet them to sub-
ordinates. Their method of procedure was per-
fectly arbitrary ; and the mere fact that they were
not paid, but expected to indemnify themselves
when once they had apportioned its share to the
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 121
Government, gave the rein to a system of whole-
sale spoliation only to be matched in Turkey at
the present day, or by the extortions of the pre-
fects in the conquered provinces of the Roman
Empire. Adam Smith, who had visited France
in 1765, and studied French finances, wrote in his
u Wealth of Nations," — " The most sanguinary
laws exist in those countries where the revenue is
farmed out by the Government."
It is no wonder that under such a system the
country was wretchedly cultivated ; that whole
regions, in spite of a capital soil, were, according
to Arthur Young, mere barren tracts, desolate
stretches of dreary bogs and arid wildernesses;
that the villages and towns were often but a filthy
heap of mud-houses and windowless hovels ; that
the children in their repulsive rags were, " if pos-
sible, worse clad than if with no clothes at all ; "
that the countrywomen — in the enforced absence
of husbands and brothers, of carts and horses —
were condemned to the heaviest field-work, till,
disfigured and blasted with drudgery, they ap-
peared not so much women as creatures of amor-
phous shape ; and that this extreme poverty of
the husbandman, following his plough "without
wooden shoes or feet to his stockings," in turn
became the insidious worm, gnawing at the root
of the tree of national prosperity.
In the " Confessions," Rousseau incidentally
122 MADAME ROLAND.
refers to the French peasant's dread of the tax-
gatherer's spies, and the premium that was put
upon poverty. He narrates how, journeying on
foot from Paris to Lyons, he lost his way on one
occasion, and, footsore and famishing, besought
hospitality of a peasant for payment. The rustic
brought him some skimmed milk and rye-bread,
saying it was all he possessed. Jean Jacques's
hunger being in no wise appeased, and the peasant,
drawing his own conclusions from this very gen-
uine appetite, cautiously lifted a trap-door near
the kitchen, descended, and reappeared with a
ham, a bottle of wine, and a loaf of wheaten
bread, — a meal to make the traveller's mouth
water. But the peasant's anxiety returned on
Rousseau's offering to pay him ; and it was only
after much pressing that he, with a shudder,
brought out the terrible words of tax-gatherer
and cellar-rat He explained how he hid his
wine, because of the aides ; how he hid his bread
because of the taille ; and that he would be lost
if it were known that he was not dying of hunger.
The impression produced by the lot of this peasant
who dared not so much as eat the bread he had
earned in the sweat of his brow, became the germ
of that life-long inextinguishable hatred which
Rousseau felt for the oppression of the poor, —
became the germ of his " Contrat Social," the little
book which kindled so mighty a conflagration.
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 123
There was a limit, however, beyond which even
the extortions of the tax-collector, the custom-
house officer, the gauger, could not proceed, —
they could not seize where nothing remained to
be taken. Yet the public exchequer was empty,
the public "revenues were exhausted, and still the
cry for gold, more gold, was as importunate at
Versailles as that for bread, more bread, among
the populace. Paris-Duvernoy, one of the minis-
ters of Louis XV., seeing no other way out of
the pressing difficulty, at last bethought him of
putting a tax, the Cinqnantihne, on all classes
without distinction. This tax raised a perfect
storm of indignation among the nobility and
clergy. Who so daring as to lay a sacrilegious
hand on the riches of the Church! The Duke
was forced to resign, and a proclamation was
issued to the effect that all ecclesiastical pos-
sessions should now and in perpetuity remain
exempt from taxes and imposts ! The author
of this proclamation was that identical Cardinal
Fleury, the confidant of the King, to whom Henri
Saint Simon had described the appalling poverty
of the realm.
Such was the conduct of the Church at the
approach of an imminent national crisis ; such
the rapacity of a priesthood instituted in the
name of Christ, the very core of whose teach-
ing had been not to lay up riches for yourself,
124 MADAME ROLAND.
but charity, the sharing in common of the common
fruits of the earth. If ever the absolute divorce
between theory and practice had the effect of
producing in a nation an army of cynics, sceptics,
and scoffers, then this effect must have been pro-
duced in France at the beginning of *the eigh-
teenth century. But while the extravagance and
licentiousness of the higher clergy had reached
a fabulous extent, the curds and village priests
were left so badly paid that they often depended
for a livelihood on the charity of their poor pa-
rishioners. Many of them, in consequence, were
among the first who made common cause with
the people in 1789, — such as that apostolic figure
of Claude Fauchet, who preached the Revolution
with the Gospel in his hand.
With an irresponsible Government, an effemi-
nate aristocracy, a dissolute clergy, a poverty-
stricken people, it seemed that the ruin of the
old Regime must bring about that of the realm
itself. But to save it from destruction there was
yet left one sound and robust limb in the French
body politic, — the bourgeoisie or middle class ;
although there did not then exist the infinite gra-
dations by which social inequalities are to some
degree hidden, or at least made less glaring, in
the present day. For, as Arthur Young wrote,
" there were no gentle transitions from ease to
comfort, from comfort to wealth ; you passed at
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 1 25
once from beggary to profusion, from misery in
mud cabins to Mademoiselle Hubert [a popular
actress] in splendid spectacles." Still, from the
ranks of the middle class there rose up a small
phalanx of men, — philosophers, historians, litte-
rateurs, journalists, — impassioned innovators,
doughty pioneers, the light brigade of the Thought
Militant of human progress. The very sound of
the names of them — Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alem-
bert, D'rfolbach, Condillac, Helvetius — still rings
upon our ears like so many battle-cries. These
were no word-mongers calmly writing by their
snug firesides, — these were soldiers in the heat
of the fight, eager, alert, fevered with action, whose
words were their swords, and who too often paid
for their audacity with poverty, exile, and im-
prisonment. They have been much vilified, these
brave philosophers ; their system has been much
misunderstood, because, forsooth, it was less a
system than a challenge. It may be objected
that a Reformation such as Luther had wrought
for Germany in the sixteenth century, or a trans-
formation such as Cromwell momentarily effected
for this country in the seventeenth, would have
been more permanently beneficial than their anni-
hilation of all previous religious and social moulds ;
but the Night of St. Bartholomew had forced
back the advancing tide of thought so long, that
nothing could now stem its accumulated waters
126 MADAME ROLAND.
in their destructive overflow. It is by the sangui-
nary light of these massacres that we should
read the writings of Voltaire and his associates ;
for thus only their vehement onslaughts, their
motto of Ecrasez Vlnfame, receive their fitting
commentary.
Leader of the minds who inaugurated the revo-
lution of thought by importing the sensational
philosophy of Hobbes and Locke into France, is
the ubiquitous Voltaire, — the intellectual Briareus
of the eighteenth century ; the man who did the
thinking of fifty heads at least, and who, while
assisting the Encyclopaedists in their warfare
against the priests, yet contrived to seat himself
by the thrones of kings. Voltaire's primary ser-
vice to his time consisted in his sowing division
between Church and State, and in his power of
making such potentates as Frederick the Great
and Catharine of Russia actual accomplices of his
assaults on the despotism of the Hierarchy. Thus
shielded by Voltaire's supreme dexterity, his com-
rades could proceed in their perilous undertaking,
— the publication of the " Encyclopedic," which
by revolutionizing the thought of its generation
fitted the following one to carry thought into
action.
Diderot — the son of a blacksmith, himself a
smith in the workshop of thought, who amid
much din and confusion forged, with his comrades,
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 127
those destructive weapons afterwards wielded by
the Constituent Assembly — was,* along with
D'Alembert, the directing spirit of the " Ency-
clopedic" The former bold and impetuous as
the latter was discreet, they succeeded, between
the years 175 1 and 1760, in spite of Papal denun-
ciations, legal decrees, and State prisons, in com-
pleting this engine for the destruction of feudal
institutions and theological tenets, and for the
propounding of their own systems of nature and
society. To free men from the bondage of
authority in religion and philosophy, to substi-
tute for superstitious terror a faith in human
reason and virtue, to transform regret for a lost
Paradise to quenchless belief in the perfectibility
of the race, was the prominent teaching of their
school. Some of these men called themselves
Deists, some Pyrrhonists, some Atheists ; but, in
spite of clashing divergencies of opinion, they all
worshipped at one common shrine, — that of Pro-
gress. The fact is that a social rather than a
philosophical idea lay at the root of their work,
and that in their efforts to rid their country of
the incubus of superstition they also tore away
some of that transmitted inheritance of religious
thought around which cluster the most sensitive
fibres of the mind. Helvetius and D'Holbach,
in the crude and dogmatic exposition of Mate-
rialism elaborated in " De l'Esprit " and the " Sys-
128 MADAME ROLAND.
teme de la Nature," became the exponents of the
Necessitarian doctrine, reducing the universe to
a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and man to an
animated machine.
Apart and companionless, " a love in desolation
masked, a power girt round with weakness," there
came he who appeared in the eighteenth century
like one crying in the wilderness. The most
paradoxical and enigmatic figure in literary his-
tory, he preached the purification of morals while
tainted with the corruption of his age, and com-
posed a lofty theory of education after depositing
his children in the Foundlings' Hospital. Jean
Jacques Rousseau possessed, perhaps above all
writers, the magnetism of genius ; and Madame
Roland is an instance of the paramount influence
he exercised on the generation which succeeded
his. A child of the people, a vagabond of the
highways, a citizen of Geneva, he naturally ap-
proached the problems of his time by a road
different from that of his compeers. As we have
seen, it was his inextinguishable hatred of the
oppression of the poor that turned his thoughts
to politics ; and if in the " Contrat Social " he
seems to reason too much from general a priori
principles, it must be remembered that as a native
of Switzerland he had had experience of a form
of government which gave" to part of his theories
a solid basis of fact. His definition of the State
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 1 29
as the social compact of all its members, who,
constituting what he calls the sovereign, annually
elect in their entirety the prince or executive
power, has become proverbial. This single axiom,
from which the correlative notions of the Rights
of Man — Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality — are
natural outcomes, became the lever which helped
to set the vast forces of the Revolution in motion,
as well as the lodestar of its reconstructive ten-
dencies. Rousseau's leading conception is, that
Might is not Right, and that although the power
of the strong may enable him to frame laws
which force the weak to obey him, the moment
the weak becomes strong enough to refuse he is
justified in doing so. Justice, and not expediency,
is the watchword of his political creed, — a creed
in striking contrast to Thomas Carlyle's equally
strenuous teaching that Might is Right. Certainly
we bred up in the Darwinian era ; we who have
felt the full significance of that modern Shibboleth,
u the struggle for existence ; " we who have ached
in dull despair at this grim law of life with which
Nature, " red in tooth and claw," proclaims that
Might is Right, — we cannot help smiling at
Rousseau's rose-colored visions of a primitive
state of Nature, wherein the leopard was supposed
to have lain down with the kid, and to which
society was exhorted to return. Yet though we
must admit many of his premises to be false and
9
130 MADAME ROLAND.
many of his arguments shallow, his conclusion is
nevertheless in harmony with the highest concep-
tion of justice, — justice which, like music, has
its origin in the soul of man only; the most
purely human of the virtues, and which is the
goal towards which society is slowly and painfully
working its way.
Another of Rousseau's axioms in the " Contrat
Social," — and one which must be noticed in
passing as connected with the land question,
now of such paramount interest, — is the asser-
tion that " the State, as regards its members, is
the master of all possessions by reason of the
social contract, which is the basis also of all their
rights. As a rule," he says, " to legalize the
rights of the first occupier of any lands, the fol-
lowing conditions are necessary : first, that this
land should never before have been occupied ;
secondly, that he should only occupy the amount
requisite for subsistence ; thirdly, that he should
take possession, not by a vain ceremony, but by
labor and cultivation, — sole indication of owner-
ship which, in default of legal titles, deserves the
recognition of others."
Unconnected with the Encyclopaedists and un-
noticed by Rousseau, there were two men who,
without exciting much attention, were then elabo-
rating a system of pure Socialism. Morellet, in
his " Code de la Nature," preached community
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 131
in property, capital, dwelling-houses, and all
requisite tools for labor; State education, and
the distribution of work among members of a
community according to their strength, and of
the means of subsistence according to their
wants. The government of the State was to be
modelled in all respects on that of the family,
whose members, though unequally endowed with
physical and mental strength, share the income
in common. Mably, a financier and man of the
world, deeply versed in affairs, adopted these
views with enthusiasm, in spite of their apparent
unpractical Utopianism.
The school of Economists and Physiocrats, as
they were called, had in some respects a more
immediate influence on the politics of the Revo-
lution. The main point of Quesnay, the head of
the school, seems to have been identical with
Mr. George's proposition, — "that all taxation
should be abolished, save a tax upon the value of
land." Turgot, in some respects a disciple of
Quesnay, succeeded in introducing during his
ministry (he became Controller-General in 1774,
after the accession of Louis XVI. to the throne)
some economic reforms into the French Admin-
istration, as well as in abolishing some of the
most scandalous abuses. He removed, among
other oppressive forms of taxation, that most in-
famous of all, the Corvfa ; he suppressed exclu-
132 MADAME ROLAND.
sive industrial corporations or trade-guilds, whose
restrictions and monopolies had been one of the
many fatal obstacles to the trade of the country.
This last reform was hailed in Paris with trans-
ports of delight. The working-men left their old
masters in crowds, and celebrated their emanci-
pation from the bondage of the trade-guilds.
After repealing some of the most pernicious laws
affecting the circulation of wine and corn in the
country, Turgot shifted some part of the imposts
on to the shoulders of the privileged classes.
These changes, and the prospect of still more
daring ones in contemplation, — such as the in-
troduction of a new territorial contribution, —
aroused the animosity of the rich and powerful.
Unfortunately, Turgot had failed to conciliate
the partisanship of the popular party by his op-
position to the convocation of the States-General,
which was then its unanimous cry. His position
having thus become precarious, Marie Antoinette
procured his dismissal, and would, if possible,
have had him locked up in the Bastile for no bet-
ter reason than that he had refused to bestow
certain pensions on some of her worthless favor-
ites. Had the nobles and clergy been gifted with
some portion of second sight, they would have
gone into mourning on that day in May, 1776,
the date of Turgot's fall ; as it was, they and
their opponents were equally jubilant. A few
FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 1 33
thoughtful minds deplored the event ; and among
others Marie Phlipon, then a girl of two-and-
twenty, wrote to her friend : " I have heard this
evening of the resignation of M. Turgot ; it vexed
and stunned me. One of his financial measures
has acted hurtfully on my father's affairs, and
therefore on mine also ; but it is not by private
interests that I judge him. He was so well
thought of, so much was expected of his exten-
sive views ! " From his retirement at Ferney
came Voltaire's cry, " I am as one dashed to the
ground ; never can we console ourselves for hav-
ing seen the golden age dawn and vanish. My
eyes see only death in front of me, now that Tur-
got is gone. The rest of my days must be all
bitterness."
Two years later, in 1778, both Voltaire and
Rousseau died within a few months of each
other; and the revolution which they had in-
augurated in the spirit took bodily form, and
entered on the stormy scene of action in the
volcanic Mirabeau, the noble Madame Roland,
the inexorable Robespierre.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN.
Let us return to Madame Roland, who from her
solitude in the Beaujolais followed with breath-
less interest the course of events, — the installa-
tion of Necker in Turgot's place ; the convocation
of the Notables ; the ineffectual efforts made to
extricate the nation from its desperate financial
position, — and who rejoiced not a little when the
Government, having exhausted all its resources,
felt driven at last to assemble the representa-
tives of the nation, or States-General, which had
not met since the year 1614. The winter of
1788-89 resounded with the noise and excite-
ment of these elections. France was in a fer-
ment, as if the assembly of those States would be
a cure for all the ills of the people.
The rapidity of events henceforth worked with
the inevitable momentum of elemental forces.
The elasticity of time was never so apparent
in history, — when days became equivalent to
months, months to years, years to centuries.
That the Court and nobility did not calmly view
these changes, that they tried their utmost to
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 135
retard them, may well be believed ; but their pres-
tige having once departed from them, they resem-
bled that magician who, having forfeited the
charm, could no longer lay the spirits he had
raised. For the French Guards in those memor-
able days disobeyed orders, broke open their
barracks, and marched through the capital cry-
ing, u Vive le Tiers Etat ! We are the soldiers
of the nation."
After this defection of the army, the Royalists
found nothing wiser to do than the dismissal and
exile of Necker. Lafayette's message to him
was: "If you are dismissed, thirty thousand
Parisians will bring you back to Versailles."
Round the news-shops, — whence poured a very
flood of papers and pamphlets, — in the cafes
and public places, crowds of men formed and
dispersed and formed again, who all at once
flashed into lightning-like action at the cry " To
arms ! to arms ! " uttered by the young Camille
Desmoulins, whom we might call the Gallic cock
of the Revolution. It was then that the people
in a sublime rage battered down the massive
doors of the Bastile, and with tears of joy gave
liberty to its prisoners ; it was then that the
National Assembly, kindling with the passion of
humanity, abolished in one night — the sacred
night of the 4th of August — the legalized
wrongs of centuries. " Let those titles be
136 MADAME ROLAND.
brought to us," cried one representative,*" which
are an outrage to delicacy, an insult to humanity,
— titles which force men to harness themselves
to carts like beasts of burden ! Let those char-
ters be brought to us in virtue of which men
have passed long nights in beating the pools, so
that their frogs might not trouble the slumbers
of a voluptuous seigneur ! " A torrent of gener-
ous emotion swept over the assembled deputies :
nobles, priests, dignitaries of the law and muni-
cipalities, all parties seemed carried away on that
irresistible current. The feudal system, with all
its iniquitous rights, was abolished in fewer hours
than it had lasted centuries.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man was the
first reconstructive act of the National Assembly,
which declared the following principles to be the
basis of the new government : —
Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in
rights. All sovereignty emanates from the nation, and
should be wielded for its welfare. The will of the people
makes the laws and enforces them by public authority.
The voting of taxes belongs to the nation as a whole. Il-
legal arrests and depositions without trial by jury are
abolished. All citizens, without distinction, are eligible for
public offices. The natural, civil, and religious liberty of
men, and their absolute independence of all authority save
that of the law, forbid any inquiries into their opinions,
speeches, and writings, as long as they do not disturb
order* or interfere with the rights of others.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 1 37
This Declaration of Rights was adopted on the
26th of August, and its principles were to be em-
bodied in the Constitution which it was the main
business of this Assembly to frame.
A combination of three men, by no means
united among themselves, dominated the Rev-
olution at this the first stage of its progress :
Necker — the popular minister, at one moment
idolized of the people, and within a few months
after his triumphal return to Paris forced to
leave it secretly with his wife, a disgraced and
heart-broken man; the chivalrous Lafayette —
who had won golden opinions by fighting in the
American War of Independence, made Comman-
der-General of the National Guards in 1789 ; and
Mirabeau — another Samson, to whose colossal
strength alone it seemed given to curb the un-
loosed forces of the Revolution. Unfortunately
he also had his vulnerable point, — the Delilah
who shore him of his strength being the Queen,
by whom he was bribed.
Under such guidance, while many startling yet
salutary changes, impossible to enumerate here,
were taking place in France ; while the pusillani-
mous nobles fled pell-mell across the frontiers ;
while the vacillating King, professing adhesion to
the Constitution, was secretly conspiring with for-
eign potentates, — Madame Roland was writing
to Bosc letters palpitating with hope, fear, and
138 MADAME ROLAND.
enthusiasm. " Who is the traitor," she cries,
" who at this moment minds any business but
that of the nation ? " In August, 1789, she says :
11 I believe that the honest Englishman is in the right,
and that we must have a small touch of civil war before we
are good for anything. All those little quarrels and insur-
rections of the people seem to me inevitable ; nor do I think
it possible to rise to liberty from the midst of corruption
without strong convulsions: they are the salutary crises of
a serious disease. We are in want of a terrible political
fever to carry off our foul humors. Go on and prosper then !
let our rights be declared ; let them be submitted to our
consideration ; and let the Constitution come afterwards ! "
And again, on the 4th of September, —
"Your kind letter brought us very bad news; we roared
on hearing it, and on reading the public papers. They are
going to patch us up a bad Constitution, in like manner as
they garbled our faulty and incomplete Declaration of Rights.
Shall I never, then, see a petition demanding the revision
of the whole ? Every day we see addresses of adhesion, and
other things of that sort, which bespeak our infancy and
confirm our shame. It behooves you Parisians to set the
example in everything; let a temperate but vigorous peti-
tion show to the Assembly that you know your rights, that
you are determined to preserve them, that you are ready
to defend them, and that you insist on their being acknowl-
edged. It is not at the Palais Royal that this should be
done, — the united districts ought to act; but if they are
not so inclined, it should be done by any set of men, pro-
vided they be in sufficient number to command respect and
to lead on others by their example. I preach to as many
oeoule as I can. A surgeon and a village curate have sub-
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 1 39
scribed for Brissot's journal, which we have taught them
to relish ; but our little country towns are too corrupt, and
our peasantry too ignorant. Villefranche overflows with
aristocrats^ people risen from the dust, which they think they
shake off by affecting the prejudice of another class. ..."
The question which was then agitating the
whole country was that of the Royal veto. By
giving back into the hands of the King the power
of negativing the decisions of the Assembly, the
nation seemed to abdicate the power of self-gov-
ernment which it had only just conquered. Fierce
and prolonged were the debates in the House ;
intense the excitement without. The districts
began to assemble, as Madame Roland had ad-
vised, and to present petitions to the Commune.
But while in the Assembly members were volu-
bly discussing the new Constitution, while the
Queen at the famous banquet to the Swiss and
other regiments attempted her one supreme effort
at fascination, other forces were at work, — forces
soon to become more potent than either Throne
or Assembly.
After the 14th of July, when the National
Guard had been levied in the different districts
of Paris, a reorganization also took place in the
municipalities of the capital. Each district elected
two members, so that the Town Council consisted
of one hundred and twenty members, who took
possession of the Hotel de Ville, under the name
140 MADAME ROLAND.
of Representatives of the Commune of Paris.
This Commune, destined to play so leading a
part in the future of the Revolution, gradually
increasing in number, came to be called " The
Council of the Three Hundred."
Although the reform of abuses went on steadily
enough, it was impossible to eradicate in a few
months the rooted evils of centuries. While the
new Constitution was being elaborated, the country,
badly-farmed as it was, did not grow more produc-
tive than of yore ; corn was as scarce, bread
remained dear, and trade was naturally more than
ever depressed. Madame Roland remarks in her
Memoirs how at Lyons twenty thousand artisans
had been in want of bread during the first winter
of the Revolution. In Paris, to which the needy,
the outcast, and the miserable gravitated as to a
common abyss, the muffled moan of the homeless
and hungry accompanied the deliberations of the
legislators.
Side by side with the noble efforts of brave and
earnest men, were also at work appetites and pas-
sions whose sinister power hurried on the men
who appeared to be guiding the State vessel. And
could it be otherwise, considering the previous
national conditions ? Could these men and women
who had so long borne the bitterest yoke, who
had been accustomed to the spectacle of the most
ferocious punishments, when suddenly untram-
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 141
melled, act with perfect clemency, moderation, or
humanity ? Had they, indeed, done so, it would
have gone far to prove that the evils of slavery
have been grossly exaggerated. So far, however,
from the excesses of the populace — at least, in
the first years of the Revolution — being a sur-
prise to us, it should more properly be a surprise
that, as a rule, they evinced as much good-feeling
and tolerance as they did !
Yes, feudal privileges had been abolished and
good laws passed, but the populace of Paris was
as hungry as before, — if possible, a good deal
hungrier ; and so it came to pass that a formida-
ble body of women marched to Versailles on that
memorable 5th of October, when they appeared
below the King's palace, and brought him, Marie
Antoinette, and the Dauphin triumphantly back
with them to Paris.
This spontaneous bringing back by the mob of
the Royal Family to the Tuileries, there to live
under their own eye, was probably due to the
growing suspicion of underhand plotting. But in
spite of rumors, alarms, and political panics, the
majority of the people of Paris, as well as of
the Representatives, were monarchical ; and had
the King given his sincere adhesion to the recon-
struction of the Government, there are many indi-
cations that the final crash of the Throne might
have been averted. If we are to believe Camille
142 MADAME ROLAND.
Desmoulins, there were not a score of Repub-
licans in France at the first meeting of the
States-General. However, it seems useless to
speculate on the might-have-beens of history.
Madame Roland herself never entertained any
illusions. Very early she perceived the inter-
ests of the Royalist and popular party to be dia-
metrically opposed to each other, and in the
summer of 1789 she wrote with her unflinching
judgment : —
" You busy yourselves about a municipality and you
suffer heads to escape which are about to conjure up new
horrors. You are nothing but children ; your enthusiasm
is a momentary blaze ; and if the National Assembly do
not bring two illustrious heads to a formal trial, or if some
generous Decrees do not strike them off, you will all go
to the Devil together."
If there is a fierce ring in these words, she, on
another occasion, says : " I weep over the blood
that has been spilt ; one cannot be too chary of
that of human beings." But, terrified at the dan-
gers which menace the new-born freedom of her
country, she adds the warning: "The philosopher
shuts his eyes to the errors or weaknesses of pri-
vate men ; but even to his father he should show
no mercy where the public weal is at stake."
The burning missives addressed by Madame
Roland to Bosc and other political friends were
widely circulated ; the greater portion of them,
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 143
without the author's name, found their way into
the public press. They chiefly appeared in the
" Patriote Francais," edited by Brissot, then one of
the leading members of the Commune of Paris.
As yet personally unacquainted with the Rolands,
he had, attracted by the articles in the " New
Encyclopaedia," been for some time in correspon-
dence with them.
Brissot de Warville — afterwards the leader of
the Girondins — was born at Chartres in 1754.
A disciple of Plutarch and Rousseau, he had
gravitated to Paris, and by a strange coincidence
had been fellow-clerk with Robespierre in a
notary's office. A rapid and discursive writer,
who could dash off a political treatise as others
would a letter, he was preoccupied from the be-
ginning of his career with questions of public
interest, to the detriment of his own. Perpetually
flitting from France to Switzerland, from Switzer-
land to England, from England to America, he
had had better opportunities than most of the
French patriots of studying the workings of differ-
ent systems of government, so as to be able to
institute a comparison between them. " The
English Constitution, which I had studied on
the spot," says Brissot in his Memoirs, " seemed
to me, in spite of its defects, well adapted to
serve as a model to societies desirous of changing
their system." Republican at heart, Brissot was
144 MADAME ROLAND.
no advocate for the Republic in the early days of
the Revolution ; for he believed in a gradual
transition from the old order to the new, and
wished that on its completion the Constitution
should be given a fair trial by the nation.
Madame Roland, who first made his personal
acquaintance in the winter of 1791, hits off his
character in these telling lines: "He knew man
but not men ; was meant to live with sages, and
to be the dupe of rogues." Such a dupe he had
time after time been made, as, for example, during
his literary connection with such vile offscourings
of journalism as Morande, Lointon, and Latour,
the editor of the "Courrier de 1' Europe." This
facility of being hoodwinked by designing men
afterwards furnished a fatal instrument of attack
to his political opponents. " What a pleasant
intriguer is that man," says Madame Roland,
" who never considers himself nor his family,
who is as incapable as he is averse to occupy
himself with his private interests, and who is no
more ashamed of poverty than afraid of death."
This disinterestedness of character kept him in
a state of chronic impecuniosity, in spite of his
great facility as a writer. Brissot composed
whole chapters of those works hurled like thunder-
bolts from the Jove-like hand of Mirabeau ; he
attempted to form an International College in
London, with the object of establishing a bond
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 145
of union between the literary and scientific men
of Europe, and in such works as the " Theory of
Criminal Laws " he advocated the mitigation of
punishments ; but never did he reap any reward
from his many well-intentioned efforts. One re-
ward only, and that worthy his humane character,
was awarded him. Into his hands, to his immor-
tal honor be it said, the people gave the keys of
the Bastile. Thenceforth Brissot's best energies
were spent in disseminating his political principles
through the " Patriote Francais."
In the mean time signs and portents did not
bode speedy subsidence of the high-wrought
waves of political passion. The French people
resembled a captive, who, after languishing a life-
time in the clammy darkness of a dungeon, is
too suddenly liberated, and dazed with the pleni-
tude of light and air, staggers as one intoxicated.
Violent reprisals for the past, conspiracies and
rumors of conspiracies, pangs of hunger and
want, drove the artisans in towns, the peasants
in the country, to deeds of arson and bloodshed.
Woe to the Seigneurs who had so unmercifully
drained the tillers of the soil ; woe to the Tax-
farmers who had sent the laborers to the galley
and to the hangman for defrauding the revenue
of some pennyworths of salt ; woe to the Reg-ra-
ters who had greedily stored up vast quantities of
grain to sell it at famine prices to the starving
10
146 MADAME ROLAND.
poor ! The hour of retribution had struck. In
the livid smoke of burning chateaux and flaming
mansions, the Eumenides seemed to pursue the
territorial lords as they fled in disguise across
the frontier from an infuriated peasantry.
The moderate Constitutionalists, shocked at
these excesses, concocted a new martial law,
which they hoped would serve as a dyke where-
with to stem the steadily-rising tide of the Revo-
lution, — as vainly, however, as he who should
bid the roaring sea turn its flow.
CHAPTER X.
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF.
The year 1790 brought with it a promise of con-
ciliation and concord. Not in France only were
the best natures full of faith in the future, but
all over Europe the hearts of men turned with
yearning expectation towards the land where
mankind seemed taking a fresh start in its de-
velopment. In England, above all, the sympathy
with the French people was widely diffused.
The same generous enthusiasm prevailed which
blazed forth in i860 on the liberation of Italy by
Garibaldi. Something deeper still, for, as Words-
worth wrote, —
u Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven ! Oh times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in Romance !"
Wordsworth, in those days drawn across the
Channel, nourished such glorious visions of the
coming change that the reaction from them over-
clouded his mind for years, and threw him — as,
148 MADAME ROLAND.
indeed, it did half that generation — into the op-
posite ranks of reaction. Coleridge, the future
leader of nineteenth-century Toryism, dreamed
of establishing a Pantisocracy on the banks of
the Susquehannah ; Godwin, not yet " fallen on
evil days," incorporated the principles of the
Revolution in his " Political Justice." Fox hailed
the storming of the Bastile by the Parisians as
the greatest event in history. If such were the
feelings of Englishmen, what was the thrill of
expectation in those countries adjoining France,
still sorely pressed down by the shackles of
Feudalism !
In France itself, where all artificial barriers
obstructing the free intercourse of province with
province had been abolished ; where the taxes
had been equitably distributed ; where the di-
vision of the kingdom into districts was the basis
of a system of electoral franchise approximately
proportioned to population ; where the suppres-
sion of monasteries, the sale of Church property,
and the abolition of feudal rents not only threw
an enormous quantity of land into the market, but
by relieving the small proprietors from the pres-
sure of innumerable trammels infused the vigor
of a new life into agriculture, — in France itself,
in spite of the vindictive plotting of emigrants
and the smouldering rage of the clergy, there
was a buoyant hope that the Constitution once
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 149
established, the regeneration of the country
might be peaceably consummated. Had not the
King unexpectedly gone to the Assembly, ex-
pressed adhesion to the new Constitution, ex-
horted them all to follow his example, taken
the civic oath ; and was not all France likewise
about to swear it in a rapture of enthusiasm ?
And now in this spring of 1790 a spontaneous
movement, originating in the heart of the people
itself, swept the surface of national life with its
quickening vernal breath. The conception of no
single mind nor the watchword of a party, the
sense of this common national revival imparted
the same impulse to the inhabitants of distant
provinces. To consecrate the bond of brotherly
union, to seal their fidelity to the new Order, to
vow mutual assistance in danger or distress, was
the motive of these fraternal Feasts, which sent
forth holiday-making crowds on joyful pilgrimages
to the altars of the Federation. From Brest to
Bordeaux, along the heaths of desolate Brittany
and through the rich Norman pastures, over the
rolling hills and mountainous fastnesses of pictu-
resque Limousin, by the sounding shores of the
Bay of Biscay, amid the orange-scented groves of
Provence, the people were marching, with wav-
ing banners, to the strains of the Ca Ira, and
converging to centres of meeting in the provin-
cial capitals.
150 MADAME ROLAND.
Before the sunrise of May 30, in the dewy
freshness of morning, patriotic crowds were pour-
ing through the gates of Lyons. As many as
fifty or sixty thousand Federates, and two hun-
dred thousand people in all, took their way
through the plain bordering the shores of the
blue winding Rhone, towards the Altar of Con-
cord, where a colossal statue of Liberty rose
through the silvery morning mists. Amid that
moving throng of men with their waving flags,
of women and girls festively clad, bearing palm-
branches and crowned with flowers, there went
one, radiant and resolute, stepping out like a
goddess of old, herself in her immaculate strength
and purity the living realization of the liberty
they adored. We know her, walking there by
the side of the austere Roland, surrounded by a
small group of friends ; but the Revolution knew
her not as yet, the highest of its heroic hearts.
It knew her not, though already it received her
soul into its own in that stirring narrative of the
new Covenant, which, anonymously written by
her, appeared in the u Courrier de Lyons," edited
by her friend Champagneux, and of which no less
than sixty thousand copies were sold on that
occasion. In the letters and manifestoes de-
spatched from all parts of the country to the
National Assembly, the spirit which animated
these festivities shows itself as a recognition of
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 151
the natural authority belonging to old age, par-
ticipation of women in the national life, adoption
of the new-born by the Communes in the name
of France, renunciation of religious hatreds at
the foot of the Cross. The most impressive of
all those Feasts of the Federation was that cele-
brated in Paris itself on the 14th of July, 1790,
the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile.
The great bond of fellowship in the cause of
liberty was nowhere more deeply felt than by the
Rolands. They devoted themselves to the propa-
gation of the new ideas, and conceived the plan
of an association of a few friends who should live
together, and make every effort to enlighten the
people as to the changes which had already taken
place and those that it was imperatively necessary
to accomplish. Two of them, Lanthenas and
Bancal des Issarts, intended joining the Rolands
by putting their funds in common, and buying
some of the national property that was then sell-
ing for comparatively a mere trifle. Lanthenas,
an amiable young doctor, whose acquaintance
Roland had made in Italy, was deeply attached to
Madame Roland, whose lead he followed in all
things ; embodying her ideas in newspaper arti-
cles, in public speeches, and by every other
means he could devise. His devotion, no doubt,
made her more partial to him than she would
otherwise have been ; and it is painful to reflect
152 MADAME ROLAND.
that the man whom she often honored with the
name of brother was the only one who proved
untrue to her in adversity. He had been quite
contented with her friendship as long as no one
else was more favored than himself ; but when,
some years later, he discovered that others were
preferred, he not only turned against her, but
against her whole party. In so doing poor Lan-
thenas saved himself from sharing the fate of
his Girondin friends ; but at what a price ! His
name having been included in the list of the pro-
scribed was struck out by Marat, who declared
him to be a mean-spirited creature (pauvre d'cs-
frit). Lanthenas had once written, u When the
people are ripe for liberty a nation is always
worthy of it." This foolish phrase turned out
clever enough, for it saved his neck eventually.
But Lanthenas, if not over-wise, was one of those
useful men who can serve a cause well by their
zeal and activity on its behalf. Bancal des
Issarts, a man of strong, resolute character, had
thrown up his profession of notary in order to
devote himself more completely to the political
questions of the day. In 1789 he had been
chosen elector of Clermont-Ferrand, and in the
summer of 1790 became acquainted with the
Rolands, when he passed a few days with them
at the Clos de la Platicre.
Similarity of interests and tastes suggested the
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 153
plan of their all living together, and in view of
the contemplated association Madame Roland ad-
dressed the following prudent remarks to Bancal :
" For the happiness of an establishment in common,
either in the country or elsewhere, it is not necessary to
find perfect men, — that would be seeking chimerical con-
ditions ; but it is as necessary to know each other well as
it is indispensable that we should tolerate each other.
Every situation has its inconveniences as well as its ad-
vantages and duties. In seeking the many benefits of an
association, we must not disguise from ourselves that we
incur obligations in return, and will need virtues which
may be more easily dispensed with in solitude."
Roland himself had no misgivings as to the
perfect feasibility of the scheme. Bancal, having
paid his friends another visit in the autumn of
that year, received from him the following hearty
letter, which not only gives one the highest idea
of Roland's character, but also of that of his
friends. It is a glimpse into an ideal kind of life.
Roland asks : —
" What better can you do than join us ? We should put
our lives in common, and multiply our pleasures, inasmuch
as there are more of us to enjoy them. You know our
plain, outspoken ways, and one does not, at my age, alter
when one has never changed. We talk every day of the
approaching meeting, and the Church property at Ville-
franche offers us an excellent opportunity, it being now on
sale to the amount of two or three hundred thousand livres ;
nor need we despair of finding a house. Perhaps we are
building castles in the air about it all; but what a pleasant
154 MADAME ROLAND.
prospect ! We will preach patriotism and enlarge people's
ideas ; the doctor shall carry on his profession ; my wife
will be the apothecary of the canton ; you and I must have
an eye to financial matters ; and we will all join in exhort-
ing people to union and concord. In doing all this in com-
mon, we shall nevertheless enjoy complete individual freedom,
convinced that in order to inculcate the love of liberty one
must be free oneself, and that we should not be so if we en-
tered into an engagement we could not break if necessary."
Nothing seemed wanting now to prevent this
pleasant scheme from being carried out. Yet
something had happened during this last visit of
Bancal to the Clos which had entirely altered the
aspect of things. It seems pretty clear that the
latter — judging from hints and allusions in their
correspondence — had conceived too warm an ad-
miration for Roland's wife, and seeing the disparity
of age between her and her husband had, with
the bias natural to a Frenchman, indulged in the
hope of finding his attachment reciprocated. It
seems equally clear that Madame Roland, although
shocked at the discovery, could not help feeling
flattered, nor avoid a certain compassionate ten-
derness for the man she was now forced to bid
renounce all idea of fixing himself in her neighbor-
hood. This, at least, seems to be the key to the
letter she now addressed to Bancal after her hus-
band's invitation : —
" It would make the charm of our lives (this association),
and we should not be useless to our fellow-men. Yet this
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 1 55
comfortable text has not put me at my ease! ... I am
not convinced it would be for your happiness, and I should
never forgive myself for having troubled it. For it has
seemed to me that you were inclined to some extent to
make it depend on things which seem wrong to me, and
to nurse hopes which I must forbid. No doubt the affec-
tion which unites sincere and sensitive natures who share
a common enthusiasm for what is right must give a new
value to existence ; no doubt the virtues which such an affec-
tion may help to develop might turn to the profit of society.
. . . But who can foresee the effect of violent agitations
too frequently renewed ? . . . I mistake ; you might some-
times be saddened, but you could never be weak. ... It
is the natural impetuosity of your sex and the activity of
an ardent imagination that give rise to these slight errors
which resemble the illusion of dreams."
The letter continues in this strain, and ends
with the suggestive remark that the beautiful
days which they have passed together at the Clos
have not been followed by others ; for since Bancal
has left, she says, the thunder has never ceased
to growl, its mutterings being ingeniously turned
into a symbol of her inner life, as she concludes :
" More thunder ! How I like the grand and som-
bre color given by it to the landscape ; but were
it terrible instead, I should not fear it."
Bancal des Issarts, at any rate, never went to
live with the Rolands, but put the sea between
them by going to England, where he remained
for a considerable period, to study, it was said, its
political institutions. The correspondence in the
156 MADAME ROLAND.
mean while was carried on briskly enough, and is
the chief storehouse of materials for Madame
Roland's life from the end of 1790 to March, 1792,
when her husband entered the Ministry. It gradu-
ally became more political in character, and two
years from the date of their parting Bancal con-
fided to Madame Roland his passion for a Miss
W , whom M. Dauban, from several indica-
tions, ingeniously guesses to have been Miss
Maria Williams, who then resided in Paris, and
mentions Bancal in her " Recollections of the
French Revolution." Madame Roland, of whom
this lady speaks with profound admiration, did
everything in her power to advance her friend's
suit with Miss W ; but apparently to little
purpose, for they never married.
Madame Roland's letters to Bancal in England
form a running commentary on the political oscil-
lations, the intrigues of the Court, the manoeuvres
of the Constitutional party, and the passionate ea-
gerness of the patriots to establish firmly the con-
quests of the Revolution. Among other things, we
hear that the Declaration of the Rights of Man
was printed on pocket-handkerchiefs and distribu-
ted by thousands ; that Roland, who was a first-rate
pedestrian, used to go for long excursions with his
friend Lanthenas, distributing little sheets and pam-
phlets to every one they met by the wayside, and
to the people in cottages and country rnns.
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 1 57
On the reform of the municipal bodies all over
France, the honest and patriotic Roland had
been one of the first to be sent to the Hotel de
Ville of Lyons. By his whole previous training
and wide experience of affairs, he seemed emi-
nently fitted for practical politics. When Arthur
Young, passing through Lyons at the end of
1789, sought information concerning its silk
manufactures, the one man every one told him to
go to was Roland de la Platiere. This gentle-
man he consequently met, and derived so much
useful information from him that he found he
had not visited Lyons in vain. " We had a great
deal of conversation," he says, "on agriculture,
manufactures, and commerce ; and differed but
little in our opinions, except on the treaty of
commerce between England and France," —
adding, what is more interesting to us, "This
gentleman, somewhat advanced in life, has a
young and beautiful wife, — the lady to whom he
addressed his letters written in Italy."
The debt of Lyons, whose finances were in as
deplorable a condition as those of the rest of the
kingdom, amounted to nothing less than forty
millions of francs. As the silk factories had suf-
fered much during the first year of the Revolu-
tion, it became necessary to solicit assistance ;
and, as was natural, the ablest citizen of Lyons
was sent as extraordinary deputy to the National
158 MADAME ROLAND.
Assembly to make it acquainted with this state
of affairs. So Roland and his wife left for Paris,
where, on the 20th of February, 1791, they in-
stalled themselves in the appartcDicnt of an unpre-
tending house in the Rue Guenegaud, near the
Pont Neuf.
No sooner had Madame Roland set foot in her
native city than she " ran to the sittings of the
Assembly." Keenly, we may believe, did she
scrutinize its members. She says : —
11 1 saw the powerful Mirabeau, the astonishing Cazalds,
the bold Maury, the astute Lameths, and the little Bar-
nave, with his little voice and little reasons, cold as a lemon
fricasseed in snow, to use the pleasing expression of a
woman of another century. I observed with annoyance
on the side of the Blacks that species of superiority which
in public assemblies belongs to men accustomed to per-
sonal display, to purity of language, and to distinguished
manners. Nevertheless, the logic of reason, the daring
of honest worth, the enlightenment of philosophy, the fruits
of study, and the readiness acquired at the Bar must have
assured the victory to the patriots of the Left, if they were
all incorruptible and could remain united."
Could remain united ! ay, there was the stum-
bling-block.
The Right, or Blacks, — so called because the
emigrant princes and nobles wore black, — then
represented the party of the Moderates, who so
far from wishing to move another step in the
direction of progress were only anxious to stop
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 1 59
still, or, if possible, to retrograde gently. In the
Left there were (as yet indiscriminately mingled)
men destined in the lapse of one short year to
become mortal enemies. Among those signal-
ized by Madame Roland was left out one who,
destined to be borne higher than any on the
revolutionary tide, sat as yet inconspicuously on
the back benches of the Assembly. Robespierre
belonged to that small section of the extreme
Left at whom the Jupiter Tonans of the Con-
stituent Assembly once hurled his admonition of
" Silence ! you thirty votes ! " But Mirabeau
had scanned that impassive figure, — cadaverous
in its pallor, sternly pressing forward in one
straight line, deviating neither to the right nor
left, — and had uttered the memorable words :
"That man will go far, for he believes every
word he says."
Now began the potent influence which Madame
Roland exercised on the Revolution. She was
no sooner settled on the third floor of the Rue
Guenegaud, than her house became the centre
of a most advanced political group. Dominant
female figure of her time though she was, 1791
was the year in which women played the most
marked part in the Revolution. The philosophical
disquisitions of the salons had not yet been over-
borne by the martial enthusiasm of 1792 and the
gathering Terror of 1793. The social life of Paris
160 MADAME ROLAND.
was still in its fullest bloom, though the salons of
1 79 1 differed entirely from those famous gather-
ings presided over by such female wits as Madame
du Deffand and Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse;
sparkling literary anecdote and philosophical spec-
ulations had been superseded by political and so-
cial questions. Each shade of opinion had its
appropriate meeting-place. Royalism was repre-
sented in the splendid mansion of the Princesse
de Lamballe. The focus of the Constitutionalists
was at the saloji of the youthful Madame de Stael,
already in her twenty-fifth year a leading political
power. The philosophy of the Revolution found
its highest expression in the group that gathered
round the lovely and lovable Madame de Con-
dorcet, who had so sincerely given her heart to
the great movement that she was able to incite
her husband to the composition of his noblest
work, while he was daily expecting to be dragged
to execution. Then there was the Cercle Social
at which ultra-revolutionary and social theories
were chiefly discussed; it was attended by an
enthusiastic crowd of men and women, and among
them was a Dutch lady, a Madame Palm-Aelder,
who claimed political equality for her sex, — a
claim worthy to be made of the Revolution, and
which the fervid and excitable Olympe de Gouges,
who always sided with the weaker party, seconded
by those telling words : " Women have surely the
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. l6l
right to ascend the platform, since they have
that of mounting the scaffold."
Above these varied figures Madame Roland
towered, representing, as she did, the pure Re-
publican ideal. Coming from the country, where
her great powers had lain dormant so long, —
coming with the bloom of her enthusiasm still
fresh upon her, with energies unblunted, and a
heart whose capacity for emotion had but grown
by long self-suppression, — she now scanned with
keenest attention the various actors in the thrill-
ing political tragedy whose heroine she was des-
tined to become. Her scrutiny disappointed her.
Too critical to cheat herself with illusions, she
nowhere discovered the man at once great and
disinterested enough to regulate the terrible
clash of class with class, and to evolve a fresh
order from the threatening chaos.
The little gatherings at Madame Roland's
apartment were far too modest to bear any like-
ness to a salon. Four times a week a small knot
of men used to meet there to discuss and concert
measures in connection with the political ques-
tions of the day. The fair hostess herself sat at
a little table apart, engaged in needle-work, or
else busy with her voluminous correspondence.
If we are to take her word for it, she never joined
in these discussions, — but neither, in spite of
her other avocations, ever lost a syllable of what
1 62 MADAME ROLAND
passed. If she had not the faculty of being in
two places at once, she must certainly have had
some of Caesar's genius for doing more than
one thing at a time. And as she listened
to this interminable talk, leading apparently to
no practical results, her impatience often be-
came such that she was forced to bite her lips to
avoid bursting into speech, and sometimes only
refrained with difficulty from boxing the philoso-
phers' ears.
Among the men who most assiduously attended
these gatherings was Brissot, whom Madame
Roland now first saw face to face. His appear-
ance and manners harmonized perfectly with the
idea she had formed of him from his writings,
although it struck her " that a certain volatility of
mind and character did not entirely become the
gravity of philosophy." Thither also came placid,
ruddy-faced Petion, honesty personified, erelong
to be made the idolized mayor of Paris, and not
long after to become the fugitive outlaw hiding
his prematurely white head from pursuit. He
was usually accompanied by his fellow-townsman
Robespierre, ever scrupulously neat, with his pow-
dered hair, the striped olive-green coat enhancing
his bilious pallor, saying little, but drinking in
everything that was said, and breaking now and
then into his wintry smile. Madame Roland no-
ticed that at the Jacobin Club Robespierre would
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 163
often make use as his own of the arguments and
ideas he had heard overnight ; but she excused it
as arising from the conceit of youth, and occa-
sionally teased him about it. Petion and Robes-
pierre, both members of the Constituante, had
always belonged to the most advanced party in
the Assembly, and on its dissolution they were
triumphantly carried off on the shoulders of the
people. Buzot, elected at Evreux, where he was
born in 1760, also belonged to that small minority
of the "thirty votes." Of all the men Madame
Roland came in contact with, he was destined to
exercise the greatest influence on her future life.
Mirabeau had passed away in April, and with
him the massive pillar that had helped to prop
the monarchy. Mirabeau's advice to the King
had been to escape from Paris, — advice followed
by the Royal Family on the 20th of June, when
they secretly escaped from the Tuileries, and di-
rected their flight to the north-eastern frontier,
where the Marquis de Bouille, from his head-
quarters at Metz, was to have come to the rescue
of the King. The world is familiar with the
story of this thrilling flight ; with the trivialities
which, delaying it by an hour or so, rendered the
well-concerted scheme abortive ; with the recog-
nition of Louis XVI. 's transparent disguise by
Postmaster Drouet ; with the latter's headlong
nocturnal ride, and arrival at Varennes before the
164 MADAME ROLAND.
lumbering royal berline, which he successfully
stopped under the gloomy gateway of that town ;
the seizure of the Royal party and their convey-
ance back to Paris by national guards, with the
two deputies, Barnave and Petion, sent to protect
them from the fury of the mob : this anomalous
procession moving along the sweltering highways,
past the ever-renewing throngs of people with
angry, menacing faces, — faces stamped with the
degradation of centuries, whose inherited hatred
flashed in deadly looks from innumerable eyes,
stabbing the King's soul with thrusts more terri-
ble than are dealt the body with weapons of
steel.
This progress through an inimical people by a
sovereign who had violated his oath was in reality
that King's dcchcance, or, more truly, his moral
decapitation. It was impossible that Louis XVI.
could recover a shred of authority after so signal
a collapse, — although one cannot help wishing
that he had made good his escape across the
Rhine. Madame Roland and Brissot hoped for
nothing better. On the 22d of June she wrote
to Bancal : " The King and his family are gone ;
it is far from a misfortune, if we act with good
sense, energy, and union. The mass of the peo-
ple in the capital feel this, for the mass is sound
and has accurate perceptions ; so much so that
yesterday the indignation against Louis XVI.,
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 1 65
the hatred of kings, and the word Republic,
might be heard on all sides." Madame Roland
in writing to Bancal says that to replace the
King on the throne would be sheer folly and ab-
surdity ; that now is the time to amend the
errors of the Constitution ; that they could never
elect Monsieur, d'Artois, Conde, or the vicious
and despised Orleans as Regent ; that the King
should be deposed and detained in safe keeping,
the people indicted who assisted in his flight;
and that in order to insure the regular working
of the Executive power, a national President
should be temporarily elected.
Her life-long aspiration after the Republic
seemed about to be fulfilled. She and her
friends were ardently looking forward to its es-
tablishment. The people now began loudly
clamoring for the deche'ance, or deposition. It
was proposed that a petition to that effect should
be drawn up, signed by thousands on the Champs
de Mars, and sent up to the Assembly. It was
from the Jacobin Club that the cry for the de'che'-
aiice rose most unanimously. Strange, impres-
sive sight this, of a club of Revolutionists holding
their debates in the church of a former Jacobin
monastery, whence this new order of a Church
Militant took its name. On the 13th of July a
promiscuous crowd from the Palais Royal and
other centres of agitation was closely packed in
1 66 MADAME ROLAND.
the sombre, ill-lighted vault, where pre-eminent
among tombs of buried monks, was a monument
to Campanella, the great sixteenth-century apos-
tle of religious liberty, whose spiritual presence
there was a kind of consecration. Brissot
seemed to grow with the moment, and in a mem-
orable burst of eloquence carried the whole as-
sembly with him.
Brissot, without absolutely attacking the mo-
narchical principle, insisted on the necessity of the
Kings deposition, and ended by reassuring pub-
lic opinion on the dangers which threatened
France from without by a luminous exposition of
the critical state of Europe. Madame Roland,
who was present, describes the solemnity of this
meeting, " when they all, with inexpressible en-
thusiasm — kneeling on the ground and with
drawn swords — renewed their oaths to live free
or to die." And describing Brissot's extraordi-
nary success, she exclaims : " At last I have seen
the fire of liberty lit in my country ; it cannot be
quenched again. ... I shall end my days when
it pleases Nature. My last breath will still be a
sigh of joy and hope for the generations to suc-
ceed us."
The outcome of this meeting was a monster
petition to demand the dcchcance, to be signed at
the Champs de Mars on the following Sunday.
Vs j Ss In the brilliant sunshine of the 17th of July
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 1 67
crowds of holiday-makers began to collect; and
Madame Roland, who went there herself in the
morning, bears witness to the peaceable demeanor
of the citizens prepared to sign the petition.
But a dreadful change soon came over the spirit
of the scene. Two mysterious individuals dis-
covered in hiding under the hollow structure of
the Altar of the Federation gave rise to suspi-
cions of the most ominous kind in the minds of
the populace, and seeing they refused to confess
what had brought them there, they were struck
down by some infuriated patriots, or, as others
suspected, by villains set on for the purpose of
bringing about a massacre. For this murder,
the rumor that Lafayette had been wounded, and
some stones thrown at the National Guards, suf-
ficed for the unfurling of the Drapeau Rouge
and the proclamation of martial law. Before the
people — most of them armed with nothing more
deadly than walking-sticks and parasols — real-
ized the situation, a frightful detonation of artil-
lery struck down men, women, and children, till
Lafayette, at his life's peril, spurred his white
horse right in front of the cannon's mouth to
stop the indiscriminate slaughter. That altar
where only one short year before citizens had
sworn concord and fraternity, was now stained
with blood, some hundreds, at least, of harmless
people having perished on the spot.
168 MADAME ROLAND.
The Massacre of the Champs de Mars fell like
a blight on Madame Roland's heart. She fal-
tered, fell ill, and lost hope for a time. " Mourn-
ing *and death are within our walls," was her cry.
11 But let us keep the fire of liberty alive, and
transmit it in its purity to a happier generation,
if our continued efforts are not able to ensure its
success in our day." In the same spirit she
wrote in August,—
" Fate, by giving us life at the period of new-born lib-
erty, has assigned us the place of the forlorn hope of an
army, bound to fight and prepare its victory. It behoves
us to do our task well, and so prepare the happiness of fu-
ture generations. For the rest, we find our own in such a
glorious task. If one must struggle, is it not better to do
so for the felicity of a whole nation than on one's own ac-
count ? What, indeed, is the life of the sage under pres-
ent conditions but a perpetual struggle with passions and
prejudices ? "
Numbers of the Republican addresses sent to
the Assembly from the country were in reality
composed under Madame Roland's inspiration at
Paris. She was equally indefatigable in penning
stirring missives to the Jacobin societies in the
departments, — offshoots of the Society Mkre.
How necessary it was to keep the Provinces in-
formed of the current events and opinions in
Paris we learn from Arthur Young, who, passing
through some of the chief provincial towns at
such a crisis, says he might almost as soon have
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 169
asked for a white elephant as for a newspaper,
even at the most frequented cafes.
A coup d'etat of the Constitutionalists seemed
imminent and the days of the Jacobin Club to be
numbered, as a detachment of soldiers, marching
through the Rue St. Honore, threatened to de-
molish the building, throwing the patriots therein
assembled into fear and confusion. So great was
the panic, that one excitable member of the
stronger sex jumped into the ladies' gallery, and
was put to shame by Madame Roland, who
"obliged him to make his exit after the fashion of
his entrance." Soldiers placed to guard the en-
trance stopped patriots from entering, although
those within were suffered to leave unmolested.
Fearless on her own account, although full of ap-
prehension for her friends, Madame Roland was
one of the last to make her way out.
The arrest of the chiefs of the party being ex-
pected from moment to moment, she and her
husband went out late on that evening — when
all peaceable citizens were only too thankful to
be safe within doors — with the intention of offer-
ing Robespierre a refuge in their own house.
The way to the distant Marais was long and
dark, the day had been crammed full of horror
and danger, yet this noble woman's chief preoc-
cupation was to place Robespierre in security.
Arrived in the desolate quarter, they found that
170 MADAME ROLAND.
Robespierre had not returned to his lodging, —
nor did he ever return to it. After leaving the
Club, as he was walking down the noisy Rue St.
Honore, with groups of people hissing, others
applauding, some one suddenly seized him by the
hand, pulled him into a house, and shut the door
after him. This was Duplay, a thriving cabinet-
maker, faithfullest of Robespierre's partisans;
nor would the notable Madame Duplay, having
once secured such a rare guest, suffer him to de-
part again. In the mean time, Madame Roland,
more anxious than ever concerning the fate of
her mysteriously vanished friend, proceeded
towards midnight to Buzot's residence, with the
intention of persuading him to join the Club of
Feuillans, so as to be able to warn and assist his
friends in case of persecution. The Feuillans,
who had seceded from the Jacobins, now formed
the nucleus of the Moderate Royalist Party, of
which the Lameths, Duport and Barnave, " sub-
jugated by the smile of a captive queen," were
the latest representatives. Madame Roland,
tremulous with generous excitement, urged Buzot
to defend Robespierre at the Feuillans, so as to
ward off the apprehended Act of Accusation,
which she feared the Assembly would ratify with-
out hesitation. Buzot, although he refused to
comply with her request, promised to defend
Robespierre in the Assembly if necessary.
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF. 171
In spite of the prevalent expectation, the As-
sembly did not follow up its "one fell blow" with
the decisive measures which might have nipped
the rapidly-growing influence of the Jacobins, the
Cordeliers, and the Fraternal Societies. Instead
of closing the clubs, arresting the leaders, sup-
pressing the most violent journals, it deliberated,
discussed, delayed, and so lost its final oppor-
tunity, — for the time of its dissolution was fast
approaching. Countless addresses, too, arrived
from the country, protesting against the Royal-
ist proclivities of their representatives. One of
them, addressed to the Chamber and brought in
person by Bancal des Issarts, was evidently due
to the impulse of the woman who possessed the
secret of communicating her own fiery energy to
her friends. This address, in which the electors
of Clermont accused the Deputies of having
twice disappointed the hopes of the nation by
the adjournment of the elections and deferring
the completion of the Constitution, and in which
it was further stated that if a term were not fixed
within the fortnight steps would be takeii regard-
less of the Assembly, was not admitted before the
bar of the Chamber. Bancal had hurried up to
Paris with the address, in spite of a dissuasive let-
ter from Madame Roland, who in the deepest de-
pression at the massacre had written all was over,
and that it was useless for him to come to Paris.
172 MADAME ROLAND.
Soon after these distressing events, Roland,
having satisfactorily accomplished the mission
with which he had been intrusted, left the capital,
and his wife could now again cultivate her let-
tuces and superintend the vintage at the Clos de la
Platiere. But the fever of the Revolution burned
in her veins, the thirst for action consumed her,
and having once taken her share in that stimu-
lating, all-absorbing centre of political action, she
bitterly lamented sinking back into the nothing-
ness of provincial life, and never again found re-
pose in the green fields and shady thickets once
so dear to her.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION.
The days of the National Assembly had drawn
to a close. Its members, who had come in with
the audacity of lions, went out with the meek-
ness of lambs. The sublime moments of the
yeu de Paume and of the 4th of August had
already receded into the past. Twenty-eight
months of legislative labors, accomplished at
Revolution speed, had more completely used up
these men than years of ordinary political ac-
tivity. From being the vanguard of the popular
movement they had fallen into its rear. "You
reason like the end of a legislature " had become
a proverbial expression of contempt. One of
the last acts of the old Assembly — the Con-
stituent as distinguished from its successor, the
Legislative — was to disqualify itself by passing a
resolution that none of its members were eligible
for the next Parliament. This motion, proposed
by Robespierre, was calculated, as it proved, to
handicap effectually the moderate party ; and the
new elections showed that the nation wished for
a more radical policy.
174 MADAME ROLAND.
The Convention of Pilnitz took place in Au-
gust. The Emperor of Austria, the King of
Prussia, the minor German potentates, and the
emigrant princes were concocting measures
against the French people, who since the King's
unsuccessful flight had kept him in semi-durance
at the Tuileries. However, since the completion
of the Constitution and its acceptance by Louis
XVI., there was a fresh upflickering of royalty ;
but the conspiracies with the foreigner, and the
bribery, or attempted bribery, of public men, were
never given up for long. " Louis XVI.," says
Madame Roland, " was always vacillating be-
tween the fear of irritating his subjects, his v wish
to please them, and his incapacity of governing
them ; . . . always, on the one hand, proclaiming
the maintenance of what he ordered to be sapped
with the other, — so that his oblique course and
false conduct first excited mistrust, and ended by
rousing indignation."
The Legislative Assembly met on the 1st of
October, 1791, while the country was distracted
by apprehensions of invasion and by doubt of its
ability to meet it. In this crisis of her fate,
France, as if instinctively, had sent to represent
her the men most apt to act with promptitude.
In one night the aspect of the Chamber had en-
tirely changed its character. The venerable
Constitution-makers had vanished, smoke-like,
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 75
into the past. In their stead had come slim fig-
ures, clustered locks, eyes flashing infinite hope.
So youthful a Senate was never seen before.
Conspicuous among its members was a group
of men, sent up from the ardent Gironde, destined
to take the lead in the New Assembly. All of
them men who had nourished their youth on the
literature of Greece and Rome, they entered the
arena with little or no practical experience, but
with the Republic for their watchword. They
were the idealists of the Revolution. The free
state which they wished to achieve, that would
they achieve "holily;" and while they clamored
for war with the foreign foe, they deprecated vio-
lence at home.
When Madame Roland returned to Paris in
the December of 1791, the affinity between her
and the new party made her at once the centre of
that group of men known as " The Gironde." It
seemed as if from their childhood these kindred
natures had been converging to this hour of
meeting.
With armies ominously collecting on her fron-
tiers, a spirit of defiant heroism entered the heart
of France. The representatives she had elected
to man the vessel of State were the expression of
this spirit. The indefatigable Brisso t was chosen
as its captain by this gallant crew, — chief among
whom may be mentioned the headstrong Guadet,
176 MADAME ROLAND.
as impetuous as Gensonne" was deliberate in
counsel ; Isnard, the Provencal, consumed by a
fanaticism he communicated to his hearers ;
Vergniaud, winged of speech, stamping the top-
ics of the time with the seal of eternity ; the
silent Grangeneuve, capable of performing a
great action without suspecting its greatness ;
Louvet, ever first to the attack, as dauntless in
spirit as delicate in frame ; Barbaroux, the reso-
lute young Marseillais, "with the head of Anti-
nous and the heart of a lion ; " Petion, too, and
thehigh-souled Buzot, both tried supporters of the
popular cause ; not to forget those two figures of
an ideal purity and sweetness, Fonfrede and
Ducos, the Nisus and Euryalus of the Revolu-
tion. Of this young hopeful crew the grave,
reverend Roland — he of whom Lavater had said
that he "reconciled him to Frenchmen" — was
presently to assume the pilotage. But high on
the poop above, beautiful like the impersonation
of liberty, stands the heroine of the Gironde, ex-
horting and stimulating, while the ever-increasing
storm lashes the sea, and the wind whistling in
the shrouds and rigging foretells a perilous pas-
sage. Will they steer the ship safely through
the breakers and whirlpools, those fearless men
singing their Allons enfants, or will they and that
fair woman who is their inspiration founder pitia-
bly in the convulsed elements of the Revolution ?
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 77
The last months of the year 1791 were crowded
with incident. The Assembly, in very self-de-
fence, passed the decree against the emigrant
noblesse and the Princes of the Blood, declaring
that unless they returned by the 1st of January,
1792, their property should be confiscated and
themselves declared traitors to their country.
The question had also been mooted and sup-
ported of passing a law to stop emigration ; but
Brissot, with his unflinching love of liberty, had
successfully opposed the motion. The decree
against the priests, enforcing the civil oath on
penalty of sequestration of stipend and expulsion
from the State Church — a measure of far more
questionable wisdom — was passed in December,
1791. To mix up the social and economic
changes with religious ones was dangerously to
complicate the situation.
The stumbling-blocks of the Revolution — its
deadliest opponents, in fact — were not the King
with his veto, nor yet the truculent aristocrats
petitioning for invasion, but the priests and the
women, — so true is it that no great outward
transformation can be effectively achieved with-
out a previous inward and spiritual transforma-
tion, in which the female part of the population
must take an incalculable share. Now, although
the women of the upper and upper middle classes
were deeply penetrated by the ideas of the eigh-
12
178 MADAME ROLAND.
teenth century, and had consequently flung them-
selves into the movement with an emotional
impulse that had gone far to accelerate it, the
women of the people — except in Paris and some
other large centres, where hunger spurred them
into insurrection — were wedded to their Church.
Here, in fact, lay the real, insuperable difficulty;
and the fierce animosities of a semi-religious war-
fare began to envenom the deadly strife.
The responsibility of the decrees against the
emigrants and non-juring priests rests mainly
with the Girondins. Their next decisive step
was to preach war ; not a prudent, self defensive
war, but war on a grander scale than the world
had yet known, — a crusade for Liberty through-
out Europe. And Vergniaud, that storm-bird of
the Revolution, who continually rose above the
rage of temporal contests to some serene ether of
thought, lifted up all hearts in the Assembly as
he cried in that richly-cadenced voice of his :
" A thought rises within me. The shades of the
generations of the past seem to come crowding
to this your temple, and to conjure you, in the
name of the evils they endured from slavery, to
deliver from them the unborn generations whose
fate is in your hands. Grant this prayer ; be the
Providence of the future ; enter into a cove-
nant with that Eternal justice now protecting
us!"
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 79
These solemn words converted the Chamber
into a temple. But unanimous as was the cry for
war, one man held out against it, — the inflexible
Robespierre, who urged, with statesman-like
sagacity, that the nation should get rid of its in-
ternal foes before attacking the foreigner. The
first decisive difference in opinion between him
and Brissot broke out on this occasion, for the
latter, reposing infinite faith in the new doctrine,
was less distrustful of the coadjutors who for
private reasons of their own might be willing to
join hands with him.
At this critical juncture of affairs another illus-
trious woman exercised a decisive influence on
the march of events. Madame de Stael, then but
twenty-five, had become the rallying-point of the
Constitutionalists, as was Madame Roland of
the Gironde. Placed in hostile political camps,
they never met ; and Madame Roland makes but
one allusion, and that a curious one, to the future
" Corinne." In a letter from Lyons, dating back
as far as November, 1789, she says: —
" Report spreads all kinds of stories about Madame de
Staal {sic), who is said to be regularly present at the As-
sembly, and to send little billets from the gallery to her
devoted cavaliers, in order to encourage their support of
patriotic measures. The Spanish ambassador, it is said,
has gravely reproached her for it at her father's table.
You cannot imagine what importance the Aristocrats at-
tach to these absurdities, hatched, no doubt, in their own
180 MADAME ROLAND.
brains ; but they would fain depict the Assembly as led by
a few feather-brained youths, egged on by a dozen of
women or so."
Madame de Stael, either from feminine jeal-
ousy, or possibly acquainted with Madame
Roland's stinging attacks on M. Necker, her
father (of whom she had said, among other
things, that he was forever speaking of his char-
acter, without rhyme or reason, as women of
gallantry do of their virtue), in her description
of the Girondin group never even alludes to the
woman who was its inspiration.
Narbonne, made Minister of War by the in-
fluence of Madame de Stael, fell in with the popu-
lar war-cry, in the hope of re-establishing the
King's authority on a firm Constitutional basis.
The Court party proper, however, had no genuine
desire for war, as the risks outweighed the advan-
tages. Events eventually justified the fears of
the Court and Brissot's sanguine faith in French
arms and the cause of the Revolution, more than
they did the cautious apprehensions of Robes-
pierre.
At this period Brissot was not only all-power-
ful in the Assembly, but his direct or indirect
influence pervaded all" its committees, and on
the break-up of the Narbonne Administration he
imposed a Ministry of his own on the Govern-
ment. He had now reached the height of his
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. l8l
influence, and while bestowing place and power
on those whom similarity of political views had
made his friends, he himself, poorer than Robes-
pierre, went about in a shabby old out-at-elbows
coat, while his wife in person used to iron out his
three shirts on some sixth floor of a lodging. In
the teeth of this Spartan disinterestedness, his
opponents did not blush afterwards to accuse
Brissot of intrigue and place-hunting !
As the members of the Executive were ex
eluded from the Chamber in which the ruling
power actually resided, the leader of the Giron-
dins, averse from crippling his own influence or
that of the chief members of his party, looked out
for men not yet practically involved in politics,
while qualified by previous experience for public
life. His choice fell upon Roland de la Platiere,
as Minister of the Interior. It seemed a happy
idea, seeing that for the last thirty-five years of
his life the latter had not only been professionally
led to comprehend the economic and commercial
conditions of his country, but had also studied
them with the eye of the philosopher.
On the 23d of March, 1792, Roland entered
the new Ministry, and to all intents and purposes
his wife entered it with him. On the same even-
ing she for the first time saw one of his col-
leagues, Dumouriez, Minister for Foreign Affairs,
and the future hero of the victory at Jemmapes.
V
1 82 MADAME ROLAND.
"This is a man," said she to her husband after
their visitor's departure, " who has a vivacious
intelligence, a false eye, and of whom, perhaps,
we should be more distrustful than of any one in
the world. He has expressed much satisfaction
at the patriotic choice with which he was
charged, but I should not be astonished if some
day he obtained your dismissal from office."
Thus, at the first glance, Madame Roland per-
ceived the incongruity between the worldly plia-
bility of Dumouriez and her husband's unbending
rigidity of principle ; but she was also forced to
acknowledge that if Dumouriez had no character,
he had more native capacity and resource than
all the other Ministers taken together. Claviere,
long esteemed by Brissot for his extensive and
intimate acquaintance with the complicated sys-
tem of Finance, became Minister of that depart-
ment ; and in his case also Madame Roland
foresaw possible troubles of another sort. He
was upright, no doubt ; but then, again, he was
too like her husband, whose temper she knew
and managed with inimitable tact : she foresaw
that irritable, dogmatic, and tenacious of their
views as both were, they would soon disagree.
" These two men," she says, " were made to es-
teem but not to love each other ; and they have
not failed in their vocation." In Degrave she
depicts the most ludicrously inadequate Minister
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 83
of War ! — how or why placed in that office is
not evident. " He was a little man in all re-
spects," she remarks. " Nature had created him
gentle and timid ; his prejudices made pride ob-
ligatory, and his heart inclined him to amiability.
Perplexed as he was to harmonize all this, he
became truly null. I seem now to see him strut-
ting, courtier-fashion, on his heels, his head erect
on his feeble body, showing the whites of his
blue eyes, which he could never keep open after
dinner without the aid of two or three cups of
coffee ; speaking little, as if from reserve, but
really because he had nothing to say ; lastly, so
completely losing his head in the midst of affairs
that he had to send in his resignation." The
able and conscientious Servan, Madame Roland's
own choice, replaced him in office.
Charles V., in his retreat having vainly tried
to make several watches keep time, railed at his
former folly for wishing to regulate an empire's
course. Madame Roland, called from privacy to
take part in public affairs at a most momentous
crisis, now discovered with dismay how difficult
it was for a small knot of men to act in concert,
even when agreed as to principles. She was
equally struck by the scarcity of men whose
"energy of soul, solidity of judgment, and exten-
sive views" might entitle them to be called great.
Although she never abated by a jot her devotion
1 84 MADAME ROLAND.
to the cause, we henceforth find a considerable
change in her tone hitherto so glowing., and in
her appreciation of the leaders of the Revolution.
Seeing so closely the wheels of the political
machine and the actors that worked it, she shud-
dered at their want of union, and asked herself
where was the man of sufficiently commanding
political genius to weld together these hetero-
geneous elements. Her sex precluded her, un-
fortunately, from taking a share in the actual
political struggle ; otherwise, with her knowledge
of men, her practical sagacity, her singleness of
purpose, her magnetic personality, she might
herself have become the rallying point of her
party, and her potent will would no doubt have
infused into them a cohesion and a distinctness
of aim for lack of which they ultimately perished.
As it was, she could only act indirectly and at
second-hand, which naturally weakened the force
of her influence. Although she would not have
had Roland deviate by an inch from the political
principles which they had hitherto entertained, she
could have wished him to evince more pliability
in unimportant details of business and greater
tact in his intercourse with his colleagues.
But Roland suffered from precisely the same
defects which were at the root of so much that
was calamitous in the French Revolution. For
the men who then came to the forefront of events
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 85
had not served that apprenticeship to political
life (as how should they under a despotic Gov-
ernment ?) which would have insensibly prepared
them for the complex and difficult art of good
government. That very a b c of politics, the daily
press, familiar as household words to the meanest
drudge in the United States, only came into exist-
ence with the French Revolution. Philosophic
theories, logical conclusions drawn from abstract
reasoning, the speculations of the study, the argu-
mentative rhetoric of the Bar, were the equipment
with which the prominent members of the Assem-
bly started on their political career. Whereas
the subtile involvement of social life is such that
the law of progress seems to be, that for every
two steps taken in advance there must be made
a step backwards, these fanatics of freedom wished
to push on at all hazards, even at that of annihi-
lating all resisting human forces.
With Roland, the simplicity of Republican man-
ners came upon the Court with a fresh shock.
His round hat, his plain dress, his shoes tied with
ribbons, shocked and scandalized the whole tribe of
flunkeys. Here, indeed, was Royalty compromised
as it never had been before. The Master of the
Ceremonies, approaching Dumouriez with a dis-
turbed countenance and frowning brow, said in a
low constrained voice, indicating Roland with a
side-glance, "Lord, Sir ! no buckles to his shoes ! "
1 86 MADAME ROLAND.
" Ah, Sir ! all is lost ! " replied Dumouriez, with
a most comical self-possession.
Madame Roland was now installed in the Minis-
terial residence, magnificently fitted up in the early
days of Louis XVI. 's reign by M. de Calonne
while, like so many others, trying his hand at
regulating the finances. To her private use she
appropriated only a small cabinet. The only
change she made in her life was to restrict her
intercourse even more severely than of old, partly
to economize time and partly to keep the host of
place-seekers at a distance. Twice a week she
presided at a Ministerial dinner, to which, besides
her husband's colleagues, members of the Assem-
bly and other political friends to the number of
fifteen were bidden, but at which no lady save
herself was present. Lemontey, a distinguished
writer though not a political partisan, describing
Madame Roland as she was at this period, says :
" Head, eyes, and hair were of remarkable beauty. The
freshness and brilliancy of her delicate complexion, added
to an air of reserve and candor, gave her a singularly youth-
ful appearance. I did not discover that easy elegance of
the Parisian to which she lays claim in her Memoirs, yet
she was devoid of awkwardness, because what is simple
and natural must also be graceful. On my first seeing her
she realized my idea of the little girl of Vevay, who has
turned so many heads, — the Julie of Rousseau. Madame
Roland spoke well — too well. The listener would fain have
discovered signs of preparation in her speech, but could
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 87
not. Hers was simply too perfect a nature. Wit, reason,
common-sense, and sweetness flowed with spontaneous
felicity of diction from between ivory teeth and rosy lips :
there was nothing for it but to resign yourself. ... At the
beginning of her husband's ministry I saw Madame Roland
for the last time. She had lost nothing of her freshness,
youthfulness, or simplicity. Roland looked like a Quaker,
for whose daughter she might have passed. Her child
capered round her with hair rippling down to her waist.
You would have said they were inhabitants from Pennsyl-
vania transplanted to the salon of M. de Calonne. Madame
Roland spoke only of public affairs, and I could see that
my moderation inspired her with some pity. Her soul was
wrought up, but her heart remained gentle and inoffensive.
Although the wreck o r monarchy had not yet occurred, she
did not disguise from herself that signs of anarchy were be-
ginning to show themselves, and she promised to oppose
them unto death."
Although the power of the executive in reality
rested not so much in the Ministry as in the Rep-
resentative Assembly, the conscientious Roland
was prepared to fulfil his duties to the utmost.
The good-nature and apparent sincerity of the
King had charmed him at first, and he had come
home from the Cabinet meetings full of hope con-
cerning the future working of the Constitution,
seeing the excellent hitherto misunderstood inten-
tions of the monarch. His wife was not so easily
duped, and warned him not to be too credulous.
Her misgivings proved only too well founded, for
in spite of his protestations of devotion, Louis
1 88 MADAME ROLAND.
XVI. 's policy consisted mainly in putting a stop
to all active measures of government. Thus he
cunningly evaded sanctioning two decrees of the
utmost importance to the State, — one against
the recalcitrant priests, now fomenting civil war
in the provinces ; the other (war having been
declared against Austria), that of the formation
of a federate camp of twenty thousand men to
protect Paris, — on the one hand exposed to the
foreign foe by its proximity to the frontier, and
on the other to the foe within, in that suspicious
guard of picked men which had gradually been
formed in the Tuileries.
The idea of this camp had originated with Ma-
dame Roland. Convinced of the King's duplicity
and its attendant dangers, she had persuaded
Roland that a patriotic Ministry should either
make an effort to save the country or retire from
office. With more than her usual promptitude,
she wrote off a letter destined to be sent to Louis
XVI. in the name of the Council. None of the
Ministers being prepared to take so bold a step,
Roland sent it in his own name. A lesson and an
exhortation in one, it implored the Sovereign not
to rouse the suspicion of the nation by constantly
betraying his suspicion of it, but to secure his
country's love by adopting in all sincerity the
measures fitted to insure the welfare and safety
of the State. The Declaration of Rights, he was
THE ROLAND ADMINISTRATION. 1 89
told, had become a political gospel and the French
Constitution a religion, for which the people were
prepared to perish.
The only effect of this letter was to bring about
the fall of the Ministers, with the exception of
Dumouriez, who had secret leanings to the Court.
Servan was the first to get his dismissal. Enter-
ing Madame Roland's room with a radiant face,
he said, " Congratulate me ! I have been turned
off." " I am much nettled," replied the lady,
" that you should be the first to enjoy this honor ;
but I hope that it will be conferred on my hus-
band without delay." Her hopes were not disap-
pointed ; and her advice, when he brought her
the news, was that he should be the first to let
the Legislative Assembly know of his dismissal
by sending it a copy of his letter to the King.
The Girondin Ministers now became the popu-
lar idols of the hour. There were many signs
abroad that the Court wished to strike some de-
cisive blow. The Moderates and the Constitu-
tionalists seemed on the point of uniting with the
Ultra- Royalists ; and General Lafayette from his
camp wrote a threatening letter to the Assembly,
justifying the King's veto, and exhorting it to
respect royalty. The immediate result of these
ominous movements was the insurrection of the
20th of June, when the Palace of the Tuileries
was invaded, as by enchantment, with a tumultu-
190 MADAME ROLAND. .
ous crowd of sans- culottes and fish-wives, and
which saw the descendant of the Bourbons don
the bonnet rouge. Cries of " Recall of the Minis-
ters ! " " Repeal of the Veto ! " were heard at
intervals ; but without committing himself to any
promise, the King knew how to amuse the people
by pinning a cockade to the red cap of liberty,
and joining in the shouts of " Long live the Na-
tion ! " At last, admonished by the Mayor, the
crowd dispersed peaceably enough, and this
singular insurrection ended in the Royal apart-
ments being thrown open to the populace to
see on its way out !
CHAPTER XII.
DIES IRJE.
" The country in danger ! " was the cry which
electrified France, as crowds of volunteers started
from all parts for the frontier. Now, for the first
time, the hymn of the Revolution resounded
through the realm, as, solemnly singing it, five
hundred Marseillais marched towards Paris.
But the danger not only came from the foreign
enemy, already victorious in several places on the
frontier, — it lurked at the very heart of the capi-
tal, in a hostile Court, ready to make common
cause with the invader. Here lay the paramount
cause of the ioth of August, — collateral causes be-
ing the deposition of Petion, the beloved Mayor
of Paris, and the dismissal of the Girondin Min-
istry. Madame Roland declares that Roland and
herself knew no more concerning the ioth of Au-
gust — when the Palace of the Kings of France
was stormed, and the Royal Family forced to
take refuge in the bosom of the National As-
sembly — than did the outside public.
Now came the question how to proceed with
this poor King, from whom every shred of
192 MADAME ROLAND.
authority had departed ! Suspension of the ex-
ecutive power, appointment of a tutor to the Dau-
phin, removal of the Royal Family to the Lux-
embourg, were the first measures adopted by the
Assembly. But its orders were countermanded,
and the Royal Family taken to the dungeon-
like tower of the Temple instead of to the palace
assigned them ; while the Swiss troops — who
had incurred the deadly hatred of the populace
of Paris by firing on and killing them by thou-
sands, in their defence of the Tuileries — were
imprisoned in the Abbaye, the most exposed of
the prisons. For a new power had mysteriously
sprung into existence on that night of the ioth
of August, — the insurrectionary Commune.
Whence its authority — by whom elected —
none could say ; but, by the occult law of revolu-
tions, the leadership suddenly passed from the
Assembly into its hands. One man at that
moment was the soul of the Commune, — the
man who, if any one, had made the ioth of Au-
gust : the man who could suffer thousands to be
massacred, yet weep like a woman over the death
of one he loved ; the man who summed up his
political practice in that famous cry, " We must
dare, and again dare, and without end dare ! "
To name Danton is not so much to speak of a
single man as of a whole section of the people.
He was great because he represented such a
DIES IRjE. 193
vast mass of the national life ; but his greatness
was disfigured because this national life itself
was turbid and corrupt. If Robespierre might
be called the abstract idea of the Revolution, its
will was Danton, just as Marat seems to have
been its avenging demon.
No man of the Revolution inspired Madame
Roland with such instinctive antipathy as Dan-
ton. Robespierre she admired, before their com-
mon party had split into the hostile camps of
Gironde and Mountain ; Marat, whom she had
never seen, she long held to be a kind of myth or
popular scarecrow; but Danton was a solid fact,
thrown much into her presence, and whom she
was obliged to reckon with. " I never," says she,
" beheld so repulsive and atrocious a counte-
nance ; and although I argued that I knew noth-
ing against him, and that the most honest men
necessarily have two kinds of reputation when
party strife runs high, — in fact, that we should
not go by appearances, — I could not reconcile
that face with a well-meaning man. I never saw
anything so characteristic of brutal passions, of
the most astounding daring, half-veiled under an
assumption of jovial good-nature."
This Commune — destined to take so leading
and sanguinary a part in the subsequent events
of the Revolution — counted among its members
the fierce and fickle Tallien, the medical student
*3
194 MADAME ROLAND.
Chaumette (a vampire-like creature who seemed
to batten on blood), and Hebert, destined to in-
famous notoriety as the Pere Duchesne. A sig-
nificant addition was made, without any official
election whatever, to this ominous corporation ;
for between the nth of August and the 2d of
September Marat stole forth from the holes and
cellars where he lay habitually hidden, and took
his seat in the Commune. The " friend of the
people " emerged into the light to preach the ex-
termination of the great of the land. In Marat
— who cultivated hatred as a fine art, and cele-
brated the praise of murder ; who even made
Robespierre quail with his threats of burning
tyrants alive in their palaces, and of impaling
senators on their benches in the Assembly — we
recognize, not so much a man, as the dreadful
summing up of centuries of wrong. To under-
stand, nay, to absolve this man who had " made
himself Anathema " because hate consumed him
like a raging sickness, we must recall those til-
lers of the soil worked like galley-slaves on the
high-roads, those trembling peasants who ate .
their daily bread with the terror of criminals,
those poor Bretons who considered " hanging as
a deliverance from worse evils." We must recall
these wrongs here ; for the blackest days of the
Revolution — the sanguinary days of September
— were approaching with giant strides.
DIES IRJZ. 195
Such were the elements of the new Commune,
before which the National Assembly faded. The
country however was once more appealed to, and
this time without the distinction of active and
passive citizens, — which had been an oligarchical
device of the Constituent Assembly, whereby the
majority of the French nation were excluded from
the suffrage, on the ground that those who did
not pay a certain minimum in taxes were not
entitled to the franchise. Meanwhile the Giron-
dins, with some modifications in the Cabinet, had
been triumphantly recalled to office. Danton be-
came Minister of Justice, the geometrician Monge
of the Marine, and Pache — afterwards nicknamed
" the Tartuffe of Politics " by Roland's wife — was
made Minister of War at the recommendation of
her husband, who on taking office began by renew-
ing the staff in most of the Government offices.
Champagneux he made General Secretary, the
excellent Bosc Postmaster-General, and placed
Lanthenas in the Arts and Science Department.
Each Minister had very large secret funds placed
at his disposal, employed mostly in issuing pa-
pers, circulars, and placards of all kinds, the walls
being made the great vehicle of political education.
Louvet, author of " Faublas," became the editor of
Roland's paper the " Sentinel," most of the politi-
cal circulars for which were composed by Madame
Roland herself. The Minister of the Interior,
196 MADAME POLAND.
besides seeing to the free circulation of provisions,
had in fact little to do -but to publish manifestoes ;
for such was the universal jealousy of the concen-
tration of power, that the only bodies that possessed
any were those who could lay claim to none.
What kind of Government should France now
adopt, was the question. Madame Roland would
fain have seen a Republic, inhabited by citizens
such as Plutarch had taught her to love. But
she forgot the dissimilarity of conditions, — that
enormous proletariat of France (hungry, violent,
ignorant, tumultuous) about to be enfranchised,
and to affect directly the future working of politi-
cal institutions. Her own party, the Girondins,
were the only men in the State whose culture
would have rendered them fit to realize such a
form of Government in its purity ; but the foreign
invasion, by driving the people into a frenzy of
rage and fear, rendered unpopular all measures
but those of violence and terror.
Longwy and Verdun had been taken by the
Prussians; Paris lay exposed to the enemy; in
the very capital a portion of the population se-
cretly rejoiced at these defeats of the French
army. A panic of desperation seized the people.
They did not tremble for their country alone ;
they trembled still more for that newly-born lib-
erty, already so dearly purchased. " Vivre libre ou
mourir!" became the universal cry. The press
DIES IRjE. 197
of volunteers to the public places to inscribe their
names on the altar of the country was so enor-
mous that numbers had to be sent away. It
seemed as though soldiers sprang from the ground,
— as those armed men were fabled to have done
from the dragon's teeth of Cadmus. But the fact
of so many patriots departing for the frontier
seemed to promise Royalists a freer field for
cabal. In the latter days of August were made
numberless arrests of nobles, recalcitrant priests,
and citizens of dubious patriotism, — as many as
five thousand being seized in one night. The
Abbaye, St. Pelagie, the Conciergerie, and other
prisons — or convents suddenly turned into such
— were full to overflowing.
On the 2d of September, 1792, the inhabitants
of Paris were wrought up to a fever-heat of excite-
ment. The air was full of farewells to the volun-
teers departing for the frontiers ; the muffled roll
of drums filled the air ; an enormous black flag
waving from the Town fclall seemed to prognosti-
cate destruction and death ; the clatter of horses
and arms seized in the nation's name was heard
as they were being taken to the gates ; the alarm-
bells were pealing ; volleys of cannon thundered
in quicker and quicker succession ; the desperate
looks of the people, the sinister rumors afloat, —
everything foreboded the outbreak of some immi-
nent catastrophe.
198 MADAME ROLAND.
Was it the premeditated act of the Commune ?
Had it been engendered in the monstrous imagi-
nation of Marat ? Or had Danton — with his
famous, " Let my name be branded and my
memory perish, if only France be free ! " — aimed
the first blow ? Or, again, did the Paris mob of
its own accord turn upon its prisoners, vowing
that not a Royalist should survive to triumph if
the enemy entered its walls ? Each successive
historian of the French Revolution, from Michelet
to Lamartine and Louis Blanc, has assigned the
hideous responsibility of the September massacres
to different sets of men. But there is sometimes
a fatal conjunction of circumstances in which dis-
tinct causes work darkly towards the same events ;
and it seems that if the prison massacres were
unhappily projected by the leaders of the Com-
mune, there was yet no distinct organization or
directing Committee, but that the people itself,
to judge from the conduct of some of its organ-
ized sections, moved by. an impulse of rage and
despair turned furiously upon its internal foes,
and breaking all social bonds, constituted itself
judge and executioner in one.
The first signal for the horrible crimes about
to be committed was the transfer of some twenty-
four prisoners, chiefly priests, to the Abbaye, the
most crowded of all the prisons. This transfer
was significant, when taken in connection with
DIES IR.E. 199
the removal of the jailer's family and that of
several men, by the orders of Danton, among
whom happened to be Desmoulins' schoolmaster.
The carriages containing these priests, followed
by an escort of Marseillais and other federate
troops, were soon surrounded by a hooting, yell-
ing, menacing crowd, to whom a cassock was the
symbol of counter-revolution and civil war ; and
whether the attack first began on the outside, or
was provoked by one of the priests, a spark was
enough to blow the passions of the multitude into
a destructive blaze.
Then were the prison doors burst open. Half-
clad men armed with pikes, with a strange glare
in their savage hunger-bitten faces, swarmed about
the court-yards. Prisoners were at first simply
hauled from their cells, dragged along the passa-
ges, driven pell-mell into the court-yards, and cut
down ruthlessly like grass falling beneath the
mower's scythe. Some, delirious with fear, flung
themselves of their own accord on the weapons of
their executioners ; others resisted to the death,
and fell pierced by successive wounds. To put
some kind of limit to these ghastly butcheries, a
kind of infernal Tribunal was at last instituted in
a gloomy vault, with self-appointed judge and
jury, — where Maillard, dread arbiter of Septem-
ber, sat with book and inkstand before him to try
culprits, pronounce judgments, acquit a few, and
200 MADAME ROLAND.
send the mass to destruction. In this carnival of
death there were some deeds over which history,
in mercy to mankind, should draw the veil, — as
the cruel murder and dastardly usage of the Prin-
cess de Lamballe, whose head, severed from the
body, was stuck on a pike and paraded by a wretch
through the streets of Paris and in front of the
Temple itself, before the sickened eyes of Louis
XVI. There were also deeds of devotion and
filial heroism such as humanize these otherwise
demoniacal proceedings. Thus Mademoiselle de
Sombreuil saved her father's life by enfolding him
in her arms and making her body a rampart for
him ; she even disarmed the murderers by her
courage, beauty, and despair. But not content
with the actual horrors of the scene, historians
have not scrupled to add to them, and the story
that the unhappy girl was forced to drink a tum-
bler of blood to redeem her father is proved to
have grown out of the fact, that, on having fainted,
one of the ferocious band hurried to bring a glass
of water, into which, as she took it, there fell a
drop of blood from his sanguinary hand.
These " bacchanals of blood " lasted from three
to four days and nights. Prison after prison was
invaded and emptied of its human contents; the
appetite seemed to grow with what it fed upon ;
the massacres became more indiscriminate as they
proceeded. And was there no power in Paris to
DIES IRjE. 20I
arrest this defilement of the cause of freedom ?
Alas ! the power in whose hands the real authority,
and not its shadow, was vested, — the Commune
and the armed sections commanded by Santerre
the Brewer, — took no steps to stop the massacres.
This fact, among other indications, seems a proof
that they originated and abetted them. And
where, it may be asked, was Roland, the Minister
of the Interior, all this time ?
On Sunday, the 2d of September, Madame
Roland tells us, towards five o'clock in the after-
noon, — about the time when the prisons were
invested, — she was alone at home, when the
Ministerial residence was surrounded by about
two hundred men, loudly calling for the Minister
and for arms. On their refusing to go, after
having been vainly assured that Roland was not
in, the brave woman sent some of the protesting
servants to ask ten of the number to come and
speak to her. Her calmness, her beauty, her
high intrepidity must have produced something
like awe in those rough sans-culottes, who usually
eyed with suspicion every person less tattered
than themselves. Quietly inquiring on what
errand they had come, and being told that they
were citizens going to Verdun who wanted arms,
she pointed out to them that the Minister of War
and not of the Interior was the person to whom
they should have addressed themselves. They
202 MADAME ROLAND.
had been there already, muttered they; these
Ministers were — traitors ! They demanded to
see Roland. Matters wore a suspicious look,
when one remembers the date ; but Madame
Roland, keeping her superb self-possession, pro-
posed to take them over the place herself, —
adding further, that, if they had to make com-
plaints, it was to the Commune they should be
addressed, or that if they wished to see Roland,
he was to be found at a Cabinet Meeting held at
the Hotel de la Marine. Thereupon they retired.
Madame Roland, stepping on to a balcony, saw a
furious demagogue, with his shirt-sleeves rolled
up above the elbow, brandishing a sword, and
declaiming against the treachery of the Ministers.
After some more parley, the mob retired to the
beating of drums, taking one of the valets as a
hostage.
Some days afterwards Madame Roland learned
that Danton had gone to Potion, and in his brusk
way cried, " Do you know what they have done
now ? Made out an order of arrest against Ro-
land !" "Who has?" demanded Petion. "Oh,
that committee of enrages. I have taken the
order ; here it is. We cannot allow them to act
thus ! The devil ! Against a Member of the
Council, too ! " Petion took the order, read it,
and giving it back to him with a smile said, " Let
be ; it will produce a good effect." " Produce
DIES IR^E. 203
a good effect!" said Danton, curiously examining
the Mayor ; " no, I cannot allow it."
Madame Roland very naturally connects the
two hundred sans-culottes with the order of ar-
rest, which she considers was only rendered
abortive by Roland's absence from home. Sub-
sequent events seem to justify her supposition.
But in her antipathy to Danton she suspects him
of complicity ; whereas his conduct proves, on
the contrary, that he would have wished the
Girondins for allies, if they would have suffered
him to carry on the Revolution after his own
method; but this their humanity revolted from.
This order of arrest against Roland ; the two
emissaries of the Commune nominally appointed
to protect Petion's precious person, but in reality
to mount sentinel over him ; the powerlessness
of the Members of the Assembly, who had no
armed force at their beck and call ; Madame Ro-
land's remark to Bancal on the 5th, " We are
under the knife of Robespierre and Marat," — all
this helps to explain the else inexplicable quies-
cence of the Minister of the Interior.
But a change had come over the face of the
Revolution. The massacres, it may be said, were
in substance not nearly as bad as the atrocities
over and over again committed, as history re-
cords. But atrocities committed in the name of
liberty and fraternity, — there is the pity of it !
204 MADAME ROLAND.
By them, declares the humane Michelet, the
cause of freedom in Europe was retarded for a
century. And well may it be so ; for all the
best minds began to lose faith in this uprising of
the French nation, which they had hailed as the
dawning of a new era. With the rivers of blood
spilt so ruthlessly they sullied the pure, new-born
idea of equality ; with the red glare of their ter-
ror they blotted out the clear sunrise that had
promised a better day. " You know my enthusi-
asm for the Revolution," was Madame Roland's
cry to Bancal. " Well, I am ashamed of it !
Scoundrels have defiled it ! It is become hide-
ous ! . . . To remain in power is degrading j
yet we are not allowed to leave Paris. ..."
Already, on the nth of September, Roland
wished to send in his resignation. " But," said
his wife, " Brissot has been scolding me terribly,
and declaring that for my husband to quit the
Administration at such a juncture would prove a
public calamity."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE REPUBLIC.
The first year of the Republic commenced on
the 2 1 st of September, 1792, after the Conven-
tion had replaced the Legislative Assembly. In
the course of a few months its sittings were to be
held in the Palace of the Kings of France, re-
christened Palace of the Nation. The Men of
the Mountain, the " Frogs of the Plain " (as the
moderate party was nick-named), and the elo-
quent Gironde were closely confronted in the
royal theatre ; and from the galleries, whence of
yore great seigneurs and high-born beauties had
looked on, there now rang the applause or threats
of savage sans-culottes.
The Republic had been ushered in by the first
triumph of the French arms. Dumouriez had
been victorious atValmy; Custine occupied Spire,
Treves, and Mayence ; the over-boastful Duke of
Brunswick, instead of handing Paris over to mili-
tary execution, quietly evacuated French territory.
The signal heroism of its untried volunteers re-
stored to France some of the lustre which the
prison massacres had obscured.
206 MADAME ROLAND.
These massacres had opened an abyss between
the leaders of the Gironde and the three great
revolutionary chiefs, Danton, Marat, Robespierre.
The last, as often before, had kept personally
aloof from a movement which he may have de-
plored, but of which he was now appropriating
the advantages. The Girondins, so far from imi-
tating this crafty (or statesman-like) policy, raised
the hue-and-cry against the Septemberers. Ma-
dame Roland, who in her girlhood had endured
an agony of pity at the racking of two criminals,
now suffered tortures at this desecration which
liberty had undergone. Burning with indigna-
tion, she exhorted her husband to protest against
these " abominable crimes," to appeal to the As-
sembly to put a stop to further repetitions, and
clear himself of the dishonor of tolerating them
by his silence, should it be at the risk of himself
being struck by the dagger of assassins. Al-
ready, on the 3d of September, Roland addressed
a remonstrance to the Assembly, couched in
terms which seem very mild compared to the
searing denunciations in his wife's Memoirs.
Yet this address was everywhere applauded as a
miracle of courage, — too conclusive proof that
Terror, like the Sword of Damocles, was already
suspended above the heads of the Parisians, and
that for fear of being suspected of Moderatism
the population was satisfied to let the most vio-
THE REPUBLIC. 207
lent take the lead. Roland's letter had been
hailed with delight by the Assembly, who or-
dered its publication and dissemination in the
provinces.
Proclamations and addresses were of little avail^
however, unless they could be reinforced by de-
cisive measures. These decisive measures, for
which the executive had no force at command,
Roland had not the daring to take. One way,
and one only, remained open by which the Minis-
try could still have seized the reins of govern-
ment, — the one which Danton pointed out to
Madame Roland through Fabre d'Eglantine, his
mouth-piece : institute a dictatorship, to be vested
in the hands of the Executive Council, and exer-
cised by its president, — a measure foreshadowing
the subsequent dictatorship of Robespierre, Saint
Just, and Couthon. The proposition was re-
ceived in mute disdain by Madame Roland, as
were the many other advances made from time to
time by this Hercules of the Tribunes.
She shrank from this man — whom she pictured
as a u Sardanapalus, dagger in hand " — with uncon-
trollable loathing. Between these two beings there
was radical antagonism of nature. The woman —
type of the Republic such as poets have dreamed
her — possessed all the virtues and talents that
adorn life ; possessed, above all, a profound hu-
manity, shown throughout life, and which did not
208 MADAME ROLAND.
forsake her at the foot of the scaffold itself. The
man, — embodiment of the elemental force of the
Revolution, and like it a compound of horrors and
sublimities, — if guilty of brutal and violent deeds,
had yet that signal merit of thoroughly grasping
the peril of the situation, and of being ready to
sacrifice all personal considerations for the cause
he had at heart.
If ever in her life Madame Roland was greatly
at fault, she was so in her persistent repulse of
Danton. Considering the tremendous issues at
stake and the critical position of France, she
would not only have shown far greater political
sagacity, but have proved more humane in the
long run, to have let the dead bury their dead,
and to have averted the greater terrors to come
by a truce with Danton. The Gironde, with
Danton for its ally, might have triumphantly
carried out its programme, and so have saved the
Republic. The Gironde, with Danton for its
adversary, was helplessly given over to the Hebert-
ists and to Robespierre ; and its fall ultimately
entailed that of the Republic. But Madame
Roland knew not how to make a compromise
with evil.
After the massacres of September, Roland's
wife succeeded in inspiring the whole party with
her hatred of Danton. Her voice urged them
to the attack ; and whenever they slackened in
THE REPUBLIC. 209
their zeal, one man, over whom she possessed
illimitable influence, — the proud, intrepid Buzot,
— renewed the onset in the Convention.
The Girondins had been universally returned
by the provinces. Paris manifested its bias by
electing Danton, Robespierre, Collot-d'Herbois,
Billaud-Varenne, and one of the main instigators
of the September massacres, Marat. Parties at
this time seemed pretty equally balanced in the
Chamber ; if anything, the Gironde had the ma-
jority. Their members sat on all the Committees,
and Petion the Mayor was their close ally. They
had now arrived at that point, reached by every
revolutionary party in turn, when they would fain
have piloted the vessel of State into harbor. Their
aim became to consolidate the Republic by evolv-
ing the reign of law from the chaos of anarchy.
The Revolution had been a violent transition from
an old order of things to a new one, and, its main
objects being attained, they deemed the time ripe
for a reorganization of the government in more
peaceable fashion. With this object they drew
up an Appeal to the Convention to recommend
the prosecution of the instigators of the September
massacres, setting forth that their principal objects
were to dissolve the Commune, to decree in due
form the election of a new Municipality, and to
reorganize the National Guards, whose Com-
mander-General was henceforth to be elected by
14
210 MADAME ROLAND.
the united sections. All these measures were
advocated by Madame Roland ; but in order to
succeed, a threatening obstacle had to be sur-
mounted, — the triple revolutionary power ; Dan-
ton, Marat, Robespierre.
But lack of courage was not the failure of the
Girondins. Insufficiently prepared with proofs
for so momentous a proceeding, they now im-
peached the three formidable Montagnards of
aspiring to the Dictatorship, and sought to make
them responsible for the murderous work in the
prisons. The most important of these accusa-
tions was that against Robespierre by Louvet.
The prophetic spirit of the Gironde instinctively
knew its future destroyer, but in default of con-
clusive proofs could not hope to shake his enor-
mous popularity. Robespierre, in a profoundly-
considered discourse, wherein he sketched the
whole progress of the Revolution, turned his
defence into a victory. Outside the Chamber
indignant crowds clamored for their favorites.
The failure of the indictment meant the fall of
the Girondins.
Their efforts to obtain a provincial guard to
protect the Convention was another cause of
their growing unpopularity in Paris. After-events
completely justified the wisdom of this demand.
In the absence of a properly-constituted govern-
ment, with a Commune arrogating to itself all
THE REPUBLIC. 211
the practical functions of one, and a National
Guard whose commander was appointed by the
most violent party of the moment, the Convention
was left entirely at the mercy of the most tur-
bulent faction of the population of Paris. The
moment a mob, using its " sacred right of insur-
rection" chose to invest and threaten the repre-
sentatives of the nation, what resistance could
they offer ?
Robespierre, by attacking this demand for a
provincial guard, enhanced his own popularity,
while the accusation of federalism began to be
urged with increased plausibility against the
Gironde. In the mean while, there came a res-
pite to these unfortunate dissensions of patriots
on the arrival in Paris of the victorious General
Dumouriez. All parties Vied with each other in
welcoming him. With the object of bringing
about a reconciliation between Danton and Ma-
dame Roland, Dumouriez came to dine with the
latter, and with some embarrassment presented
her with a magnificent bouquet of oleander. She
replied with a neatly-turned speech, and the
numerous guests looked upon the little incident
as of good augury. Vergniaud alone was not
touched by the hope and joy of the moment, did
not share the general delight at the realization
of their ardently-desired Republic. With his
veiled look turned inwards, he sat silently brood-
212 MADAME ROLAND.
ing, and seeing the radiant hostess drop some
petals from the nosegay into her wine, he remarked
half-aloud to Barbaroux, " Not flowers, but cypress-
leaves should we drop into our glasses to-night.
In drinking to the Republic, whose cradle has
been dipped in the blood of September, who knows
but that we are drinking to our own death ?
Never mind ! if this were my blood, I would still
drain it to liberty and equality ! " No guest but
he, the poet-politician, saw the inexorable shadow
in the festively-lighted room which rang to the
cries of " Long live the Republic ! "
So bright a scene this of the 14th of October!
Roland's wife presided, brilliant with beauty and
eloquence to-night, with her hair as usual flowing
in dark, abundant locks almost down to her gir-
dle, worn a la Romainc, knotted on one side, over
what was then called a republican gown, whose
white, graceful folds fitted the shape closely from
head to foot, — a dress " altogether ravishing in
taste." Beside her sat the successful Dumouriez,
gallant and insinuating in manner, and the slight,
insignificant-looking Louvet, — fit in turn, says
Madame Roland, M to make Catiline tremble in
the Senate or to dine with the Graces," — who
kept up that flow of wit and sparkling repartee
which rarely forsake the sociable Frenchman.
There, too, in a blue coat with high turn-down
collar, a red waistcoat with wide lapels, and shirt-
THE REPUBLIC. 213
frill of fine muslin, his hair carefully dressed and
powdered (though powder had gone out as aristo-
cratic), was the sad, high-souled Buzot, suffering
his glances to linger too long on those dark,
expressive eyes of his hostess, — glances whose
perilous sweetness came with the shock of a rev-
elation. Beside him the austere Roland, with
his careless dress and rasping voice, looked still
older than he was. There, too, among others,
were the humane Brissot, and Barbaroux with his
Antinous-like head. Oh, gifted, high-minded
group, so full of hope and aspiration, make merry
to-night ! let your glasses clink ; celebrate the
Republic ! But a short year hence, when the
leaves are falling again, and where will you be?
Scattered yourselves, like the leaves of autumn,
in lonely places, battling with the midnight
storm, hiding in wells and caverns, or shut up in
prison till the hour of execution shall strike !
She, too, this noble hostess, will be daily awaiting
her death-warrant, and will then confess — what
otherwise might have gone to the grave with her
— that she too came to know that " terrible pas-
sion," so long delayed in her life, which at last
seized upon her as with the accumulated force of
years. In the clash and clang of the Revolution,
when all the faculties were stimulated to the ut-
most, was born this bitter-sweet love, " heavy as
remorse," inevitable as fate.
214 MADAME ROLAND.
Madame Roland first met Buzot in 1791, and
after her return to La Platiere she had main-
tained a correspondence with both Robespierre
and him, but more regularly with the latter.
Their relations became more intimate after the
meeting of the Convention in the autumn of
1792. In a description of his character written
by her on a circular, closely-folded sheet of paper,
and which, cut to the size of Buzot's miniature,
was carefully placed between its canvas and exte-
rior cardboard, Madame Roland says : " Nature
has endowed him with an affectionate heart, a
proud spirit, and a lofty character. ... A ten-
dency to melancholy was aggravated by griefs of
the heart." In his public career he was ever
stanch to his principles ; for when danger at-
tended the utterance of advanced political opin-
ions he did so as unflinchingly as Robespierre,
and when it became equally dangerous to oppose
the violent excesses of the Revolution he had the
daring to do so. Buzot was tall, handsome, and
sensitive. By the scrupulous neatness of his
dress he was a standing protest against the inde-
cent neglect of appearance then in fashion. To
him a Republic, if anything, meant the general
lifting of the social standard, not its degradation
to the lowest level.
Between these two natures — as, indeed, be-
tween all whose love has the inevitableness of
THE REPUBLIC. 21 5
fate — there was a "birth-bond." They thrilled
with the same aspirations, the same hopes, and
the same sorrows. To know each other's
thoughts they had no need of speech.. If Ma-
dame Roland possessed more originality and
genius than Buzot, she gloried in the fearlessness
of the man who invariably fought her battles by
leading the attack in the Convention.
Doomed passion-flower of love to have bloomed
in so stormy a time ! Brief gleams of tenderness
illumining the lurid back-ground of Revolution
and civil war ! Flashes of love to be quenched
at the stern voice of duty and self-sacrifice !
CHAPTER XIV.
MADAME ROLAND AT THE BAR OF THE
CONVENTION.
Dumouriez's attempts to bring about a reconcili-
ation between Madame Roland and Danton
proved a failure. Knowing that the latter would
be in the adjoining box, the General had offered
to escort her to the Opera, where a brilliant re-
ception awaited him. Not caring to be seen in
public with this gay Lothario of a Dumouriez,
she made some excuse, but afterwards decided
on going with Vergniaud. About to enter the
Ministerial box, she perceived the bulky Danton,
Fabre d'Eglantine, and some ladies she thought
"of questionable appearance," who, however, it
appears, were Danton's wife and her friends.
Enough ; she retired without being seen by the
occupants, whose backs were turned to her.
Thus was lost the last chance of healing this un-
fortunate breach, which, if justified by inherent
incompatibility of temperaments, proved so dis-
astrous in its consequences.
Although for patriotic reasons Danton was anx-
ious for a conciliation, and entertained a high
AT THE BAR OF THE CONVENTION. 2\J
regard for Roland and much admiration for his
wife's genius, he had, after his careless fashion,
given the latter a wound difficult for a woman to
forgive. Roland had been elected to the Con-
vention for the Department of the Somme, and
his wife urged him to resign his ministerial post,
the responsibility of which — without the au-
thority which should have attended it — preyed
visibly on his health. But the majority of the
Convention, considering his services of the great-
est importance, — and, indeed, he was indefatiga-
ble in attending to the circulation of grain and
the due provisioning of Paris, — pressed him to
remain in office. It was then that Danton ex-
claimed in his forcible way, " Why not invite
Madame Roland to the Ministry, too ? Every-
one knows that Roland is not alone in office."
The deputies murmured disapprobation, and one
of them very sensibly remarked that it could not
signify to the country whether Roland had an
intelligent wife capable of assisting him with ad-
vice, or whether the services he rendered emana-
ted from himself alone. "This petty attack," he
said, " is unworthy of Danton ; but I will not
imply with him that it is the wife of Roland who
rules, for that would be accusing him of incapac-
ity." There was much applause ; and the result
was that Roland remained in office.
Nowhere is the great political importance
218 MADAME ROLAND.
attributed by contemporaries to Madame Roland
so decisively shown as here. She had now been
pushed to the very forefront of the Revolution,
visible to all eyes, a mark for envy, to become
the favorite target for the venomous calumnies
of Marat and the Pere Duchesne. Her co-opera-
tion in composing and promulgating the numer-
ous writings by which Roland sought to influence
public opinion could not remain unknown. The
office of one paper, "U Esprit Public," was be-
lieved to be under her management, and its
articles " due to her prodigious facility " (as
worded in Amar's subsequent indictment). Yet,
judging from her previous life and her own as-
sertions, she had not that last infirmity of noble
minds, the thirst for fame, but was impelled to
action by zeal for the Revolution, and because,
as she admits, there was no part that pleased her
so well as to be a kind of human Providence.
When the trial of Louis XVI. was preparing,
a strange disclosure, which contributed not a lit-
tle to excite and envenom opinion, was made to
the Minister of the Interior. A locksmith, for-
merly in the King's confidence, acquainted Ro-
land with the existence of an iron chest containing
important State papers. To hurry to the Tuiler-
ies, empty the contents of the chest into a napkin,
carry them home to his wife and examine them
with her, was the Minister's first care. In this
AT THE BAR OF THE CONVENTION. 219
step one seems to recognize Madame Roland's
impulsiveness ; and nothing could have been
more imprudent. Instead of calling together a
commission legally empowered to make a report
on these documents, Roland first carefully looked
them over, docketed and affixed his seal to each
bundle, and not till then handed them over to the
Convention. This arbitrary proceeding cannot
be justified, though he may have feared that
these papers would be tampered with by un-
scrupulous Committees, capable of interpolating
some documentary evidence to serve their private
animosity. Had not some vindictive opponent
sought to ruin Brissot by the trifling forgery of
one letter in a name resembling his, which would
have convicted him of traitorous designs? — al-
though Brissot, conscious of rectitude, always
scorned to defend himself against the vile charges
which undermined his reputation.
Roland had now given a handle to miscon-
struction, of which his enemies were not slow to
avail themselves. The documents turned out to
be most compromising to the King at this critical
juncture, showing, as they did, that he had never
entertained serious intentions of conforming to
the Constitution ; that he was entirely in the
hands of fanatic priests, leaders of the Counter-
revolution ; that he sought to reign by a system
of corruption ; that the men he hated most were
220 MADAME ROLAND.
precisely those who would have saved his throne,
— Necker, Mirabeau, and Lafayette ; and that he
had secretly negotiated with the Cabinets of
Europe for the invasion of France.
Denunciations and libels of Roland became the
order of the day. The rabid Chabot announced
with a consequential air in the Convention that
a certain Viard had discovered a conspiracy of
Royalists in England, who counted on saving the
King and re-establishing the Monarchy with the
assistance of Roland and Fauchet ! Shouts and
laughter answered him. No one — certainly not
Danton nor Robespierre — believed in the long-
winded tale of this unknown Viard, whom the
Committee of Surveillance had dragged from
obscurity to pit him against a man who, whatever
his shortcomings, was the soul of honor. After
Roland had been called, and declared that he had
never seen or had any relations whatever with
the persons with whom he was pretended to be in
correspondence, it was deemed advisable that, as
her name had been dragged in, Madame Roland
should be cited to the bar.
Here, on this circumscribed arena shaken by
such fierce debates, all members turning towards
her, Madame Roland might distinguish amid a
confused mass of men the wintry face of Robes-
pierre, Marat, the Angel of Death Saint Just,
leonine Danton, Condorcet, Brissot, the waspish
AT THE BAR OF THE CONVENTION. 221
Guadet, and above all the others, brave, manly-
hearted Buzot, who thrilled at the sight of her as
she entered with that proud, erect bearing of
hers, such mingled dignity and sweetness in her
expression that the Convention broke into thun-
ders of applause. When the tumult subsided,
she explained that Viard, of whom she knew
nothing, had obtained an interview with her
under the pretext of giving her an account of
what he had seen in London ; that after having
let him say his say, she had expressed astonish-
ment at his not communicating such important
matters to the Minister instead of herself, who
was only on the outskirts of affairs. " Without
having too practised an eye," she proceeded, " I
concluded that the gentleman was a person who
came more to probe our thoughts than for any-
thing else." Her whole speech, necessarily un-
premeditated, was so lucid and full of tact that it
was followed by prolonged applause, and the
honors of the sitting were voted to the Citoyenne
Roland. As she passed through the House, her
exit was accompanied by continued plaudits ;
only Marat, inaccessible to admiration, growling
dissent.
In the mean while, debates concerning the trial
of Louis almost exclusively occupied the deputies.
Gironde and Mountain were agreed in recognizing
the King's guilt. His appeal to the foreigner
222 MADAME ROLAND.
was a crime against the nation, if ever there was
one ; but as to the judgment to be awarded, opin-
ions were profoundly divided. The Girondins
had from the commencement of their political
career been more decidedly anti-Royalist than
the Montagnards. They were the first to invoke
the magic name of the Republic. Penetrated
with classic ideas, the death of tyrants was an
article of their creed ; Aristogiton and Brutus
were saints in their eyes. We have seen at what
an early stage Madame Roland had cried, " Two
heads must fall !" Perhaps, had they then fallen,
it might have saved incalculable bloodshed. But
the aspect of affairs had entirely changed since
then, and this change was instinctively felt by the
Gironde.
For, before all, the Girondins were humanita-
rians, and only politicians and statesmen after.
It may have been the cause of their failure; but
if so, it became them better than success. One
of Brissot's first acts when in power was the aboli-
tion of slavery in St. Domingo, and if attended
with unfortunate results, it shows none the less,
among many other things, his zeal for the happi-
ness of man. With such tendencies, the attitude
of the Gironde towards a fallen monarch was not
what it had been when that monarch was sur-
rounded by all the pomp of royalty. As king, was
he not virtually dead already ? Why revive him
AT THE BAR OF THE CONVENTION. 223
then ; why bring him once more prominently be-
fore the public, and invest him with a factitious
pathos by death ? Unanimous in their conviction
of his guilt and of the urgency of a trial, they
were divided in their votes as to the kind of trial
and punishment to be chosen. This lamentable
schism, which split up their ranks, unfortunately
broke the backbone of their party.
CHAPTER XV.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE.
On the nth of December, 1792, the Prince whose
coronation a few years ago had been hailed as the
advent of better times, appeared as a prisoner to
be tried at the bar of the Convention. Was it
only a few years ago, or had centuries elapsed,
since he who now stood there attainted, shorn of
crown and titles, wrapped in unbecoming brown
overcoat, had lorded it in the glittering halls of
Versailles, and been pensively observed in his
royal scarlet and gold uniform, amid his fawning
courtiers, by an obscure daughter of Paris ? To
the heir of the proudest race of kings in Europe,
the total subversion of the old order of things
must have had something so stunning in its
effects that he might well have questioned his
own identity. There must have crept over him a
sense of phantasmagoric unreality, which, super-
added to temperament, may have helped to pro-
duce his singular apathy under such astonishing
circumstances.
Was ever in history sterner illustration of the
inexorable truth, "The sins of the fathers shall be
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PARTIES. 225
visited upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation " ? For behind Louis, in Louis
himself, more weak than wicked, the people saw
— even as Macbeth did in the magic glass of
Hecate — a whole long line of kings, who to the
wail of hunger and agony around them had been
deaf as the walls of those palaces where in
shameless orgies were dissipated the revenues
of the State ; so that in Louis XVI. they beheld,
not him alone, but the scapegoat of an entire
dynasty.
On the 20th of January, 1793, by a considerable
majority in the Convention, he was sentenced to
death.
What Madame Roland's vote would have been
does not appear. Michelet, with his fondness for
diving into the recesses of the human heart, would
like to know who represented her opinion on this
memorable occasion, — the man she loved, he de-
clares, though no one, according to him, was lofty
enough to be her ideal. In Michelet's time the
secret of that noble spirit had not been divulged,
nor had those heart-moving letters been discov-
ered which cast such a new, pathetic light on her
life. But this student of womanhood felt that
under the Amazon's breast-plate there throbbed
a passion as strong as the nature which curbed
it. His conjecture as to Bancal des Issarts was
wrong ; but passing in review the men she con-
15
226 MADAME ROLAND^
fided in, he characterizes Buzot as the heart of
the Gironde. A subtle touch this, the fire and
daring with which this man always took the lead
in the struggle of parties springing not from his
heart only, but from that of the heroine of the
Gironde. Buzot voted for the King s death, with
the proviso of its ratification by the people.
Already, during the King's trial, the position
of the Girondins in Paris had grown full of peril.
The Rolands had become the target at which
Hcbert through his paper, the " Pere Duchesne,"
daily flung the dirt of his scurrilous vituperations.
Marat, to whom every person in power straight-
way became a traitor, held them up as objects of
fear and suspicion to the mob. He had, in fact,
a special subject of grievance against the Minister
who refused him a grant of fifteen thousand francs
for his paper " L'Ami du Peuple." But in spite of
the continuous attacks against him in the Paris
press and by the Clubs, Roland remained firm
to his convictions of freedom of the press and of
public meetings, fearing nothing so much as to act
despotically in the name of liberty.
How far things had already gone with them at
this time is shown by Madame Roland's letter x of
1 This letter, which is of great interest, only recently came to
light at a sale of autographs, and has hitherto only been pub-
lished in a French newspaper. It is addressed to the ex-Minister
of War, then General Servan.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PARTIES. 22*]
the 25th December, year first of the Republic.
She begins : —
" The date is not indifferent, for who knows what to-
morrow may bring forth? It is on the cards that many
worthy people may not see its end. There are dreadful
designs afloat against Louis, so as to give occasion to in-
clude the Deputies and the Minister of the Interior in the
massacre. ... I have sent my daughter to the country,
and settled my little affairs as if for the long journey, and
can now calmly await whatever may happen. Our social
institutions render life so painful to honest hearts that its
loss ceases to be a hardship, and I have so thoroughly
familiarized myself with the thought of death, that, should
the assassins come, I shall go to meet them, persuaded as
I am that the only thing in the world likely to arrest their
blows is to show an unmoved front. . . . Warnings of in-
tended assassinations come pouring in, for they honor me
with their hate, and I know the reason why ! During the
first fortnight of Roland's Ministry the scoundrel Danton
and the hypocritical Fabre were always about us, aping a
love of what was good and honest. They saw through me,
and, without my ever saying anything to confirm their
opinion, concluded that I sometimes wield the pen ; and
these writings of M. R have produced some effect;
therefore, etc.
" Since this Marat has been set to bark at me, and has
never left me a minute's peace ; I have been pelted with
pamphlets. . . . My silence has only increased their rage.
1 am Galigai, Brinvilliers, Vot'sm, everything that is most
monstrous ; and the women of the markets intend treating
me like another Lambaile.
" So I send you my portrait, for I would still wish to
leave something of myself to my friends. It pleases me to
tell you that with the exception of my husband, my daughter,
228 MADAME ROLAND.
and one other person, you are the only friend to whom I am
giving it. Nobody knows of its existence, not even the
general run of friends.
" I cannot imagine what things will come to ; but if Paris
goes to ruin, the South must save us. . . . Most of our
Deputies only walk out now armed to the teeth. Numbers
of people implore us not to stay at night at the Ministerial
residence. How charming is this Parisian liberty! Well!
Had you stayed in office we should not have come to this.
Had the federate troops been placed under your command,
you could by discipline have turned them into a respectable
sort of support. They might have served instead of the
guard, which they have not dared to levy. Pache has done
nothing but disgust, annul, and send them away again. If
they save us to-morrow, it will be of their own accord, and
in disregard of orders.
u In truth, I am weary of this world ; it is not made for
honest folk, and there is some reason for dislodging them
from it. Farewell, brave citizen ; I esteem and love you
with all my heart. I shall write to you in a few days if
the storm has not engulfed us. In case it has, remember
my daughter sometimes, and the pleasant plans we had
formed! ..."
Things had come to such a pass, that now the
only question left was when the threatening storm
would burst. The two parties — but one in their
opposition to the Moderates of 1791 — were now
engaged in such a deadly duel that the trial of
Louis (judged really on the 10th of August, and
an old story by now) dwindled by comparison
into insignificance. And this struggle is so en-
grossing, because on its issue really depended the
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PARTIES. 229
fate of the Republic. But had its fate not been
decided already, from the fact that such a struggle
existed ? Was there any chance of success when
those who united should have faced their common
foes, hated each other fully as bitterly as them ?
They should have united, — yet it lay in the fatality
of circumstances that they could not unite any
more than will oil and vinegar, however much you
may shake them up together. Although their
aims were practically the same, — for there was
no difference in kind between the Republic which
Danton wanted and that for which Brissot strove,
— yet were their methods radically opposed. The
Gironde tried to found the new order on law ; the
Mountain on terror. The Gironde considered
that the Revolution had gone far enough, and that
the crying need was to inspire the nation with a
sense of security ; the Mountain held that whole
sections must be exterminated before a reorganiza-
tion could take place. It is the fashion now to
praise up the last as the strong party, who knew
what they wanted and managed to get it ; but if
success is the test of capacity, their twelve months
more of rule, or so, does not give them such vast
superiority over the Girondins. Had they really
managed to establish a permanent government
there would be some reason for extolling their su-
perior sagacity ; but where was the advantage of
their system, seeing that their wholesale execu-
230 MADAME ROLAND.
tions — if they intimidated for a time — only-
turned the nation's love into loathing ?
It is said that the strong coercive measures which
they adopted insured the splendid triumphs of the
French army, whereas they had chiefly suffered
reverses during the Girondin ascendancy. But
one of the most glorious battles, that of Jemmapes,
had been won by Dumouriez, — a man appointed
by the Gironde, but for whose subsequent treachery
it could in no wise be blamed. When one remem-
bers how largely the army of France was com-
posed of raw volunteers, inexperienced if full of
enthusiasm, their early reverses followed by sub-
sequent victories may be explained quite apart
from party policy.
In fact, most of the successful measures, such
as the formation of some of those powerful com-
mittees, — to be turned into engines of destruc-
tion against their founders, — were originated by
the Girondins and appropriated by the Jacobins
afterwards. Thus the important measure of
sending republican commissioners to the camps
to control the generals and keep the Convention
informed of their spirit had been a proposition of
Vergniaud. No single cause contributed more,
perhaps, than this measure to the success of the
Revolutionary army ; yet was the Gironde too
short-lived to reap the benefit of this, and its
credit redounded to their political persecutors.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PARTIES. 23 1
But the capital charge — that which ruined the
Girondins in public opinion — was the accusation
of federalism. The one inexpiable sin in the
eyes of the Revolutionists was the sin against
the unity and indivisibility of the Republic. But
had they entertained such a design ? And if so,
was it really so culpable ? In Madame Roland's
letter to Servan her expression " If Paris goes to
ruin, the South must save us" sufficed to send
her to the guillotine. We see from her Memoirs
that when the enemy was expected to march
upon Paris, the expediency of removing the seat
of Representatives to the southeast had been dis-
cussed. But these changes were only talked of
as expedients in critical moments, not as perma-
nent modifications of the State. The deputies
from Bordeaux and Marseilles were credited with
a dislike to Paris, and the wish of reducing its
influence to the level of that of the provinces ;
but how about Madame Roland, who laughingly
called herself a badaud (cockney), and who from
dreary Villefranche had turned longing eyes
towards Paris, every association of her childhood
being inwoven with its streets ! Yet she repre-
sented the spirit of the Gironde in its entirety
more completely than any of its male members.
No doubt the September massacres did for a
time set Madame Roland's heart against Paris.
232 MADAME ROLAND.
In the heat of her indignation she called it a city
of cowards. To her belief the massacres had not
been the spontaneous act of a population impelled
by panic, but the deliberately-planned crime of a
band of miscreants. And so she argued that the
National Convention should be placed out of
reach of the terrorism of Paris, where an insur-
rectionary commune, with an armed force at its
back, practically deprived it of free agency, —
and pointed to the United States as an example
to be followed ! And she strenuously advocated
the formation of a Departmental Guard as a bul-
wark to the Representative Assembly.
But these suggestions and provisional schemes
have no connection with any plan of parcelling
out France into a number of small federate com-
munities. Madame Roland herself owns that
whatever might be advanced in favor of such
federate republics as Greece, Switzerland, and
the United States, the actual situation of France
— threatened on all sides by invasion — called
imperatively for unity. Buzot, in a conversation
where this was discussed, she says, asserted for
argument's sake that that growing patriotism
which had inspired the whole body of Athenians
to take refuge on ships and abandon their city to
the enemy, was possible in a small State only
whose inhabitants all knew and loved each other
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PARTIES. 233
like the members of a common family. These
remarks, reported and denounced by Anacharsis
Clootz, became one of the chief instruments by
which the destruction of the Gironde was eventu-
ally brought about.
In fact, there exists no evidence whatever of
the Girondins having contemplated the founda-
tion of a federate Republic; on the contrary,
they were as deeply convinced of the necessity of
its unity as the Jacobins. But supposing that
they had contemplated the future possibility of
such a form of government, was it for Robes-
pierre to stigmatize such a conception as a crime ?
— Robespierre, according to Louis Blanc, the
most thorough-going disciple of Rousseau. Had
he then forgotten these sentences in the "Con-
trat Social," which he who runs may read ?
"Moreover, if a State cannot be restrained within moder-
ate limits, there still remains an expedient ; that, namely,
of not having a permanent capital, but of shifting the seat
of the government from town to town, where the represen-
tatives of the nation shall meet in turn.
" Let the land be peopled in equal proportions, let the
same rights obtain everywhere, and life and plenty be
everywhere diffused. By this means your State will be-
come the strongest and most wisely-governed in existence.
Remember that the walls of towns are only raised on the
dilapidation of villages. For every palace that is building
in the capital I seem to see a whole country-side falling
into decay."
234 MADAME ROLAND.
If ever there were a strong protest against
centralization of government Rousseau made it ;
yet Robespierre shrank not on mere suspicion
and loose reports of such doctrine from sending
the Gironde to the guillotine.
CHAPTER XVI.
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS.
On a freezing day of January took place the exe-
cution of Louis XVI. His death, as subsequent
events amply proved, did not help to cement the
future stability of the Republic. Better to have
followed the opinion of Condorcet and many of
the Girondins, and have sent him into banish-
ment. You can decapitate a man, but not a
principle ; and the King dead, there will still be
the cry of " Long live the King ! " The founders
of liberty, instead of imitating the methods of des-
potism, should have left something, as Danton
said at a later stage, to the guillotine of opinion.
Force begets force, and violence violence: here
lies the justification of Marat, Robespierre, Saint
Just, Tallien, and the most furious of the Corde-
liers. But were this the only law, mankind
would be revolving in a vicious circle of retribu-
tion. The apostles of humanitarian principles
should have taken their stand on a higher plat-
form, and have cast a veil over wrongs never to
be righted by fresh wrongs in a new direction.
236 MADAME ROLAND.
Vergniaud, in replying to Robespierre's denun-
ciation of the Girondins, gave the loftiest inter-
pretation to the principles which his party
represented. Said he : —
" We are called Moderates ; and for whose benefit ? If
for that of the emigrants, was it not we who voted the
enactment of those rigorous measures which justice de-
manded? . . . Some men make patriotism consist in
tormenting others, in causing the shedding of tears. I de-
sired that men should be rendered happy by it. I did not
think that, like those priests and inquisitors who only
speak of their God of mercy at the stake, we should speak
of liberty in the midst of dangers and executioners. . . .
They believe in consolidating the Revolution by terror ; I
was fain to see her consolidated by love."
Madame Roland's letter to Servan shows how
perilous their position was already by the end of
1792, the first year of the Republic. Champag-
neux describes the continual harassing anxieties
of his friend during these last months of her
husband's ministry. Every day brought fresh
attacks, and every night warnings of intended
assassinations. The leading Girondins constantly
sought refuge in the house of friends; Madame
Roland alone scorned all precautions. Braver
than the bravest, if die she must she would die
at her post. Once, at her friends' entreaties,
she had almost consented to leave the exposed
situation at her official dwelling ; and some dis-
guise being required, she assumed the dress of a
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS. 237
peasant woman ; but the bystanders objecting to
her head-gear as not clumsy enough, she snatched
it from her head, flung it away, and declared she
would not proceed with this unworthy masquerade.
" I am ashamed," cried she, "at the part you wish
me to play ; I will neither disguise myself nor go
hence. If they wish to assassinate me, let it be
at my own home. I ought to set this example of
firmness, and I will."
From this day till Roland tendered his resigna-
tion his wife never left the house. Prepared for
the worst, she always slept with a loaded pistol
within reach, — not for purposes of attack or de-
fence, but to guard herself from outrages worse
than death.
Careless for herself, or, more properly speaking,
feeling it her duty to remain, Madame Roland
was very anxious to know her daughter in safety.
Eudora, now between twelve and thirteen, was a
gentle, blue-eyed girl, whose abundant hair fell
in fair clusters about her shoulders. She lacked
her mother's passionate mental energy, and' ap-
peared by contrast of a cold, unimpressionable
temperament, which made the idea of having to
intrust her to others less bitter than it would
otherwise have been. The parents decided to
send her to Roland's elder brother under the
charge of a Mademoiselle Mignot, her instructress.
But when it came to the point other counsels
238 MADAME ROLAND.
prevailed ; it was judged even more hazardous to
send Eudora to the country than to know her
under her mother's protection. The time-serving
woman in whom Madame Roland would have re-
posed so great a trust, and for whose old age she
had tried to provide, left as soon as Roland retired
from office, to reappear on the trial of his wife,
when her deposition against her former mistress
served to give a shadow of plausibility to some of
the charges in the indictment. Roland resigned
his post of Minister of the Interior on the 22d
of January, the day following that of the execu-
tion of Louis XVI. No invitations poured in
now pressing him to remain in office. Highly
as the Gironde valued "his services and integrity,
its own grim struggle for existence engrossed it
completely.
Roland, in fact, had become a source of weak-
ness instead of strength to it. The partisans of
the Commune had made him the special mark
of their malignity. His persistency in exhorting
the municipal officers to render their accounts;
in charging them and Danton with peculations ;
in informing the Convention of the crimes and ex-
cesses daily committed by the pilfering of shops,
the street-robberies, the expulsion of public func-
tionaries, and the decrees of the Assembly set
at naught by the Municipality, — had made him
at that time the most unpopular man in Paris.
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS. 239
His urgent entreaties that his own accounts
should be passed remained unheeded. He him-
self was taxed with dishonesty in his administra-
tion. The most absurd rumors were greedily
swallowed, — as of his having deposited a large
sum of money in a London bank. Much as he
wished it, he could not retire to his vineyards,
for that would have been regarded as tantamount
to a confession of guilt on his part ; and yet the
examination of the Compte- Rendu GMral, or gen-
eral exposition of his administration, was purposely
delayed to keep him a fixture in Paris with a
Damocles sword suspended above his head. It
was a heart-breaking situation.
The ex-Minister's health, never good, was giv-
ing way under these trials. The misdeeds he
could not prevent, and seemed to sanction as
being Minister, had given him a kind of jaundice ;
he could retain nothing on his stomach, — so that
to all Madame Roland's other cares, anxiety about
him was added. Matters were not mended by
their retirement into privacy. The modest re-
tirement of the Rue de la Harpe was stigmatized
by Marat as the boudoir of la Femme Roland,
where, under the spells of its Circe, the Gironde
was forging the plots that were to destroy the
Republic. The Clubs, more tumultuous than
ever, rang again with invectives against the Bris-
sotins, those traitors who had voted for ratification
240 MADAME ROLAND.
by the nation of the sentence on the King. Ro-
land was only spoken of as King Roland. Camille,
the too brilliant Camille, pierced them to the
quick in his " Histoire des Brissotins ; " but the
barbed arrow of his wit rebounded, alas! to cleave
his own heart when repentance came too late.
Meanwhile the sittings in the Convention grew
daily more riotous. Delegates of the nation were
seen rushing madly to the tribune, shaking fists
in each other's faces, and even drawing their
swords ! The two chief revolutionary parties
hated each other more fiercely even than Court,
Nobles, Priests, Royalists, Moderates ! But it is
always thus in the history of ideas. The more
men's ideas approximate, the more galling their
divergencies. Yet these struggles of Jacobin and
Girondin were mild compared with the war of
extermination which many of the conflicting sects
waged with each other some centuries after the
Christian era.
While this unhappy conflict raged in the Con-
vention, the fortunes of France were reaching
their lowest ebb. The news of the reverses of
Dumouriez, of the insurrection of La Vendee, of
the disturbances in Calvados, broke like so many
heavy seas over the decks of the Republic. The
Girondins, who still manned all the chief posts,
were held responsible for every disaster. Yet
they did not admit the greatness of the peril,
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS. 241
being either too culpably engrossed by the strife
of factions at Paris, or fearful of another panic,
or, what seems likeliest, too convinced of the
popularity of the Revolution to make them doubt
its stability. From the first, Brissot had relied
for success on the sympathy of neighboring popu-
lations ; and he must also have been aware, that,
as a large portion of the lands of the Church and
of the emigrant nobles had passed into the hands
of small peasant-proprietors, their interests were
enlisted in the cause of the Revolution.
Be this as it may, the ferment in the Clubs and
sections of Paris exploded on the 10th of March
in the abortive insurrection aimed at the Gironde.
But it would appear that neither Robespierre,
Danton, nor Marat himself had had any share in
this anarchical attempt to coerce the national
representation. Danton, on the contrary, had
sent warnings time after time to the unpopular
deputies, although after a last fruitless effort at
conciliation he had definitely thrown in his lot
with the Jacobins. On the day of this insurrec-
tion he had made one of his grand speeches,
exhorting the parties to union in face of their
common danger. Under the spell of his appeal
the shrieking discords resolved themselves for a
moment into harmony.
Alas ! this harmony, which would have saved
the Republic, was of brief duration. The forma-
16
242 MADAME ROLAND.
tion of the Revolutionary Tribunal became the
subject of fresh controversies. From the vision
of this terrible instrument, to be intrusted with
unlimited powers, to judge and slay, Buzot drew
back with a shudder. " They were going to insti-
tute a despotism more frightful than anarchy
itself," he said ; and although interrupted by vio-
lent uproar, he nevertheless continued to render
thanks to those who had hitherto deigned to spare
his life. " Let them only leave me time enough
to clear my memory from dishonor by voting
against this tyranny of the Convention ! . . .
What does it signify whether the tyrant be single
or plural ? When the public intrusted you with
unrestricted powers, it was not that you might
usurp its liberty." Vergniaud branded this pros-
pective of trial without jury with the exclamation :
"The Inquisition of State come again, and worse
than at Venice ! " Their remonstrances produced
some effect. The tribunal, which was elected by
the Convention, came ultimately to consist of a
jury, as well as judges and a public accuser. But
as the jury had to proclaim their vote openly,
exposed to the threats of the galleries and the
anger of the mob, they were practically acting
under coercion.
W T ith the institution of this tribunal the Revo-
lution enters upon a further stage. Auspicious
and beneficent was the beginning of its career ;
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS. 243
great the blessing it had already bestowed on the
nation ; but distracted by treachery, driven wild
by defeat, its promise turned to a menace, the
hope which it had brought the world was veiled
in terror. Yes, the Terror came in with the Revo-
lutionary Tribunal, planting the guillotine en per-
manence on the Place de la Revolution, stalking
spectre-like through the realm where it made
converts by fear instead of argument ; cramming
the prisons with promiscuous crowds consisting
of persons of every shade of opinion ; setting
aside individual liberty by breaking into houses
at all hours of the night, and bringing death to
the Suspects, — but likewise filling the foreign
invader with dread ; concentrating and intensify-
ing the action of the people ; giving a new im-
pulse to the energies of France, organizing armies,
and stimulating the people to melt down the bells
and the bronze saints of their churches to forge
arms for the volunteers.
The treason of Dumouriez, who went over to
the enemy, after an unsuccessful attempt to march
upon Paris, inflicted a dreadful blow on the Giron-
dins. Nothing better occurred to the Montagnards
than to make the former responsible for the de-
fection of this general and to accuse Brissot of
complicity, although they themselves, with the ex-
ception of Marat, had been loud in their praises
of the hero of Jemmapes. The Gironde retaliated
244 MADAME ROLAND.
furiously by incriminating Danton, — a foolhardy
proceeding on their part ; for the Hercules of
the Tribune, putting aside all further thoughts of
union and pacification, made a speech of two
hours' duration, in which he came down upon
them with his sledge-hammer eloquence. The
irreparable breach was now made, and animosities
had reached such a pitch that the members of
the Convention, with the shortsightedness of fury,
annulled their own inviolability. Marat had given
the signal by his cry : " Let us strike traitors
wherever we may find them."
For the moment the Girondins achieved a rui-
nous triumph by the impeachment of Marat, who
had issued a proclamation to the Departments
declaring the Convention to be the seat of a
" Cabal sold to the English Court ; " whereupon
the Right and Centre, unanimous in their indig-
nation, voted that he should be brought to trial.
But while " the Friend of the People " was placed
under merely nominal arrest, having every atten-
tion lavished upon him by the municipal officers,
twenty-five out of the forty-eight sections of Paris
had given in their adhesion to a petition demand-
ing the expulsion from the Chamber of the
twenty-two chief Girondins. On the 14th of
April a deputation from the Commune, headed by
Mayor Pache, came to have the petition read at
the Convention. Great care had been taken that,
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS. 245
with the exception of the offending members,
the purity of the majority should be proclaimed.
This was but a sinister mask of moderation fain
to hide the imminent peril of such a measure.
The generous-hearted Fonfrede, the youngest of
the Girondins, broke the spell of helpless bewil-
derment that seemed to have fallen on the As-
sembly. " If modesty were not a duty," he cried,
"I should feel hurt at the omission of my name
from this list ! "
Three-fourths of the Assembly, echoing Fon-
frede's sentiment, claimed to be included too.
The majesty of the common will, as expressed
in the representation of the nation, asserted
itself on that day for the last time in the Con-
vention.
The petitioners had notified that their demand
of proscription of the twenty-two should be sent
for ratification to the Departments. Whereupon
Fonfrede pointed out that the sovereignty of the
people only made itself manifest through the pri-
mary Assemblies. This would have been a sig-
nal for a dissolution of the Assembly and the
plunging the country into the turmoil of elections
at a moment when its very existence, and that of
the Republic, depended upon the most absolute
concentration of all its forces.
The moment was one of infinite risk. The Gi-
rondins, hated by Paris, which they had attacked
246 MADAME ROLAND.
with inconsiderate violence, still possessed the
majority in the provinces. Their influence, their
safety, nay their very existence, lay in having re-
course once more to a General Election. But
Marseilles and Lyons had become centres of re-
action in the southeast, La Vendee had burst
into fierce rebellion for Church and King, and
in the north and east foreign armies held the
fortresses on the frontiers.
The great soul of Vergniaud grasped the situa-
tion ; saw the strife of parties hurrying France
to its ruin ; felt that, as they never could unite
again, one of them must perish. On this 20th of
April the Girondins were still free to choose.
Vergniaud chose for them. "Citizens," he said,
" a conflagration will be kindled ... to burst
forth on the convocation of the primary Assem-
blies. ... It is a disastrous measure, and may
end the Convention, the Republic, and liberty.
If you have no choice between voting this con-
vocation and yielding us up to our enemies . . .
citizens, do not hesitate between a few men and
the commonwealth. . . . Fling us into the abyss,
and let the country be saved ! "
" This was more than a noble impulse ; it was
a great action," says Louis Blanc. The Giron-
dins remained silent. Not one of them protested
against the stern verdict of their orator, but ac-
cepted their doom at his hands. These were the
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS. 2tf
men accused of conspiring with the enemy, of
sowing sedition, of federalist proclivities tending
to destroy the unity of the Republic : these men
who subscribed as one man to Vergniaud's patri-
otic cry, " Fling us into the abyss, and let the
country be saved ! "
The Convention, stirred to its depths, con-
demned the petition against the Gironde. But
it had practically lost its authority. The Com-
mune acted as a rival power which often set its
decrees at defiance, and the government practi-
cally passed into the hands of the members of
Public Safety, — that famous Committee of Nine,
established on the 6th of April, 1793, whose sit-
tings were held in secret, and who for a time be-
came the ruling power in France.
Marat, brought to trial, had been absolved by
the Revolutionary Tribunal. Smothered in gar-
lands of fresh flowers, crowned with laurel, he
was carried in triumph through the streets, fol-
lowed by a sans-culotte multitude. Loud-re-
sounding shouts and vivas warned the Assembly
of his approach. "The Friend of the People,"
attended by his formidable escort, once more
took his seat at the summit of the Mountain.
When he appeared on the tribune his voice was
drowned by the plaudits of the galleries. He ut-
tered a few words of thanks ; but what endeared
his success to him was the prospect of crushing
248 MADAME ROLAND.
his enemies as he was then crushing a wreath
in his hand. Looking towards the Right, he
muttered : " I have them now ! They too shall
have a triumphant progress, but it shall be to the
guillotine."
CHAPTER XVIL
LOVE IN A PRISON.
On the 31st of May, Madame Roland had sat
at home listening with a thrill of excitement to
the now familiar sounds of insurrection. She
heard the beating of the rappel and the ge'ne'rale
in the faubourgs ; she saw armed men quickly
tramping through the streets ; the ill-omened
tocsin sounded lugubriously. She was still in
Paris, although long prepared to leave it. Hav-
ing returned to private life, she considered herself
free to go, and judged that in case of danger
Roland would be more unencumbered if she and
Eudora were out of the way. But although she
had come to this decision for the sake of Roland,
of her own health, and " many other good reasons,"
she did not carry it out with her usual prompti-
tude. Was she quite serious in her wish to go, or
were there not still stronger reasons which kept
her lingering in Paris ? Her passports had also
been purposely delayed, for had not she too be-
come suspect? During this state of suspense she
was prostrated by violent spasmodic colic (the
250 MADAME ROLAND.
only ailment she suffered from), usually brought
on by over-excitement.
Able to sit up after a week's illness, she was
disturbed at half-past five by a loud knocking and
the entrance of armed men, sent by the Revo-
lutionary Committee to arrest Roland. On his
declaration that only violence should force him
thence, seeing he did not recognize the legality of
their orders, the spokesman went back to the
Council-General of the Commune.
No sooner had the men gone than Madame
Roland formed a daring plan. She would go her-
self, expose the iniquity of this proceeding, and
rouse the Convention to a sense of its duty. So
she left her husband in the society of a friend,
and closely veiled, with a black shawl thrown over
her morning gown, she hurriedly stepped into a
hackney-coach and drove full speed to the Place
du Carousel. The courtyard of the Tuileries was
filled with National Guards ; the doors were closed
and guarded by sentinels. With the greatest
difficulty she obtained entrance to the petitioners'
hall, and there paced up and down for over an
hour, listening with a beating heart to the dread-
ful sounds of tumult which from time to time
reached her from the Assembly. The final strug-
gle was raging there. All day long deputations
had been pouring in, demanding — nay, command-
ing — the arrest of the Girondin chiefs. Robes-
LO VEIN A PRISON. 2$ I
pierre, denouncing them for the thousandth time,
urged on their destruction ; Chabot could exult at
having " put the rope round their neck."
Whenever the door opened, the heroine of the
Gironde, while impatiently awaiting Vergniaud,
caught a confused vision of the wild scene within.
She burned to be admitted to the bar of the Con-
vention. Strung to the highest pitch of exaltation,
she felt a force within herself to sway this turbu-
lent Assembly, to move their hearts, to save at
this, the eleventh hour, those most dear to her.
Vergniaud hurried out at last, but gave her
little hope of admittance ; even should she obtain
a hearing, he told her, no hope was to be placed in
the Convention. " Ah ! " she exclaimed, " it could
do what it pleased, for the majority of Paris only
aspire to know how to act ! " Warned of the peril
she herself was running, she scouted danger, say-
ing that even if powerless to save Roland, she
might at least tell those within some home truths
not useless to the Republic, and by her courage
set others an example. Vergniaud assured her
that a motion of six articles was going to be dis-
cussed ; that petitioners, deputed by the sections,
were waiting at the bar, — an age for her to wait !
Well, she would go home, see what was happening
there, and return immediately, if he would inform
their friends of it. Most of them were absent,
Vergniaud informed her, for though brave enough,
252 MADAME ROLAND,
they were wanting in assiduity. " Too true, un-
fortunately," she admitted, and left him to fly to
Louvet's house, leave a note for him, and then
take a hackney-coach home. In her fevered im-
patience the horses seemed to crawl, impeded as
they were by detachments of National Guards ;
so she jumped out again to make her way home
on foot.
Roland had already left his house when she
reached it. The bearers of the warrant, unable
to obtain a hearing at the Council, had left him
in peace for that night. His wife seeing him
safely hidden at a friend's house, after informing
him of her plans, proceeded once more to the Con-
vention. She found it silent and deserted ; the
armed force had disappeared, two cannon and a few
men being all that remained of it. " What ! " she
exclaimed, "on the day of an insurrection, when
only two hours before forty thousand men in
arms surrounded the Convention, while petition-
ers threatened its members from the bar, the
Assembly is not permanent ? Then assuredly it
must be subjugated ! "
She had no option but to return home again.
By this time the streets, though illuminated, were
almost deserted. At the Pont Neuf the coach
was stopped by the sentry asking " Who goes
there ? " Some parley there was with him ; but
she got off at last, and was glad indeed to reach
LOVE IN A PRISON. 253
home in safety. As she was ascending the stairs,
a man who had slipped through the gate unper-
ceived by the porter accosted her with an inquiry
about Citizen Roland. Madame Roland, arrived
at last in her room, bathed in perspiration and
worn out with fatigue, kissed her sleeping daugh-
ter, and was just dashing off a note to her husband
when again startled by a loud knocking.
It was near midnight. The tramp of heavy feet
resounded on the stairs. The pen remained sus-
pended in her hand as a numerous deputation of
the Commune entered her room. They asked for
Roland, and on her replying that he was not in,
exclaimed roughly that she must be perfectly
aware of his whereabouts. " I know not," she
said, " whether your orders authorize you to ask
such questions, but I know that nothing can
oblige me to answer them."
After a whispered consultation the men with-
drew, but the sentinel left at her door and the
guard before the house apprised Roland's wife
what to expect. She ordered some supper, fin-
ished her note, and then, thoroughly exhausted
after a day of unprecedented excitement, went to
bed, and slept as soundly as if no dangers encom-
passed her. She had not been asleep above an
hour, when a servant roused her to say that gen-
tlemen from the Section wished to speak with her.
While she was carefully dressing herself, the maid
254 MADAME ROLAND.
seemed astonished at her mistress putting on
more than a dressing-gown. " It is well to be
decent when one is going out, my child," said
Madame Roland, calmly. The poor woman looked
at her and burst into tears.
" We have come to arrest you," said one of the
men on her appearance. After protesting against
the illegality of the order, she judged it more pru-
dent to acquiesce than to expose herself to any
violent proceedings by a refusal. A Justice of
the Peace had arrived, and now affixed seals to
every article of furniture, even to the chest of
drawers. She begged to be allowed to take out
her daughter's clothes, made up a small bundle
for herself, and wrote to commend Eudora to
the care of a friend ; but when the bearer of the
warrant asked to see the address, she tore the
epistle into shreds for fear of compromising her
friend.
In the mean while a promiscuous crowd had
invaded the premises. The pale reflection of
dawn mixing with the candle-light showed sinis-
ter faces peering about. The fetid atmosphere,
caused by the press of unwashed intruders, forced
Madame Roland to throw open a window and
inhale the morning air. Her daughter clung
sobbing about her. The servants stood round
scared and helpless. The loving mother, the
kindly mistress, was to be torn from them, dragged
LOVE IN A PRISON. 255
to prison ; and as she bade them farewell, entreat-
ing them to be calm, the tears and lamentations
of her household impressed even these officers of
the Commune, inured as they were to the most
tragic scenes.
" You have people there who love you," said
one of the Commissioners.
" I never had any about me who did not,"
replied Madame Roland, and she followed them
downstairs.
The street was full of people and guarded by
armed men. Erect and fearless, the great Cito-
yenne stepped through the crowd towards the car-
riage that was to bear her to prison as proudly
as, three short summers ago, she had walked
towards the Altar of the Federation. It was
seven in the morning of the 1st of June. Women
of the markets, glaring and shaking their fists at
her, shouted, " To the guillotine ! " Some of the
Commissioners obligingly offered to pull down
the blinds.
" No, gentlemen," she replied ; " innocence, how-
ever oppressed, should not assume the attitude
of guilt. I fear the eyes of no one, and do not
even wish to escape from those of my enemies."
" You have much more character than many
men," they said. " You can calmly await justice."
"Justice!" cried she. "If it existed, I should
not now be in your power. I would go to the
256 MADAME ROLAND.
scaffold as calmly, if sent there by iniquitous
men. I only fear guilt, and despise injustice and
death."
They reached the prison. The heavy gates of
the Abbaye closed on her. She crossed that
courtyard, those corridors still reeking with blood-
shed and haunted by the spectres of September.
Over that door might have been inscribed
" All hope abandon, ye who enter here ! "
Madame Roland was invulnerable to the shafts
of misfortune. Locked into her room, she sat
down, covered her face with her hands, and say-
ing, " Well, here I am in prison ! " fell into a pro-
found reverie. There she was, calm as to her
own fate, inexpressibly anxious concerning that
of her country and her friends, when, on the 2d
of June, the familiar sounds of insurrection
reached her in captivity. Marat himself that
day sounded the tocsin to call the people to
arms ; Henriot, the ruffianly commander, was
investing the Tuileries, and behold the Conven-
tion itself actually a prisoner in Paris !
After a feeble show of resistance, the Right
and the Centre, cowed by Henriot's cannon,
agreed to the expulsion of the twenty-two Giron-
dins, who to smooth matters were only to be put
under arrest at home. So fell the Gironde ; and
it is refreshing to find among the list of the pro-
LOVE IN A PRISON. 2$?
scribed the heroic name of Ducos, that martyr to
friendship, who when Marat would have saved
him because of his extreme youth scorned his
mercy, and cast in his lot with Fonfrede, be his
fate what it might.
" Things are rarely what they seem," says Ma-
dame Roland in her Memoirs, " and the periods
of my life that have been the sweetest were the
reverse of what outsiders would imagine. Happi-
ness, in fact, belongs to a state of feeling, and not
to external circumstances." Circumstances were
now at their darkest, but hidden in her heart she
had a hive of honey. In reviewing her past life
she had nothing with which to reproach herself ;
she had done her duty valiantly. In the very
act of securing her husband's liberty she had
sacrificed her own. From the beginning of their
union all her faculties had been placed at his ser-
vice, and reinforcing his powers with hers, she
had practically lifted him into the important posi-
tion which had now ended in ruin. But in this
marriage " the ascendancy of twenty years' sen-
iority, added to a domineering temper," had been
a heavy burden, which the wife had still borne
with uncomplaining fortitude.
She never ceased to honor and esteem " the
virtuous Roland;" she was devoted to him as a
daughter, she says ; but that love which he had
never awakened in her, which her powerful organi-
17
258 MADAME ROLAND.
zation could not escape, seized hold of her in the
stormiest days of the Revolution, to raise as fierce
a storm in her heart and shake the fabric of her
life to its foundations. The fiery trial through
which she had passed in finding a man who an-
swered to her ideal by the courage, purity, and
elevation of his nature, and who, while recipro-
cating her passion, recognized as fully as she did
herself the inviolability of previous ties, — this
trial had been so terrible that persecution, im-
prisonment, the scaffold itself, sank by comparison
into insignificance. Yes; when once her con-
jugal bonds had been forcibly wrenched asunder,
she welcomed the prison as a deliverance from
her invisible captivity, cherishing the fetters winch
left her free to love her friend unrestrictedly,
and thanking Heaven for having substituted her
present chains for those which she had previously
borne. Could any words more forcibly express
through what a terrible struggle she had passed ?
And these words would never have left her lips
had she not been shut out from the world, and
been writing to Buzot under the shadow of the
guillotine.
In reading the letters which the captive woman
sent to the proscribed republican, we must never
lose sight of the unique situation in which they
were penned, nor of the improbability of these
lovers ever again meeting, — which added a child-
LOVE IN A PRISON. 259
like openness to the tragic intensity of feelings
that seemed already to belong to the departed.
In the eyes of many to whom are thus revealed
the inmost recesses of Madame Roland's heart,
she may seem reprehensible for having allowed a
feeling to take root in her heart opposed to that
which she owed to her husband. But the Revo-
lution, by loosening the bonds of custom, by
stimulating the vital energies, by communicating
her volcanic commotions to her children, pre-
pared the soil for those insurrections of the heart
and heroisms of love so pathetically interwoven
with its political history. Now it is a Danton,
who, convulsed beside the grave of his wife (de-
ceased in his absence) has her dug up, and
clasps her inanimate corpse in his arms in trans-
ports of despair. Now it is a Vergniaud, for
whom to stay in Paris is death, and who stays
that he may not shorten by an hour his inter-
course with Mademoiselle Candeille, the beautiful
actress he adores. Now it is a Lucile, fair young
wife of Desmoulins, who glides round the prison
like his shadow, and like his shadow, too, follows
uncomplainingly to the guillotine.
That whole generation, while the social fabric
was yielding and cracking beneath its feet, and
while death encompassed it, was consumed by
the thirst for life. Into its brief existence it
crammed centuries of thought, action, suffering.
260 MADAME ROLAND.
It was ready to shatter all obstacles that hindered
the current of its passions. The indissolubility
of the marriage tie had been cancelled. An in-
terval of a few months sufficed between the rup-
ture of the old union and the formation of the
new. In this very month of May, 1793, the
records of the " Moniteur " prove the cases of
divorce to have been one third in proportion to
the marriages. Madame Roland no more be-
lieved in the indissolubility of the conjugal tie
than did her contemporaries ; and the bond
which claimed to keep together two people made
incompatible by differences of age, temperament,
or sentiments, appeared to her both anomalous
and cruel. But she never considered the possi-
bility of applying this reasoning to her own
situation. Her theories never served her as
stepping-stones to license. The more old foot-
holds of custom seemed giving way beneath her,
the more frantically she clung to her ideal of
Duty, that rock which had hitherto upheld her.
When it came to a question of gaining her own
happiness or of spoiling the last years of Roland's
fretted existence, she never hesitated at the sac-
rifice. And does not the highest moral worth
consist in overcoming temptation rather than in
never having been led into it ?
The perfect candor of Madame Roland's nature
had not suffered her to live in confidential inter-
LOVE IN A PRISON. 261
course with another while hiding -her thoughts
from him. It would have seemed like treason.
She had confessed everything, laying her heart
bare before Roland. u The knowledge that I am
making a sacrifice for him," she says, " has upset
his happiness. He suffers in accepting what yet
he cannot do without." Roland, if exacting in
daily life, could rise to great occasions. He
entered magnanimously into his wife's trouble ;
and there goes a tradition that he had formed a
resolution of voluntarily leaving her, should she
not succeed in stifling her love. But she would
never have consented to this, knowing as she
did how closely the fibres of his life were bound
up in hers : having so completely fulfilled her
maxim that a woman must make the man's hap-
piness in marriage, that he could not live without
her. Truly there seemed no way of disentangling
this moral knot, when the Revolution came and
cut it in two by throwing Madame Roland into
prison.
A sense of unwonted lull came to her behind
the iron bars. The reins had been roughly
snatched from her hands, and there was nothing
for her to do but let the fatality of events carry
her whither they would. With her habitual promp-
titude and love of order, she began arranging her
cell, placing a rickety little table near the window
ready for writing, and, to avoid disarranging it,
262 MADAME ROLAND.
having her meals set out on the mantel-piece.
These she tried to limit to what was strictly
necessary, although she was free to spend what
she liked on herself. The allowance of prisoners
had been reduced by Roland from 4s. 2d. to is.
8d. a day, but the rise in the price of provisions,
tripled within a few months, made this sum inade-
quate, after the deduction of expenses for bed,
etc. Retrenching her wants as far as her health
permitted, she took bread and water for break-
fast, a plain dish of meat and vegetables for
dinner, and a few greens for supper ; the sum
thus economized she spent on the wretches who
were lying upon straw, u that while eating her
dry bread in the morning she might feel the
satisfaction that the poor reprobates would, owing
to her, be able to add something to their dinner."
Books and flowers, whose soothing, uncom-
plaining companionship had been dear to her
from childhood, became the solace of her cap-
tivity. Thomson's " Seasons," a favorite book,
had been in her pocket on the night of her im-
prisonment. She sent for Plutarch, who had
made her a republican at eight years of age, and
whose " Lives " might help her to bear with for-
titude the reverses of her own ; for Hume's " His-
tory of England," and for Tacitus. To her regret
she could not procure Mrs. Macaulay's " History
of the English Revolution," a work at that time
LOVE IN A PRISON. 263
greatly admired by French Republicans, and which
she would fain have matched by a rival produc-
tion in her mother tongue.
The rare beauty of Madame Roland's character
and her winning manners could not fail to gain
the hearts of all who came in contact with her.
The jailer's wife showed her every kindness, made
her sit in her own room where the air was purer,
and where she was able to receive friends. Even
the turnkeys, some most villanous of appearance,
became humanized in her presence. Her faithful
friends rallied round her, Bosc assuring her of the
safety of her daughter, placed by him under the
protection of a worthy, kind-hearted lady, in whose
family she remained like one of her own children.
To Champagneux, who had always admired her,
she had never appeared so great as now, " when
she gave to the prison the dignity of a throne."
The kindly Grandpre, appointed Inspector of Pris-
ons by Roland to obviate some of their grossest
abuses, proposed that she should address the
Minister of Justice and the Minister of the Inte-
rior to protest against an imprisonment for which
no cause had been assigned. She readily con-
sented, more to vent her indignation than from
any expectation of a favorable result.
Tranquil on her own account, she was racked
by cruel anxieties concerning Roland and her pro-
scribed friends, especially the one dearest of all.
264 MADAME ROLAND.
Roland had fled, and was now sheltered in the
house of some ladies who lavished every care and
kindness on him. Some of the Girondins were
under arrest at their own homes, having remained
in pledge of the good faith of those who had es-
caped to the provinces, among whom were Barbar-
oux, Louvet, Petion, and Buzot. None of the
most prominent Girondins had been to the Con-
vention on the 2d of June : they had, therefore,
been able to take flight. But it was only by force
that his friends had prevented the determined
Buzot from rushing to the tribune, where he would
have wished to make his protest and die. He
now proceeded to Caen, which became the centre
of Girondin agitation.
While Madame Roland, behind her bolts and
bars, was striving after an inward calm impervi-
ous to calamity, she was rudely disturbed in her
meditations by loud cries persistently repeated
under her windows. They were those of the
newsmonger proclaiming to the people "La
gj-ande coltre, the great rage of the Pere Du-
chesne against that woman Roland imprisoned
at the Abbaye, and the discovery of the great
conspiracy of the Rolandists, Buzotins, Petion-
ists, Girondins, in league with the rebels of the
Vendee and the agents of England." Obscene
language, conveying the foulest abuse, was per-
sistently shouted in the hearing of the captive.
LOVE IN A PRISON, 265
Hebert, the vulture of journalism, marked the
destined victim, hovering round her in ever-nar-
rowing circles, ready to strike his talons into her
heart. These persistent asseverations of the
presence of Roland's wife at the Abbaye seemed
calculated to incite the mob to a repetition of
their September exploits ; but the reprobation
with which the Girondins had not ceased to
brand them had had its effect. They themselves
were destined to benefit by that impulse of hu-
manity. Stung to the quick by the infamy of
Hebert's calumnies, Madame Roland wrote to
Garat, the Minister of the Interior, with a pen
that knew how to stab : —
"Garat! to you I report this insult. It is due to your
cowardice ; and if still worse things should happen, it is
on your head I invoke the vengeance of Heaven. . . .
Yes, I know what events usually follow on those outra-
geous provocations. What matter ? I have long been
ready. In any case, accept this farewell, which I send to
prey on your heart like a vulture."
While still sore from the revolting infamies of
the Pere Duchesne, there came to her the sweet-
est consolation fate could still vouchsafe, — a letter
from Buzot. She replied to it on the 22d of June : x
" How often have I not read it, pressed it to my heart,
covered it with kisses ! . . . I felt calm and resolute on
1 The four letters written, during her imprisonment, to Buzot,
and published for the first time in 1864 by M. Dauban in his
" litude sur Madame Roland," came to light in November, 1863,
266 MADAME ROLAND.
coming here, not without hopes for the defenders of
liberty ; but when I heard the decree of arrest against the
Two-and-twenty I cried, My country is lost ! ' I have suf-
fered tortures till assured of your safety. . . . Continue
your noble efforts, my friend ! Brutus despaired too soon
of his country's safety on the plains of Philippi. As long
as a single determined republican is free, he must and can
be useful.
" As for me, I shall calmly await the return of justice, or
endure the last excesses of tyranny in such a way that my
example may not prove useless. What I feared most was
that you might take some imprudent steps on my account.
My friend, it is by saving France that you can insure my
safety. Nor do I care for safety at its cost ; but shall die
contentedly if I know that you are of use to your country.
Death, sorrow, torments are nothing to me, I can defy
them ; believe me, I shall live to my last hour without
wasting an instant in ignoble fears. . . .
" Certain privileges, due to my humane keepers, I am
forced to keep secret for fear of compromising them ; but
kind actions are more binding than chains, and supposing
I could save myself to-morrow, I would not, for fear of
ruining the honest jailer who does his best to soften my
captivity. ... I have my Thomson (dear to me on more
accounts than one), Shaftesbury, an English dictionary,
Tacitus, and Plutarch ; I lead the same life as in my study
at home, at the Ministerial dwelling, or elsewhere. ... I
when they were sold among a bundle of time-yellowed papers, —
the unpublished Memoirs of Louvet and Petion, a copy of the
Memoirs of Buzot, a tragedy of Salles, Notes and Memoranda
by Barbaroux. The whole lot went for fifty francs. These let-
ters, penned for one only, written without the faintest thought
of the public, illuminate with a fresh light the heart of the noble
woman whose last confession they were.
LOVE IN A PRISON. 267
have prevented R from addressing himself to the Con-
vention since the 2d of June. It is no longer the National
Assembly to persons of high principles. I know of no
constituted authority now in Paris from which I should
care to solicit anything ; I would prefer rotting in my
chains to such humiliation. The tyrants may oppress,
but degrade me, — never! never! . . . The unfortunate
R — — has been in hiding with several timorous friends
within the last twenty days, screened from all eyes, — more
of a captive than I. I am anxious about the state of his
head and health; he is now in your neighborhood — ah !
would he were so, morally speaking. I hardly dare tell
you, what you only will understand, that I was not over
sorry at being arrested. * They will be less furious, less
eager in R 's pursuit,' said I to myself, and should
they proceed to a trial I may be able to meet it in a way
most creditable to his reputation. It seemed to me I was
thus acquitting myself of a debt due to his sufferings ; but
do you not see that in being alone it is with you I abide ?
Thus I sacrifice myself to my husband by a captivity that
gives me more to my friend, and I owe it to my persecutors
to have reconciled duty and love : do not pity me! . . .
"Man a?ni, in yours of the 15th I have recognized the
manly tone of a proud and independent spirit occupied
with lofty plans, triumphing over fate, capable of generous
resolutions and sustained effort. How vividly it called up
the feelings which unite us ! But how sad is yours of the
19th, — how sombre its conclusion ! A great matter, for-
sooth, to know whether a woman will survive you or not !
What does matter is to preserve your life so as to be of
use to your country ; the rest will follow."
The rest will follow ! With those few scornful
words the prisoner puts aside the consideration
268 MADAME ROLAND.
of her personal lot, to invite her lover to concern
himself solely about that of his country. Here
we surprise the most intimate movements of Ma-
dame Roland's heart, when she had left the world
behind her and was speaking to one only, and
that one forever separated from her. Is it possi-
ble for a noble nature to express intenser affec-
tion than by rendering thanks to the dungeon for
having at last reconciled duty and love ? And
yet love itself is subordinated to her country,
ever first with her.
Was it likely that she or her friends would
wish to ruin France by fomenting a civil war?
Their mistake really lay in miscalculating the
extent of their influence and the spirit of the De-
partments. They had fancied that their first
summons would electrify the provinces, rally the
country round the Girondins, and deliver Paris
from what they considered the despotism of a
small terrorist faction. They argued in their
indignation that they would defend the unity and
indivisibility of the Republic from the encroach-
ing violence of the capital. Buzot, in his Memoirs,
gives a succinct statement of the plan they had
proposed to themselves. This plan consisted in
effecting a junction between the troops of the
Departments and the inhabitants of Paris ; of
re-establishing the Convention in its integrity, and
of insuring its liberty of action by a guard to be
LOVE IN A PRISON. 269
chosen from all the Departments ; and to have
the members of the Convention tried by judges,
to be likewise elected by the Departments. This
was the extent of Girondin federalism. A proc-
lamation was drawn up at Caen for the purpose
of raising a national force. Eight departments
of Brittany and Normandy became the centre of
the coalition ; but in other parts of France — at
Bordeaux, Rennes, Limoges, Marseilles, Besan-
con, Dijon, etc. — there were symptoms of insur-
rection. The Girondins had intrusted their fate
to the hands of General Wimpfen, who had
served under Dumouriez, — an excellent soldier,
who put his sword at their disposal. While col-
lecting troops, he issued an address to the Metrop-
olis, proclaiming that his intention was to march
towards, not against, Paris, for the sake of Paris
itself and that of the Republic.
However fair-seeming these threats, veiled
under an appearance of good intentions, civil
war must have inevitably followed them, but for
one insuperable obstacle, — that of the sincere
republicanism of the Girondins. Rage might
have blinded them for an instant to the conse-
quences of their proceedings ; but they had no
sooner clearly realized them than they gave up
all thought of fomenting the insurrection. If
their enemies could only be reached by striking
at the Revolution first, then let their enemies
270 MADAME ROLAND.
triumph ! Mountain and Gironde equally shrank
from the terrible conflict ; and the consequence
was that when Puisaye, appointed second in com-
mand by General Wimpfen, marched his five or
six hundred men, chiefly from the remotest parts
of Brittany, towards Vernon, near Evreux, to meet
the forces of the Mountain coming from Paris,
the combatants had so little confidence in their
cause that without striking a blow they took to
flight, leaving neither wounded nor killed. The
Mountain, with generous sagacity, had gone on
the tack of treating the insurrection in the Cal-
vados as a pardonable error, born of the intrigues
of a few conspirators ; and the result was that
the inhabitants were only too eager to testify
their adhesion to the ruling powers.
Under these distressing circumstances, General
Wimpfen dropped the mask of semi-republicanism
with which he had hitherto deluded the Girondins,
showed himself under his true Royalist colors,
and informed them bluntly that there remained
only one means of promptly and effectively at-
taining their object, — that was to open negotia-
tions with England, for which he already possessed
the necessary facilities, if they would intrust mat-
ters to his hands. The founders of the Republic
were horror-stricken. Without consulting with
each other they rose as one man, and broke up
the Conference in indignant silence. If they
LOVE IN A PRISON. 2*]\
erred in not carrying out to the letter Vergniaud's
heroic proposal, they speedily retrieved their error,
and so saved France from impending ruin. But
they themselves were now effectually ruined ;
there was no longer any abiding for them in
Calvados. The decree of the Convention, which
declared them Hors la loi (outlawed) had been
placarded on the Intendance Mansion at Caen.
Buzot's house at Evreux had been razed to the
ground and a gallows erected in its place, with the
inscription, " Here dwelt the traitor Buzot." The
earth seemed to recede from beneath them. Dis-
guised as soldiers in the ranks of the company
of the Breton National Guards returning to their
homes, they left Caen behind them.
Some three weeks earlier, on the morning of
the 24th of June, the Citoyenne Roland was
informed, to her surprise, that she was set at
liberty, nothing having been found against her
to warrant her detention. She lost no time in
collecting her few things, getting into a coach,
and driving to her apartments in the Rue de
la Harpe. Light as a bird she flew down the
step, was joyfully welcomed by the woman of
the house, and intended, after leaving a few di-
rections, to hurry to the kind family who had
adopted her child, when two men, who had
followed at her heels, stopped her on the stairs,
crying, " Citoyenne Roland ! "
272 MADAME ROLAND.
"What do you want ?" asked she, looking back.
" We arrest you in the name of the law ! "
Had ingenious persecutors laid their heads
together to concoct a plan for more effectually
tormenting their victim, they could not have de-
vised a more successful one. The door of the
cage had hardly been opened, — the resignation
of the prisoner had hardly given place to a thrill
of joy at her freedom, and to the delightful antici-
pation of again clasping her daughter to her heart,
— when she was recaptured. In her vivid descrip-
tion of this event Madame Roland herself gives
up attempting a description of the disappointment
she suffered.
Once more dragged to prison, she did not sub-
mit to this second incarceration without a protest
addressed to the section of Beaurepaire, — its only
result being that of leading to the imprisonment
and death of the younger Cauchois, son of her
landlord, who made some efforts to save her.
Taken to Sainte Pelagie this time, — a sinister
prison, situated in a low, remote quarter of Paris,
— the great citoyenne was lodged in a narrow
cell, only separated by a thin partition from that
of assassins and prostitutes, where it was impossi-
ble to avoid hearing the foulest language and
seeing the most revolting sights, — the building
where the men were kept facing the wing occu-
pied by the women, who between them kept up a
LOVE IN A PRISON. 273
perpetual fire of ribald jokes and indecencies. As
she had no option between taking exercise in a
filthy room in the company of those miscreants,
or of remaining shut up in her cell, she preferred
the latter, vainly trying to mitigate the stifling
heat of July by wrapping paper and leaves round
the bars, glowing with the sun. But her mental
suffering rendered her almost oblivious to these
trials. The hope of seeing her daughter, again,
so cruelly foiled, had struck her a heavy blow,
and she dared not even indulge in the luxury of
sending for her occasionally, lest the girl should
attract the attention of the Argus-eyed Hebert
and company, and be thrown into prison as the
offspring of " conspirators." Such cases were
not unknown, and alarmed her indescribably.
Grief overwhelmed her ; but only for a moment.
In her next letter to Buzot, of the 3d of July,
there is no trace of weakness. She says : —
" My friend, do not let us transgress so far as to strike
the bosom of our mother in speaking ill of that virtue which
we buy by cruel sacrifices, it is true, but which in turn re-
pays us by such precious rewards. . . . Tell me, do you
know a greater gain than that of rising superior to adversity
and death, and of finding something in your heart capable
of sweetening and embellishing existence to its latest breath ?
Tell me, did anything ever give you this experience more
fully than the knowledge of our mutual attachment, in spite
of the contradictions of society and the horrors of oppres-
sion? ... I will not gainsay that I am indebted to it for
being pleased with captivity. Proud of persecution at a
274 MADAME ROLAND.
time when virtue and character are proscribed, I would
have borne it with dignity, even apart from you ; but you
endear it to me. The wicked think to crush me with their
chains. Madmen! what care I whether I am here or there?
Does not my heart go with me everywhere ; and is it not
in prison that I am free to follow its dictates ? . . . From
the moment I am alone my duties are restricted to good
wishes for what is just and honest, and even so you still
claim the first place. Nay, I know too well what would
have been my duty in the natural course of things to com-
plain of the violence which has snatched me from it. If I
must die . . . well, I know of life the best it contains,
while its continuance would probably only exact fresh sacri-
fices. . . . The moment in which I gloried most in my exis-
tence, when I felt most vividly that exaltation of soul which
dares all dangers and rejoices in facing them, was the one
on which I entered this Bastile to which the executioners
have sent me. ... It seemed to give me an occasion of
serving Roland by the firmness with which I could bear
witness ; and it seemed sweet to be of some use to him,
while, at the same time, my seclusion left me more entirely
yours. I should like to sacrifice my life to him, that I might
have the right of giving my last breath to you alone."
It was no fine-sounding phrase, when the wife
of Roland said she would sacrifice her life for him !
She had effectually done so ! And though sev-
eral persons were sent at intervals, both by Roland
and Buzot, to help her to escape (a not impractic-
able scheme, especially from the Abbaye), she per-
sistently refused to avail herself of this chance, —
partly from fear lest the pursuit of her unhappy
husband would be carried on with greater zeal
LOVE IN A PRISON. 2y$
when she could no longer act as scapegoat for
him, and partly, as we have seen, not to risk the
liberty of the good jailer who should connive at
hers ; so she remained, making lighter of her po-
sition than she felt it to be, to allay the anxieties
of the proscribed Buzot, to whom she wrote again
on the 6th of July : —
"Calm yourself, my friend; this new captivity has not
aggravated my state so much that we should risk anything
to change it. . . . Fourteen days ago I sent for this dear
picture, x which hitherto, by a kind of superstition, I would
not place in a prison. But why deny myself this poor and
precious consolation in the absence of the original ? It is
next to my'heart, hidden from all eyes, felt at all moments,
and often bathed with my tears. Yes ; I admire your cour-
age, I am honored by your attachment, and glory in the
efforts with which these sentiments may inspire your proud
and sensitive soul. . . . Whoever is capable of loving as
we do feels within himself the root of all great and good
actions, the reward of the heaviest sacrifices, a consolation
in all trials. Adieu, my best beloved, adieu ! '
The last letter she sent to the outlaw was
penned on the 7th of July. After that date
1 " This dear picture" is written in English in the original. It
was Buzot's miniature, already spoken of, at the back of which
Madame Roland had affixed a closely-written sketch of the origi-
nal. She had given him hers in return, as may be inferred from
the allusion in her letter to Servan. This miniature of Buzot,
which she probably carried with her to the scaffold, was discov-
ered, in 1863, amid a heap of vegetables at a green -grocer's stall
at Batignolles, and came into the possession of M. Vatel, through
whom it was made known to M. Dauban.
276 MADAME ROLAND.
Buzot lost his last ray of comfort in the cessation
of all intercourse with her whose picture he, too,
carried next his heart.
" You cannot imagine the charms of a prison, mon ami,
where we are only responsible to ourselves for what use
we make of time ! No tiresome interruptions, no painful
sacrifices, no petty cares ; none of those duties all the more
imperious because they appeal to our sense of right ; none
of those conflicts between the laws or prejudices of soci-
ety and our dearest impulses ; no jealous looks to watch us
and everything we do; nobody who suffers from one's mel-
ancholy or inaction, or who exacts sentiments beyond one's
control. Given back to oneself, with no obstacles to over-
come, one may honestly give free play to one's thoughts,
without injuring the rights or affections of any one, and
thus recover moral independence in the bosom of captivity.
But I would not have allowed myself this kind of independ-
ence by disburdening myself of another's happiness which
I yet found it so difficult to make. Events have brought
about what I could not have achieved myself without a
kind of crime. How I cherish the fetters where I am free
to love you wholly, and where I may always think of you !
. . . Persevere in your generous efforts, serve your coun-
try, save liberty ; every one of your actions is a delight to
me, and your conduct makes my triumph. . . . Oh, you
who are as dear as you deserve to be, temper the impatience
which torments you ! In thinking of my fetters, remember
also what I owe to them. . . .
" I have cordially approved the resolution of the Depart-
ments to act only in concert. I know not whether these
delays, by giving the enemy so many opportunities for mak-
ing his preparations, may not prove fatal to the good cause.
. . . True, the majority of Parisians would open their arms
to their brothers from the Departments ; they are looking
LOVE IN A PRISON. 277
forward to them as deliverers. . . . After so much delay,
there should be no partial action ; they ought to move in a
body now. Their chief aim should be to secure the Post
Office, to maintain perfect discipline, to enlighten public
opinion by lucid and truthful writings, to attend carefully
to the provisions, to the means of defraying the expenses,
and their wise regulation. These are the matters to which
the deputies should attend, and which require careful con-
sideration. There are nearly always people enough fitted
for action, but only a few able to lead. . . .
" It seems to me that even independently of the general
interest, every department requires the preservation of unity ;
for, under the false pretence that they wish to destroy this
unity, the Communes, once most favorably inclined, have
been set against them. To take any extreme measure,
therefore, would be to incur the risk of terrible internal
divisions. . . .
" But do you know that you speak very lightly of sacri-
ficing your life, and that you seem to have come to this
conclusion quite independently of me ? How do you ex-
pect me to look upon it? Is it decreed that we can only
deserve each other by running to destruction ? And if fate
should not permit us to be soon reunited, must we there-
fore abandon all hope of ever meeting again, and see only
the tomb where our elements may mingle ? . . . Adieu, my
wellbeloved ! "
Yes ; for these two, whom the fatality of pas-
sion had linked together while the law of society
kept them asunder, — who had met in their com-
mon love for the Republic, and been flung apart
by her, — there remained nothing now but the
tomb, to which the Revolution was hurrying them
with gigantic strides.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN OUTLAWRY.
On the eve of the 14th of July, the fourth anni-
versary of the storming of the Bastile, from which
the year of Liberty dated, a tall, beautiful girl, in
Normandy cap and simple white dress, stopped at
a sombre-looking house in the Rue des Cordeliers,
and asked for Marat. She had come from Caen,
where she had seen the proscribed Girondins, but
without coming into personal relations with them,
though she had spoken to Barbaroux, without re-
vealing her purpose.
Marat — who knows not the tragic tale ? — re-
ceived Charlotte Corday sitting in a medicated
bath, covered by a board for writing, when she,
pretending to bring him news of the traitors at
Caen, plunged her knife into his heart.
On the day of Marat's funeral, at which the
whole Convention assisted, Champagneux was on
his way to Madame Roland in her prison. The
honors paid to Marat rilled her with violent in-
dignation, succeeded by hopeless gloom. " I shall
never leave this place," said she, " but for the
scaffold. However, I suffer less concerning my
IN OUTLAWRY. 279
own fate than for the calamities which will over-
whelm my country ; it is ruined ! " After this
she was silent, but roused herself to give Cham-
pagneux a message for Brissot, whom she urged
in glowing terms to enlighten his countrymen as
to the principles and motives of his political career.
She knew that nothing else remained ; and the
leader of the Girondins, discovered and arrested
at Moulins, confined in the identical room which
Madame Roland had occupied at the Abbaye, set
about composing his " Testament Politique." This
work, according to Champagneux the most forci-
ble of all Brissot's writings, Robespierre managed
to destroy. Champagneux seized the occasion of
the message to impress upon Madame Roland the
importance of continuing her own private and
political Memoirs, already begun, but left off again
in discouragement.
So Madame Roland resumed her pen, and with
her usual rapidity filled in the gray, small-sized
sheets of paper with her strong, clear handwriting.
How she contrived to hide her manuscript from the
jailers is a mystery. But she had succeeded in
taming even the ruffianly keepers of Sainte Pela-
gie, and to her they were full of little atten-
tions. Two thirds of her Historical Notices had
already been intrusted to a friend, who had burned
them, under apprehensions of a domiciliary visit.
The author, on learning their fate, could not help
280 MADAME ROLAND.
exclaiming, " I wish they had thrown me into the
fire instead ! " Standing on the edge of the grave,
not knowing from day to day whether she would
have time to finish her story, she intrusted to
these frail leaves the justification of her political
life. Undismayed by the trying miscarriage of
her first manuscript, she wrote so rapidly that her
Notices were finished in the space of a month,
and the rest of her Memoirs in about three
weeks.
These " Memoires," now one of the French
classics, contain the narrative of Madame Ro-
land's private life from infancy to the date of her
marriage. Modelled on Rousseau's " Confessions,"
they yet bear the impress of a strong, original
nature. Terse and limpid in style, they are free
from that academic sententiousness characteristic
of Manon's youthful letters, uniting shrewdest
criticism and description of character with the
idyllic sentiment so dear. to the eighteenth cen-
tury, — a book with a life crushed out on its
leaves ; the life of a woman in the plenitude of
existence, yet already practically cut off from it.
The circumstances under which this autobiogra-
phy was written, give it the strangest pathos.
These fresh pictures of child-life, these vernal hours
of youth, that seem to scent the pages containing
them, are painted on the dark background of a
prison. Leaning against the bars of her window,
IN OUTLAWRY. 28 1
the captive author sees again the bowers and
avenues of Meudon, the pleasant garden in whose
arbor of honeysuckle she has sat with her parents
on the long-past summer days. As she recalls
the convent, with its sacred chants and solemn
organ-peals, the vision is cruelly dispelled by the
oaths and curses with which thieves and forgers
interlard their speech. Even while describing
those tranquil months passed under her grand-
mother's roof on the lie St. Louis, she breaks off
abruptly with the remark, " I feel the resolution
of continuing my undertaking grow weaker. The
miseries of my country torment me; the loss of
my friends affects my spirits ; an involuntary sad-
ness benumbs my senses, darkens my imagination,
and weighs heavy on my heart. France is become
a vast amphitheatre of carnage, a bloody arena in
which her own children are tearing one another
to pieces."
But while the recollection of early friendships
rose from the past " like an old half-forgotten
legend," these friends proved the strength of their
attachment by coming, at imminent risk to them-
selves, to visit the prisoner. Now it was the
faithful Agatha — poor fluttered nun, driven from
her convent but still roosting near it — that came
to lament over her darling. Now it was Henri-
ette, most generous and devoted of souls, who
sought her old friend, not merely to console but
282 MADAME ROLAND.
to offer to take her place. She, a royalist, had
seen nothing of Roland's wife since the Revolu-
tion had swept them asunder. But misfortune is
a great peace-maker. Madame de Vouglans was
a widow and childless ; the prisoner had an old,
suffering husband who needed her care, and a
young, interesting daughter. What more simple
than to propose to die for her, — save a useful at
the expense of a useless life ! Henriette wanted to
exchange clothes with Manon, and tried to con-
vince her that by the time the trick was discov-
ered she could have made good her escape, — a
perfectly feasible plan, provided the captive were
willing. " But they would kill you, my good Hen-
riette ! " cried Madame Roland. " Your blood
would be upon my head ! Better suffer a thou-
sand deaths than have to reproach myself with
yours !" Tears and prayers were of no avail ; the
thing was impossible. She had no illusions as to
her own fate, though she often made light of it to
others.
Heroism is very catching. Nothing was com-
moner in the Revolution than this sublime disre-
gard of life. The wave of emotion leaped so high
that timid women, who in ordinary times would
hide from a thunder-storm, were ready to face the
most imminent perils. We have heard quite
enough of the horrors of this French Revolution ;
we can never hear half enough of the greatness it
IN OUTLAWRY. 283
engendered. The lofty deeds of antiquity fade
beside these modern ones ; the devotion of martyrs
is more than matched by that of republicans ; nor
does the history of man keep a higher record than
that of Condorcet serenely composing his work
" On the Progress of the Human Mind," while the
pursuers were on his track.
So Manon remained at Sainte Pelagie, and the
two friends parted never to meet again. But as
long as history reserves a niche in her Pantheon
for the great French-woman, let Henriette keep
a place beside her. Passing rich, indeed, Ma-
dame Roland was in the love of friends. Cham-
pagneux's constant visits had also rendered him
a suspect, and he was by this time himself a pris-
oner. Alarmed for Bosc's safety, Madame Ro-
land entreated him not to come so often, and to
take greater precautions when he did so. To his
care were intrusted the leaves that held the im-
perishable part of Madame Roland's life ; and he
took them at the peril of his own, keeping them
hidden for a time in the hollow trunk of a tree in
the forest of Montmorency. Proscribed himself,
later on, a fugitive in the depth of winter, he
carried the precious charge with him, and thus
rescued both her children, — the offspring of her
body and that of her brain.
What by this time had become of Buzot and
his comrades, whom we left enrolled in the com-
284 MADAME ROLAND.
pany of Breton volunteers, well provided with
fire-locks and cartridge-boxes ? Madame Roland
followed them in thought ; lived in hope that
they had taken ship to America. " Oh, my
friends ! " she wrote, " Heaven grant that you
may reach the United States — that last refuge
of liberty — in safety ! My hopes follow you
thither, and I entertain some hopes that you are
now sailing towards its shores. But, alas ! /am
doomed. I shall never see you more ! " Describ-
ing the impression made on her in youth by a
novice who on taking the veil had sung the cus-
tomary verse,
" Here have I chosen my abode, and will establish it forever,"
she now writes : " I have not forgotten the notes
of this little passage, but can repeat them as ac-
curately as if I had heard them only yesterday.
Good God ! with what emphasis I should utter
them now in America ! "
Alas ! the little band of outlaws was not on
the broad Atlantic, sailing westward. Far from
it. Would it, indeed, have been possible for
Buzot to leave the country where the woman he
loved was immured with no prospect but the
guillotine before her? He would much have pre-
ferred death. But they all of them loved France
so dearly, it seemed as though they could not
tear themselves from their natal soil. They had
IN OUTLAWRY. 285
left the brave Breton volunteers to strike across
country to Quimper, under the escort of six tried
guides, thence to take ship to Bordeaux. Nine-
teen men in all they were, mostly tall and vigo-
rous, armed to the teeth, and, to be the better
disguised, clad in those white smocks bordered
with red worn by common soldiers on the march.
Already the Departments had been filled with
Jacobin proclamations against the " traitors,"
* conspirators," " federalists," — descriptions of
their persons having been sent to all the Munici-
palities. Popular feeling, with the desperate in-
stinct of national self-preservation, had turned
dead against them.
Buzot, Barbaroux, Petion, Salles, Louvet,
Cussy, Girey-Dupr6, and a young man named
Riouffe, who joined them from sheer sympathy,
were among the eleven now starting on this
memorable retreat. Across desert moors, along
lonely by-ways, sinking knee-deep in bogs, strug-
gling through brakes and briers, the outlawed
republicans for security's sake tramped through the
night, sometimes beneath the quiet stars, or under
wild skies where the moon, flying before the hurry-
ing rack, seemed like them to fly from its hunters.
Strange Ulysses-wanderings these for men
bred up to peaceful professions, — authors, bar-
risters, students of arts and sciences. Afraid to
ask shelter at country inn or cottage, they once
286 MADAME ROLAND.
stretched their tired limbs in a hay-loft, — to be
summoned, in the name of the law, by a patriotic
villager at the dead of night, while flickering
torch-light cast its reflection now on the Nation-
al Guards without, now on these desperate men
within, determined dearly to sell their lives. A
curious colloquy, recorded by Louvet, then oc-
curred between the suspected and suspecting
parties.
"What are you doing here?" asked the Mayor,
tentatively ; to whom Barbaroux replied, —
" We were sleeping."
" But why in a hay-loft ? "
" We should have preferred your bed," quoth
Louvet briskly.
" And who may you be, my lively gentleman ? "
persisted the Mayor, whom Riouffe answered
laughingly,—
" Why, a tired volunteer, who did not expect to
be called so early."
More parley ensued, and while they looked to
their fire-locks, a more enterprising inquirer
wished to know why they carried such loads of
arms. " Because we know that this district is
infested by brigands," replied Buzot, bent on an-
noying the Departmental force, " and we wished
they should at least learn to respect what they
dislike." The upshot of it was that they all set
off amicably enough for Roternheim, not without
IN OUTLAWRY. 287
lurking misgivings ; but the snoring citizens of
that quiet country town, not in the mood for
catching rebels at such hours, suffered them to
leave its precincts in peace.
But oh the weariness of the long march ! One
of them suffered tortures from gout ; Barbaroux,
limping with a sprained ankle, leaned his heavy-
weight on his companions ; Riouffe, barefoot and
blistered, left a bloody trail as he tripped on tip-
toe to save his grazed heels ; Buzot plodded along
heavily, "carrying in his heart such bitter griefs,"
as Louvet knew from u his cJiere Lodoi'ska," who
had carried the solace of Buzot's letters to Ma-
dame Roland, and is called by her an M angel of
goodness and beauty." LodoYska whose heroic
devotion to Louvet is so thrillingly described by
him, was even now following closely in the wake
of the outlaws, risking arrest as suspect, driving
mysteriously it seemed to the Argus-eyed offi-
cials, but able to save herself by tact and pres-
ence of mind.
Hunger had added its pangs to the sufferings
of the wayworn wanderers. No sooner did they
approach a human dwelling than shutters were
barred, doors locked, and people shrank from
them as though they were plague-stricken. At
last, after dragging along for thirty-one hours at
a stretch, they reached the neighborhood of
Quimper, and hid themselves in a woody brake
288 MADAME ROLAND.
till nightfall. By way of climax to their misery,
they were drenched by a thunder-storm, literally
bedded in water, and too weary to rise. Even
the cheerfullest of them — Girey-Dupre\ Riouffe,
and the lion-hearted Barbaroux — lost heart for
jesting, and had only faint smiles left. Petion
alone remained imperturbable, steeled against all
misadventures.
But some respite to their sufferings was at
hand. Charitable friends hid them in their
homes. A favorable opportunity having offered,
the ex-deputies took ship for Bordeaux, which
the ever-rash Guadet, gone off by himself, had
depicted as devoted to the Girondins. Alas ! their
heaviest trials awaited them there. Reaching
Gascony at the end of September, they found
the Jacobins masters of Bordeaux and of the
whole country. The capitulation of Valenciennes,
the troubles in La Vendee, the surrender of Toulon
to the English, by exasperating the people flung
them perforce into the arms of the Jacobins, who
followed a clear if terrible policy of their own.
A new Constitution, made under their influence,
had been given to the nation, which rallied round
it as its last chance of union and security. The
proscribed deputies, illegally turned out of the
Convention, were now themselves regarded as
illegal and unconstitutional ; and the Gironde
rejected its Girondins.
IN OUTLAWRY. 289
Ignorant of this state of opinion at first, they
had not taken the precaution to hide their iden-
tity, but soon found out their mistake. Discov-
ered at an inn at Bee D'Ambez, they just escaped
falling into the hands of the Jacobins ; for the
house had been invested, and, as the report said,
their beds were found to be still warm. There
seemed no safety now but for the little band to
dissolve, and so put the hunters off the scent.
With sorrowful hearts they bade each other fare-
well. This great blessing was vouchsafed them,
that danger borne in common had tightened the
bonds of friendship. Petion and Buzot, who
never left each other " till death did them part,' 1
remained roaming about the Gironde, now retired
beneath some friendly roof, now hidden in the
caverns near St. Emilion. The others, in groups
of twos and threes, vanished along different routes,
mostly ending in the guillotine.
Madame Roland at Sainte Pelagie was not alto-
gether ignorant of these events. She knew now
that the proscribed Girondins, those who were
not already imprisoned in Paris, would never reach
America. This conviction, harder to her than
her own impending fate, filled her with despair.
She resolved to commit suicide. Several consid-
erations urged her to take this step. She would
foil her executioners and escape the las£ indig-
nity of mounting the scaffold. A most powerful
19
290 MADAME ROLAND.
motive with her was, that by doing so she hoped
to secure her personal property to Eudora, which,
were she condemned, would be legally confiscated.
Having come to this conclusion she wrote a letter
to Roland, asking him " to forgive her for dispos-
ing of a life which should have been devoted to
him, but that she having now been deprived of
the power of doing so, he would lose nothing but
a shadow."
Two months ago, the Citoyenne Roland had
declared that she would proudly have ascended
the scaffold ; then the victim, still able to speak,
could bear witness to the truth. Now, deprived
of this right also, she considered it a degradation
to submit. A paper to which she committed her
last thoughts on this occasion contains a striking
proof of her calmness and minute attention to her
daughter's interests. After giving a business-like
account of the little property she could claim in
virtue of marriage settlements and legacies, she
directs that a small sum of ready money shall be
laid out in buying her daughter the harp which
had hitherto only been hired for her ; " and they
shall get it from Koliker," she says, " an honest,
fair-dealing man, who will perhaps abate some-
thing of the hundred crowns (£12 10s.) which he
has asked for it Nobody can tell," she added,
" the relief that music affords in solitude and mis-
fortune, nor from how many temptations it may
IN OUTLAWRY. 291
be a safeguard in prosperity. Let the teacher of
the harp be kept a few months longer ; by that
time the dear little girl, by making good use of
her time, will know enough for her own amuse-
ment. Her drawing, also, should by no means
be neglected. It is an essential article of educa-
tion, to which Eudora' s care and attention ought
to be directed." Taking leave of her in a few
lines into which all her tenderness is condensed,
she added that proud legacy, " Do what they will,
they cannot rob you of my example ; and I feel,
and I will venture to say, upon the very brink of
the grave, that it is a rich inheritance."
The " dear little girl " was not suffered to remain
long with the kind family of Madame Creuze" la
Touche. How many were the good Samaritans
sent to the scaffold in those stormful days for
harboring a suspect or a suspect's helpless offspring !
Blue-eyed Eudora must go forth from the hospita-
ble roof, — whither was not so clear. Poor little
black lamb ! who would gather it to the fold, with
that Girondin brand upon it ? Every school-
mistress shrank from the charge. One at last
consented to admit the gentle child, if for the
dreaded name of Roland another were substituted.
Even that did not suffice for long in the eyes of
quaking citizens haunted by visions of the guillo-
tine. Eudora, in those months of terror, was
passed from hand to hand. But her mother's
292 MADAME ROLAND.
devoted friends, to whom she had bequeathed
Eudora, watched over her. She flourished in
secret, although deprived of every sou of her
parents' property ; and it may as well be added
here that she developed into a sweet and noble
woman, such as would have gladdened her mother's
heart ; that she married the son of the worthy
Champagneux, and returned ultimately to the
solitary vineyards of La Platiere.
Could Madame Roland have foreseen this, per-
haps it would have assuaged some of the anguish
which she devoured in silence. Serene though
she was in the presence of others, the woman
who attended her told one of the prisoner's friends
that she mustered up all her courage before them,
but that when alone she would sometimes stand
leaning against the bars of her window and weep
for hours together.
The idea of suicide was abandoned at the in-
stance of Bosc. He succeeded in convincing his
friend that she owed it to herself and her cause
to die grandly in the face of all, leaving an exam-
ple such as must inevitably make its mark on the
public.
The year 1793 was on the wane. In the dis-
tant Gironde, where the sunny vintage was over,
Buzot, still hidden in cellars or caves, was indulg-
ing (what survived all shocks of fate with the
men of that generation) the passion of writing
IN OUTLAWRY. 293
Memoirs. In pleasure-loving Paris, where the
theatres had never been more crowded with ele-
gantly-clad women, hair mostly dressed a la Titus,
the remnant of the Girondins lingered in close
confinement, awaiting their trial.
Much they still hoped of this trial. Madame
Roland, also, who was to be called as a witness,
indulged in favorable anticipations. In these
swift impressionable times, how might not opinion
be turned by the suasive tongues of the eloquent
Gironde ? She herself would strike sympathy
from the stoniest hearts by the fervor of her
appeal.
On the 24th of October the imprisoned Giron-
din deputies appeared before the Revolutionary
Tribunal : twenty-one in all, for although some of
the chiefs had vanished for the present, other ac-
cused persons, not originally belonging to them,
had been thrown in to make up the orthodox
number. Fouquier Tinville's act of accusation
contained an elaborate statement of all the errors
and crimes which the Mountain laid to their
charge, the sum and substance of which was that
they were royalists, federalists, fomenters of civil
war, conspirators against the Republic. Amar
did not blush to accuse Brissot of having con-
templated the ruin of the French colonies be-
cause he had made an attempt to emancipate their
slaves ; of having provoked the assassination of
294 MADAME ROLAND.
the patriots at the Champs de Mars because he
had given the first Republican impulse ; of hav-
ing wished to stifle liberty because he had declared
war against kings. The very acts that most re-
dounded to the glory of the leader of the Gironde
were turned into the engines of their ruin by the
hatred of party. To what end, in fact, dwell on
a trial at which their most determined enemies —
Pache, Chaumette, Hcbert, and others — appeared
as witnesses against the Twenty-one, a trial of
which the judgment was a foregone conclusion ;
nevertheless, much to the disgust of the Montag-
nards and Municipality, it was prolonged from day
to day. Vergniaud, who had promised his friends
to be the last to speak, could not contain his indig-
nation at the calumnious evidence of a witness.
Suddenly roused, he had one of those inspirations
of eloquence whose pathos and sublimity had so
often swayed the Assembly. The audience, the
very jury, were moved sympathetically ; that great
voice was answered by tears. A black outlook
for the Jacobins, this ! They suddenly declared
witnesses and legal forms to be perfectly unneces-
sary ; a deputation was sent to the Convention,
and the latter with much dispatch empowered the
jury to cut a trial short when they considered
themselves sufficiently enlightened.
At ten o'clock on the night of the 30th of
October the accused were summoned for the last
IN OUTLAWRY. 295
time, to learn that the trial was at an end. Ma-
dame Roland had not been called. The jury unan-
imously returned a verdict of guilty, and the
sentence pronounced on the Twenty-one was —
Death !
The condemned Girondins could not repress a
thrill of indignation, a movement of wrath. It
was not so difficult to die, but to die as traitors
to the Republic ! Valaze stabbed himself to the
heart, and fell dead. Lasource, turning upon his
judges, cried, " I die on the day when the People
have lost their reason. You will die when they
recover it ! " Brissot's arms fell nerveless to his
side ; his head sank forward ; he was not thinking
of his own fate, but of the wife, of the three young
sons, whom his devotion to the public cause left
utterly destitute. Fonfrede flung his arms round
Ducos, that young martyr of friendship who had
scorned Marat's mercy, sobbing, " I have brought
you to this ! " Ducos answered quietly, " Be com-
forted, friend ; do we not die together ? " Verg-
niaud was for taking poison ; but there was not
enough for all, so he flung it from him in con-
tempt : he would not be divided from them in his
death.
As they left the room where Valaze s corpse
lay stretched on the table, one by one the con-
demned went up to him and kissed him on the
forehead, saying, "Till to-morrow!" The pris-
296 MADAME ROLAND.
oners in the Conciergerie, feverishly awaiting the
verdict, heard them singing the Marseillaise in
chorus on their approach, and recognized the sig-
nal of doom. To whatever shade of political
opinion the prisoners might belong, the fate of
these men, still so young in years, — Brissot, the
eldest of them being under forty, — cut them to
the heart.
At midnight a funeral repast was laid out in
the dungeon, sent by an unknown friend. Noth-
ing had been forgotten. Delicately prepared
dishes, exquisite wines, rare flowers, were lavishly
supplied. Sitting there for the last time, the
doomed Twenty spent the night together, — now
conversing with the philosophic calm of a Socrates,
now, like true children of Voltaire and Diderot,
touching with brief lightning flashes of wit the
overhanging cloud of death. Oh ! do we not seem
to see them sitting there, lit up by bright-burning
tapers, passing the wine-cup round, eyes bright
with life, still busily talking, singing, breaking off
in their songs to talk again of the great passion
which makes them one — Republican France!
Vergniaud, presiding, surpasses himself in the
splendor of his thoughts ; the practical Gensonne
has nothing at heart but his country's future ;
leaning shoulder to shoulder, the Nisus and Eu-
ryalus of the Revolution feel blest in their friend-
ship ; Brissot, graver than the rest, is absorbed
IN OUTLAWRY. 297
in meditation ; the republican priest, Fauchet,
speaks of that Last Supper seventeen hundred
years ago, and of Christ on Calvary ; and all the
while, like the mummy at the Egyptian banquets,
stretched beside them lies the cold corpse of
Valaze.
Hark ! how quickly the clocks are striking the
successive hours of night, and the tapers are
burning low, and the feeble light of this last day
of October falls through the grating, imparting a
wan look to the flushed faces that have watched
through the night. Now Vergniaud is heard say-
ing, "Are we not ourselves the best demonstration
of immortality ? — we who now are here? — we,
calm, serene, impassive, beside the corpse of our
friend, in face of our own corpses, quietly dis-
cussing, like philosophers, the night or the flash
of light that will follow our last breath ? "
It is striking ten ; the door opens ; the execu-
tioner enters to fetch the victims.
CHAPTER XIX.
AVE LIBERTAS MORITURI TE SALUTANT!
Five death-carts bore the doomed ones along, —
among them Valaz£, whom no further wrong
could touch. Bare-headed, with bound hands, and
in their shirt-sleeves, they yet looked like con-
querors as, dragged through the streets of Paris,
they chanted the Marseillaise. The Vive la R/-
publique of the crowd they met with answering
shouts of Vive la Rfynbliqiie. Then — as one by
one they ascended the scaffold, as one by one
their heads fell severed by the swift stroke of its
knife — their chorus grew fainter and fainter,
till at last one voice only remained singing, —
Contre nous de la tyrannie
Le couteau sanglant est leve\
Then it too stopped — hushed in death was that
singing !
When the Girondins left the Conciergerie their
heroine entered it. It was the last milestone on
the road of the Revolution. Only a fortnight
before Marie Jeanne Roland entered its precincts,
Marie Antoinette had quitted them for the scaf-
fold ; so that the woman who hated the Republic
AVE LIBERT AS! 299
most bitterly was condemned almost simultane-
ously with that other woman who had the most
adored it. But such was the turbid confusion of
the times that the most heterogeneous kind of
people were mixed up together in that foulest
of prisons. Great nobles were cheek by jowl
with felons ; great ladies jostled women of the
streets ; by a freak of fate the Du Barry and Ro-
land's wife slept under the same roof.
Acutely at first did the disciple of Plutarch
suffer from this proximity to the reprobates of
society. She was sickened in the day by repul-
sive scenes from whose sight she could not es-
cape ; she was awakened at night by the fierce
quarrels of these unfortunates. But — oh, mira-
cle of human goodness! — ere long that part of
the prison where dwelt Madame Roland had be-
come an oasis of peace amid this Inferno. No
sooner did she appear in the courtyard than the
wrangling ceased.
Women lost to shame felt ashamed before her
radiant purity. To the most needy she gave
what pecuniary help she could, spoke to all
words of advice, hope, or consolation. In walk-
ing she was surrounded by those lost ones, who
clung to her skirts and seemed to regard her as
a beneficent divinity, while they treated the once
all-powerful mistress of Louis XV. as one of
themselves. At this page of Madame Roland's
300 MADAME ROLAND.
history it is difficult to keep back one's tears, —
not from pity for her sufferings, but that the
magic of goodness touches the deepest springs
of emotion.
The record of Madame Roland's last days we
owe chiefly to Comte Beugnot, her fellow-pris-
oner at the Conciergerie. He could not help
acknowledging the intrinsic greatness of this
woman, against whom he had entertained a
strong prejudice as a female politician and repub-
lican. Now that he saw her frequently at the
grate of the prison, where many of its inmates
gathered round her, he listened to her conversa-
tion in astonishment. So did Rioufte, one of the
famous twelve, he who had dragged his bleeding
feet across the Landes of Brittany, and had since
then been incarcerated. Months of confinement
had not quenched Madame Roland's enthusiasm,
nor impaired the beauty of her appearance. Her
large dark eyes still flashed and softened with
every changing emotion. Her complexion still
retained its brilliancy. Comte Beugnot says he
found an ever-fresh charm in listening to her,
quite as much owing to her captivating manner
as to the things she said. They completely dif-
fered in their politics, and the passion with which
she defended her own views gave him the impres-
sion " that she had inspired her whole party with
that vehement partisanship which had helped not
AVE LIBERTAS! 301
a little to stir up hatred and set others against
them." Riouffe describes her conversation as a
happy blending of womanly charm with a great
man's energy.
But whatever the differences of opinion, every-
body loved Madame Roland, everybody desired
her acquittal when she was called to appear be-
fore her judges. Comte Beugnot, intrusted with
a message for her, lay in wait till she appeared
in the passage where she stood at the grate until
she should be called. She was dressed with
great care that day, and appeared more animated
than usual. " Her complexion was exquisite,"
writes Beugnot ; " a smile hovered round her
lips. She was holding up the train of her dress
with one hand, her other one having been seized
by a crowd of women pressing round her to kiss
it. Those better acquainted with the fate await-
ing her were sobbing, and commended her to
Providence. No one can picture this scene un-
less he had seen it." But we do see it ; we hear
Madame Roland trying to console the unhappy
women, never alluding to her own fate, but gently
imploring them henceforth to live together in
peace, in hope, and in charity. The old jailer,
who had held his post for thirty years, came to
open the grate to her, and wept as he did so.
She was going to reply to Beugnot's whispered
message, when two turnkeys roughly called her
302 MADAME ROLAND.
name. At this cry, which would have been terri-
ble to any one but her, she stopped to shake his
hand, saying, " Good-by, Sir ; let us make our
peace, it is time." Raising her eyes to his face,
she noticed that he kept back his tears with diffi-
culty, but only added, " Be brave ! "
She vanished down the dark passage to appear
before Fouquier Tinville's judgment bar. Sev-
eral persons were sitting round a table for the
purpose apparently of taking down the proceed-
ings, but they only sat and stared. There was a
constant coming and going of patriots. David
interrogated the accused ; but whenever his ques-
tions did not meet with the approval of Fouquier
Tinville, the terrible public prosecutor, he altered
them and put them afresh. The principal charge
in the indictment against Madame Roland con-
sisted in the relations she had entertained with
the Girondins, condemned for traitorous designs
against the unity and indivisibility of the Repub-
lic. The questions addressed to her reached
back to a period long anterior to 1789 (date of
the Revolution). She was clear, explicit, lumi-
nous in her answers. Nothing could be more to
her taste than to enter fully into the whole course
of her husband's and her own conduct from the
beginning. Why could she not have produced
some of those letters addressed to Bosc and Ban-
cal des Issarts during 1789, 1790, and 1791,
AVE LIBERTAS! 303
which bore such unmistakable witness to her
revolutionary enthusiasm ?
The purpose of the tribunal was not served by
these eloquent replies of the accused, which need-
lessly prolonged a trial of which the result could
not be doubtful. She was told, roughly enough,
that she was not showing off her wit at the Hotel
of the Interior, and had better confine herself in
her answers to a plain Yes or No.
Let us briefly recapitulate some of the leading
points, which show the nature of these pro-
ceedings.
Question. — Was it known to you that Roland, before he
entered into the Administration, belonged to the Committee
of Correspondence of the Jacobins ?
Answer. — Yes.
Q. — Was it not you who took upon you to compose the
letters it was his duty to draw up for the Committee ?
A. — My husband never borrowed my thoughts, although
he may sometimes have employed my pen.
Q. — Were you not acquainted with the office for the
Formation of Public Opinion, established by Roland to
corrupt the Departments ; to bring to Paris a Departmental
force ; to tear the Republic to pieces, according to the plans
of a liberticide faction, etc.; and was it not you who con-
ducted the business of that office ?
A. — Roland established no office under that denomina-
tion, and I conducted the business of none. After the
decree, passed at the latter end of August, ordering him to
disseminate useful writings, he assigned to some of his
clerks the care of forwarding them, exerting himself to the
utmost in the execution of a law tending to diffuse the
304 MADAME ROLAND.
knowledge and love of the Revolution. This he called
the Patriotic Correspondence j and as to his own writings,
instead of promoting discord, they all breathed a desire to
concur in the maintenance of order and of peace.
It was observed at this point to Madame Roland
that it was in vain for her to attempt to disguise
the truth. That her endeavors to justify Roland
were ineffectual, fatal experience having only too
well shown the mischief that perfidious Minister
had done by aspersing the most faithful represen-
tatives of the people, and by exciting the Depart-
ments to take up arms against Paris.
The accused, in answer to the injurious impu-
tations upon Roland, observed that she had only
two facts to oppose, — firstly his writings, which
all contained the soundest principles of morality
and politics ; secondly, his forwarding all those
printed by order of the National Convention, even
the speeches of the members of that Assembly,
who passed for the most violent in opposition.
Q. — Do you know at what time Roland left Paris, and
where he may be ?
A. — Whether I do or not, is what I neither ought nor
choose to tell.
It was here remarked to the accused that her
obstinacy in disguising the truth proved that she
thought Roland guilty ; that she was setting her-
self in open rebellion against the law. The public
AVE LIBERTAS! 305
prosecutor, Fouquier Tinville, accompanied his
examination with such insulting epithets, and put
questions so offensive to her honor, that she, who
could calmly meet death, felt unable to repress
her tears.
But she would not be browbeaten. Turning
round to the clerk, she cried, " Take up your pen
and write ! " Then she continued : " A person
accused is answerable for his own actions, but
not for those of others. If during more than four
months Roland had not solicited in vain the pass-
ing of his accounts, he would not now be obliged
to absent himself, nor should I, supposing me to
be acquainted with it, be obliged to make a secret
of his place of residence. I know of no law
which requires me to betray the dearest senti-
ments of nature."
Here Fouquier Tinville exclaimed, in a rage,
that there was no end to her loquacity, and the
examination was closed.
Among the witnesses called, the one whose
testimony told most strongly against the accused,
was that identical Mademoiselle Mignot, Eudora's
governess, whose old age Madame Roland had
wished to provide for, and to whom she was wont
to give a thousand livres a month to expend with
Eudora on charity. The cowardly old creature,
to insure against becoming suspected herself,
made a few vague statements to the effect that
306 MADAME ROLAND.
the Rolands had shown much tranquillity at the
approach of a civil war, and that Madame Roland,
on being informed by Brissot of the capture of
Lille, had replied, " I know the good news." The
two other witnesses were Lecoq the man-servant,
and Fleury the cook. They were both so deeply
attached to their mistress that their one wish
was to share her fate. Lecoq succeeded, but the
good Fleury was so distracted by grief that she
was dismissed from the interrogatory as not in
her right senses.
Chauveau-Lagarde was ambitious of the honor
of pleading the cause of the great citoyenne. He
went several times to see her, and on the 8th of
November, 1793, came to discuss the line of de-
fence he would take. Vain measures, in which
neither placed any faith ; for when he was about
to take his leave, Madame Roland, who had been
very silent all along, rose suddenly, and with an
air of deep feeling took a ring from her finger
and presented it to him. " Madame," cried the
advocate, much moved, "we shall meet again to-
morrow after the trial." " To-morrow I shall have
ceased to be," she answered. " I value your
counsel, but it might prove fatal to you ; you
would ruin yourself without saving me. Let me
not have the sorrow of having caused the death
of a good man ! "
She was not mistaken. The proceedings were
AVE LIBERTAS! 307
again nipped in the bud by the jury declaring
themselves sufficiently enlightened, — for most
of these political trials were only a parody of jus-
tice. The accused was condemned to death as
guilty of traitorous relations with the conspirators
of Caen, as proved by the correspondence seized
at the house of Lauze Duperret.
Between the sentence and its execution the
Revolution suffered no pause. That night of the
8th, as Madame Roland had foreboded, was des-
tined to be her last. It was not given to her, as
to the departed Twenty-one, to spend it in a kind
of delirium of friendship and patriotism.
Madame Roland heard herself sentenced to
death with perfect equanimity, saying proudly to
her judges : " You consider me worthy to share
the fate of the great men whom you have assassi-
nated. I shall try to carry to the scaffold the
courage they have shown." But in the Concier-
gerie there was mourning and lamentation on that
9th of November, 1793, when the wife of Roland,
embracing all the prisoners in her room, bade
them a last farewell. To one she would say,
" How now, Reboul, you weep ? What weakness ! "
To another, " Nay, friend, am I not going to die
for my country and liberty ? Is it not what we
have always wished ? "
In the dusk of the short November day, beneath
the chill gray sky, the death-carts were bearing
308 MADAME ROLAND.
their customary load of victims to the Place de la
Revolution. Sullen, half-brutalized crowds — to
whom dead bodies were cast instead of bread —
followed with that craving for strong sensations
with which they had been accustomed to watch
the racking of criminals. It was the same popu-
lace after all, inured to ferocity through the an-
cient regime, with its Bastile, its lettres de cachet,
its brutal punishments ; the same populace for
whose wretched plight the youthful Manon had
felt such a pathetic blending of contempt and
loving pity.
All her life she had loved this people, even with
the love of a mother yearning for her first-born.
All her life she had been ready to shed her blood
for it, in the conviction that a new generation
would arise which should live to enjoy the freedom
for which she was content to perish. That con-
viction made her passage to the scaffold a tri-
umphal path, and invested her, as she stood in
the death-cart, with a splendor as of victory. Like
"a Star above the Storm" the beautiful woman,
serenely radiant, in pure white raiment, with long
dark locks falling in clusters to her girdle, fared
through the streets of the blood-stained city, an
embodiment of all that was highest and purest in
the Revolution whose star was now quenched in
the weltering storm. By the Quay de la Megis-
serie, close to the Pont Neuf, they passed, opposite
AVE LIBERT AS! 309
the house where Manon Roland first saw the light,
where the young republican had envied the great-
ness of Rome, she who to-day was meeting her
doom like the greatest of the Romans. Did the
vision of her past life rise before her minds eye,
as they say it does before that of a drowning
man's, or did she see the phantom Twenty-one
beckon her along the road they had lately gone ?
She was proud to follow them, carrying to the
scaffold a courage as great as theirs.
A courage greater than theirs in reality ; for
she was not sustained by that love of comrades
mutually encouraging each other with their song.
In the cart beside her cowered the abject figure
of an old man whose teeth chattered with terror.
It was Lamarche, a forger of assignats. She
tried to cheer him up, and there was a sweet
gayety in her words which at times called a feeble
smile to his lips. At last they reached their des-
tination. Who can tell what vistas of eternity had
opened out to her on her way thither ? Report says
that at the foot of the guillotine she asked for
pen and paper " to write the strange thoughts
that were rising in her." The request was not
granted ; the strange thoughts went down with
her to the silence of the grave.
Yet another request she proffered. The scaffold,
too, had its etiquette, and ladies were privileged
to take precedence of men in death. The brave
3IO MADAME ROLAND.
woman, wishing to spare her companion the hor-
ror of seeing her blood spilt, asked the executioner
to let him go first. Samson demurred, it being
contrary to custom. But when she said to him,
with a smile, " Come, you cannot refuse the last
request of a lady," he succumbed.
She waited calmly ; and with her wonted quick-
ness of step she mounted the short steep ladder
leading from the cart to the platform of the scaf-
fold. Then, her shining eyes turned to the colos-
sal statue of Liberty lately erected near it, she
said, bowing to the goddess of her worship,
"O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy
name ! "
Swiftly the axe clanked down ; swiftly the he-
roic heart ceased to beat. It had not once quick-
ened with fear. A witness, who daily haunted
the place of execution, has borne strange testimony
to Madame Roland's Spartan courage. When her
head was severed from her body, he saw two enor-
mous jets of blood thrown up from her mutilated
trunk, — an exceptional fact, for habitually only a
few scant drops oozed slowly from the veins,
whose blood had all been driven to the heart
by apprehension.
The wife of Roland had said that he would not
survive her. She was not mistaken. The news
AVE LIBERTAS! 311
of her execution determined him to follow her.
But how ? He intended at first to force his way
to the Convention, and to make his voice heard
of its Representatives before he too took the way
to the scaffold which his great wife had trodden
before him. But the difficulty of carrying out
this scheme made him prefer the simpler course
of taking his own life, by which he also mistakenly
hoped to secure his fortune to his daughter. The
good ladies who had so bravely sheltered him all
this time, finding they could not shake his purpose,
evinced a truly noble friendship by doing all in
their power to assist him in his undertaking. In
the evening of the 15th of November he bade
them a last farewell ; then, in the gloaming, with
face set Paris-ward, he rapidly walked along, with
the dead leaves crackling under his feet, and hopes
as dead in his heart. What his hand had found
to do he had always done resolutely ; when the
thing was to take his life, he was no less resolute.
Cato could not have run himself more calmly
through the body than this Frenchman ; and
those who on the following morning found the
austere old man leaning against a tree in M. Nor-
mand's avenue, surmised him to be asleep from his
attitude. On his person was this writing : —
" Whoever thou art that findest me lying here, respect
my remains. They are those of a man who devoted his
life to being useful, and who has died as he lived, virtuous
312 MADAME ROLAND.
and honest. . . . Not fear, but indignation, made me quit
my retreat on learning that my wife had been murdered.
I did not choose to remain longer in a land polluted with
crimes."
There lived yet another man on earth whose
fate was indissolubly linked with the departed
heroine. Buzot — who in those terrible months
of the Red Terror had been dragging from hiding-
place to hiding-place, in company with Petion
and Barbaroux, often exposed to all the inclemency
of winter, or crouched half-starved at the bottom
of caverns and old wells — was at this time roam-
ing along the stormy coves and cliffs of the West-
ern coast, seeking an uncertain refuge. When
at last the news of Madame Roland's execution
reached the unfortunate Girondin, his despair bor-
dered on frenzy. It took him days to recover his
right senses. After this calamity were probably
written those moving lines : —
" I have done ! My heart gives way. O God ! what re-
mains still to be suffered ? What remains there of myself ?
. . . Vainly do I seek the objects that made life dear to
me. Nothing is left but the void of solitude and despair.
I can no longer claim a heart which reciprocated my tender
attachment, and revived my life with its gentle flame. All
is lost, forever lost. Terrible words, which plunge me into
nothingness ! "
Buzot, however, went on living as though the
parting words of her he loved could have reached
AVE LIBERTAS! 313
him, which was almost an impossibility. " You
whom I dare not name," she had said, " you who
never lapsed from virtue, despite the most terri-
ble of passions, will you grieve that I precede
you to those realms where we may love each
other without crime ? There will cease all fatal
prejudices, all arbitrary distinctions, all evil pas-
sions, tyranny of every kind. I will rest and
await you ! " She bade him not to follow her,
but live, if so he might still serve the cause of
liberty, but to seek death voluntarily rather than
take it from a mercenary hand. She would not
bid him farewell. " From you alone I part not.
To leave life is to draw closer together."
So the unhappy Buzot continued leading his
precarious life, " often without bread, without
food of any kind, without clothes or money," only
sustained by the hope of some day " avenging
his friends and his country's liberty." But he
was not destined to see the fall of Robespierre,
though it followed close on his own death, for he
and his two companions survived till July, 1794.
Forced to leave a kind-hearted barber's shelter
at St. Emilion, owing to the increased vigilance
of commissioners sent by the Committee of Pub-
lic Safety, they went forth once more. Mistaking
a great crowd of harmless villagers for Jacobin
troops in pursuit of them, they plunged into a
pine-wood. Barbaroux, in trying to shoot him-
314 MADAME ROLAND.
self, shattered his jaw, was discovered, taken to
Bordeaux, and executed. Buzot and Petion es-
caped. But two days afterwards their bodies
were found in a corn-field, half-eaten by wolves.
So perished the founders of the Republic, the
preachers of the anti-monarchical crusade, and
the men whose orator had put their principle into
a nut-shell when he said, " You think to found
the Revolution by Terror ; I was fain to see her
established through Love." So perished she
who was the soul of the Gironde, its highest in-
spiration, its undying glory ; who, sooner than
make a truce with murder, led her party to mar-
tyrdom, — for were not those the true martyrs of
liberty who refused to turn despots for her sake ?
They died like martyrs, too, scorning death for
that which transcends death, passing away with
that smile on their lips, that rapture in their
hearts, which those who sacrifice themselves for
a great idea bequeath as the most precious of
legacies. We may say that none of those who
had sent the Girondins to the scaffold ascended
it in their turn with the same spiritual exal-
tation.
Yes ; they all followed, those who had sent or
who had suffered them to be sent there. It was
the inevitable fatality of their action. The Na-
tional Convention was the corner-stone of the
AVE LIBERTAS! 315
new State, the visible expression of the Sover-
eignty of the people ; and to violate it was to
proclaim the Revolution en permanence, to wrest
the government from the legally-constituted au-
thorities of the Republic, and leave it at the
mercy of every fresh shock of insurrection.
Vergniaud, seeing the irreconcilable breach of
parties, had uttered the sublime cry, "Fling us
into the abyss ! " and they were flung. But the
abyss did not close. Nay, it widened and
widened, though batch after batch of the revolu-
tionary leaders were thrown in without truce or
mercy. Blood still called unto blood, and victims
entailed ever fresh victims by the inextricable
mesh of circumstance.
All the offspring of the Revolution, the noble
and ignoble, the fairest and foulest, followed in
turn. The anarchic Hebertists, who had grown
bloated on the blood-money of the condemned,
were succeeded by Camille Desmoulins and the
Titanic Danton. Revolters now revolted against
the Terror, clamoring for a Committee of Mercy.
These clamors were silenced by the guillotine ;
but their overthrow shook the foundation of the
Republic. Still there stood its strongest pillar,
the inexorable Robespierre ! What ultimate
plans of government he nourished we shall never
know. Cut off in the middle of his career, this
man — who as a young judge had resigned his
316 MADAME ROLAND.
post from remorse at having condemned a mur-
derer to death, and who not many years after-
wards devised the Law of Prairial, the deadly
instrument of the Terror by which one thousand
three hundred and fifty-six victims perished from
March to July, 1794 — must now always remain
one of the enigmas of history. If, as is assumed,
he was fain to kill the Terror by the Terror,
to fill up the abyss by dead bodies, and so cross
over this bridge of corpses into the promised land
of a reorganized society, his plan was the most
horrible failure. And it is well that it was so.
Better that the Republic perished than that it
should flourish on such a basis. Robespierre
himself fell into the abyss, hurled by the Revo-
lution whose riddle he had failed to solve, and
after him came the great Revolution herself.
But though the Republic perished, the con-
quests of the Revolution were imperishable. Its
proclamation of the equal, natural, and inalienable
rights of man have modified the political and
social life of Europe. Its many great and vital
reforms in the administration of justice, in the
distribution of land, in the condition of the peas-
ant, wrought the most beneficent changes in the
lot of the people. If the humanitarian principles
to which it gave birth were baptized in blood,
we must remember that there has never yet
in the world's history been a fresh incarnation
AVE LIBERTAS! 317
of the idea without violent convulsions. The
passage from a state of brutish degradation, cor-
ruption, and misery to freedom could not be ac-
complished without a mortal struggle. But as
the earthquake which lays cities in ruins, also
lifts to the surface of the ocean beautiful islands,
which presently a luxuriant vegetation will clothe,
and where fresh young life will teem, so this
great social upheaval, while destructive of much
good as well as evil, raised a new social foun-
dation for future generations to build on and
complete.
Not only are the conquests of the Revolution
imperishable, but the examples of heroism left by
many of its children are among its priceless be-
quests. Among these examples we know of
none greater than that given by Madame Roland
in her life and death. Once, in a moment of dis-
couragement while a prisoner, seeing in what her
devotion to liberty had ended, she asked, " Was
it worth while to have been born for this?"
Yes ! a thousand times yes ! answers history.
For in the long, painful process of education
through which humanity is slowly advancing
towards higher phases of development, the best
of systems must remain waste sheets of paper
but for the lives of noble men and women capa-
ble of transmuting abstractions into realities, —
lives that shall illumine the path where others
318 MADAME ROLAND.
are groping, and kindle the moral energies of
men ; lives such as Madame Roland's, stirring
her sex to a generous emulation, handing on,
as she falls, the sacred tradition of heroes and
martyrs !
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book is written, and welcome it to a place among the minor biographies ;
and because there is nothing else so good, the volume is indispensable to
library and study." — Boston Evening Traveller.
" Another life of the great actress Rachel has been written. It forms
part of the • Famous Women Series,' which that firm is now bringing out,
and which already includes eleven volumes. Mrs. Kennard deals with her
subject much more amiably than one or two of the other biographers have
done. She has none of those vindictive feelings which are so obvious in
Madame B.'s narrative of the great tragedienne. On the contrary, she
wants to be fair, and she probably is as fair as the materials which came into
her possession enabled her to be. The endeavor has been made to show us
Rachel as she really was, by relying to a great extent upon her letters. . . .
A good many stories that we are familiar with are repeated, and some are
contradicted. From first to last, however, the sympathy of the author is
ardent, whether she recounts the misery of Rachel's childhood, or the splen-
did altitude to which she climbed when her name echoed through the world
and the great ones of the earth vied in doing her homage. On this account
Mrs. Kennard's book is a welcome addition to the pre-existing biographies
of one of the greatest actresses the world ever saw." — N.Y. Evening
Telegram.
Sold everywhere. Mailed postpaid, by the Publishers,
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
Boston.
JFamous 0Homnx Scries,
MADAME ROLAND.
By MATHILDE BLIND,
AUTHOR OF "GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE."
One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.
*' Of all the interesting biographies published in the Famous Women Series,
Mathilde Blind's life of Mme. Roland is by far the most fascinating. . . . But
no one can read Mme. Roland's thrilling story, and no one can study the character
of this noble, heroic woman without feeling certain that it is good for the world to
have every incident of her life brought again before the public eye. Among the
famous women who have been enjoying a new birth through this set of shor*
biographies, no single one has been worthy of the adjective great until we come
to Mme. Roland. . . .
"We see a brilliant intellectual women in Mme. Roland; we see a dutiful
daughter and devoted wife ; we see a woman going forth bravely to place her neck
under the guillotine, — a woman who had been known as the ' Soul of the Giron-
dins ; ' and we see a woman struggling with and not being overcome by an intense
and passionate love. Has history a more heroic picture to present us with ? Is
there any woman more deserving of the adjective ' great' ?
" Mathilde Blind has had rich materials from which to draw for Mme. Roland's
biography. She writes graphically, and describes some of the terrible scenes
in the French Revolution with great picturesqueness. The writer's sympathy
with Mme. Roland and her enthusiasm is very contagious; and we follow her
record almost breathlessly, and with intense feeling turn over the last few pages
of this little volume. No one can doubt that this life was worth the writing,
and even earnest students of the French Revolution will be glad to refresh their
memories of Lamartine's ' History of the Girondins,' and again have brought
vividly before them the terrible tragedy of Mme. Roland's life and death." —
Boston Evening Transcript.
" The thrilling story of Madame Roland's genius, nobility, self-sacrifice, and
death loses nothing in its retelling here. The material has been collected and
arranged in an unbroken and skilfully narrated sketch, each picturesque or exciting
incident being brought out into a strong light The book is one of the best in an
excellent series. " — Christian Union.
For sale by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt
of price by the publishers,
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, Boston.
famous f©omcn £erie&
SUSANNA WESLEY.
By ELIZA CLARKE.
ONE VOLUME. l6mo. CLOTH. PRICE, $1.00.
The " Famous Women Series," published at a dollar the volume by Roberts
Brothers, now comprises George Eliot, Emily Bronte, George Sand, Mary Lamb,
Margaret Fuller, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Fry, the Countess of Albany, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Harriet Martineau, Rachel, Madame Roland, and Susanna Wes-
ley. The next volume will be Madame de Stael. The world has not gone into
any ecstasies over these volumes. They are not discussed in the theatre or hotel
lobbies, and even fashionable society knows very little about them. Yet there is
a goodly company of quiet people that delight in this series. And well they may ,
for there are few biographical series more attractive, more modest, and more profit-
able than these " Famous Women." If one wanted to send a birthday or Christ-
mas gift to a woman one honors, — whether she is twenty or sixty years old need
not matter, — it would not be easy to select a better set than these volumes. To
be sure, Americans do not figure prominently in the series, a certain preference
being given to Englishwomen and Frenchwomen; but that does not diminish the
intrinsic merit of each volume. One likes to add, also, that nearly the whole set
has been written from a purely historical or matter-of-fact point of view, there being
very little in the way of special pleading or one-sidedness. This applies especially
to the mother of the Wesleys. Mankind has treated the whole Wesley family as
if it was the special, not to say exclusive, property of the Methodists. But there
is no fee-simple in good men or women, and all mankind may well lay a certain
claim to all those who have in any way excelled or rendered important service to
mankind at large. Eliza Clarke's life of Susanna Wesley tells us truly that she
was M a lady of ancient lineage, a woman of intellect, a keen politician," and
f>rofoundly religious, as well as a shrewd observer of men, things, and society at
arge. . . . Her life is that of a gifted, high-minded, and prudent woman. It is
told in a straightforward manner, and it should be read far beyond the lines of the
Methodist denomination. There must have been many women in Colonial New
England who resembled Susanna Wesley ; for she was a typical character, both
in worldly matters and in her spiritual life. — The Beacon.
Mrs. VVesley was the mother of nineteen children, among whom were John,
the founder, and Charles, the sweet singer, of Methodism. Her husband was a
poor country rector, who eked out by writing verses the slender stipend his cleri-
cal office brought him. Mrs. Wesley was a woman of gentle birth, intense reli-
gious convictions, strong character, and singular devotion to her children. This
biography is well written, and is eminently readable, as well as historically valuable.
— Cambridge Triburw..
Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of
the price, by the publishers,
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, Boston.
famous UDomen £>ctic$.
MARGARET OF ANGOULEME,
QUEEN OF NAVARRE.
By A. MARY F. ROBINSON.
One Volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.
The latest addition to the excellent " Famous Women Series " is a sketch of the
Queen of Navarre, one of the most deservedly famous women of the sixteenthcen-
tury. In political influence she is fitly compared to Queen Elizabeth of England
and Margaret of Austria; and as to her services to religion, she has been referred
to as " the divinity of the mtt religious movement of her time, and the upholder of
the mere natural rights of humanity in an age that only respected opinions." The
story of this remarkable woman is here told briefly, and with a discrimination that
does credit to the biographer. — Times-Star, Cincinnati.
Margaret of Angouleme furnishes a noble subject, which has been ably treated.
Miss Robinson's sketch proves thorough research and a clear conception of her
work, possessing a perfect knowledge of the characters and events connected with
that peiiod. She is in sympathy with every movement, and explicit in detail, being
strictly confined to facts which may be authentically received. . . . This excellent
biography is a source of enjoyment from the first page to the last, and should be
read by every student and lover of history. It abounds in instructive and enjoy-
able reading, furnishing a valuable addition to this popular series. — Utica Press.
One of the most readable volumes thus far in the " Famous Women Series "
has just been published by Roberts Brothers. It is Mary F. Robinson's "Life
of Margaret of Angouleme, Queen of Navarre." Judging from the fifty different
authorities that the writer has consulted, it is evident that she has taken great
pains to sympathize with the spirit of the era which she describes. Only a warm
imagination, stimulated by an intimate knowledge of details, will help an author
to make his reader realize that the past was as present to those who lived in it as
the present is to us. Miss Robinson has compiled a popular history, that has the
easy flow and lifelike picturesqueness which it is so often the aim of the novelist to
display. Such books as this, carefully and even artistically written as they are,
help to fill up vacant nooks in the minds of those who have read large histories in
which personal biography can hold but a small place ; while at the same time they
give the non-historical reader a good deal of information which is, or ought to
be, more interesting than many a fiction. Nor does Miss Robinson estimate the
influence of Margaret of Angouleme wrongly when she traces the salvation of a
nation to her mercy and magnanimity. — A 7 . Y. Telegram.
It is reasonable and impartial in its views, and yet clear in its judgments. The
immense importance of Queen Margaret's influence on the beginnings of modern
thoughts in France is clearly set forth, but without exaggeration or undue empha-
sis. Miss Robinson is especially happy in her portrayal of Margaret's complex
character, which under her hand becomes both human and consistent; and the
volume, although small, is a valuable addition to the history of France in the six-
teenth century. — Boston Courier.
Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of
price, by the publishers,
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, Boston.
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATF
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
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