Whilst the king, isolated at the summit of the constitution, sought support, sometimes by hazardous negotiations with foreigners, sometimes by rash attempts at corruption in the capital, a body, some Girondists and other Jacobins, but as yet confounded under the common denomination of patriots, began to unite and form the nucleus of a great republican idea: they were PÉtion, Robespierre, Brissot, Buzot, Vergniaud, Guadet, GensonnÉ, Carra, Louvet, Ducos, FonfrÈde, Duperret, Sillery-Genlis, and many others, whose names have scarcely emerged from obscurity. The home of a young woman, daughter of an engraver of the Quai des OrfÉvres, was the meeting place of this union. It was there that the two great parties of the Gironde and the Montagne assembled, united, separated, and after having acquired power, and overturned the monarchy in company, tore the bosom of their country with their dissensions, and destroyed liberty whilst they destroyed each other. It was neither ambition, nor fortune, nor celebrity which had successively attracted these men to this woman's residence, then without credit, name, or comforts: it was conformity of opinion; it was that devoted worship which chosen spirits like to render in secret as in public to a new truth which promises happiness to mankind; it was the invisible attraction of a common faith, that communion of the first neophytes in the religion of philosophy, where the necessity for souls to unite before they associate by deeds, is felt. So long as the thoughts common to political men have not reached that point where they become fruitful, and are organised by contact, nothing is accomplished. Revolutions are ideas, and it is this communion which creates parties.

The ardent and pure mind of a female was worthy of becoming the focus to which converged all the rays of the new truth, in order to become prolific in the warmth of the heart, and to light the pile of old institutions. Men have the spirit of truth, women only its passion. There must be love in the essence of all creations; it would seem as though truth, like nature, has two sexes. There is invariably a woman at the beginning of all great undertakings; one was requisite to the principle of the French Revolution.[12] We may say that philosophy found this woman in Madame Roland.

The historian, led away by the movement of the events which he retraces, should pause in the presence of this serious and touching figure, as passengers stopped to contemplate her sublime features and white dress on the tumbril which conveyed thousands of victims to death. To understand her we must trace her career from the atelier of her father to the scaffold. It is in a woman's heart that the germ of virtue lies; it is almost always in private life that the secret of public life is reposed.

II.

Young, lovely, radiant with genius, recently married to a man of serious mind, who was touching on old age, and but recently mother of her first child, Madame Roland was born in that intermediary condition in which families scarcely emancipated from manual labour are, it may be said, amphibious between the labourer and the tradesman, and retain in their manners the virtues and simplicity of the people, whilst they already participate in the lights of society. The period in which aristocracies fall is that in which nations regenerate. The sap of the people is there. In this was born Jean Jacques Rousseau, the virile type of Madame Roland. A portrait of her when a child represents a young girl in her father's workshop, holding in one hand a book, and in the other an engraving tool. This picture is the symbolic definition of the social condition in which Madame Roland was born, and the precise moment between the labour of her hands and her mind.

Her father, Gratien Phlippon, was an engraver and painter in enamel. He joined to these two professions that of a trade in diamonds and jewels. He was a man always aspiring higher than his abilities allowed, and a restless speculator, who incessantly destroyed his modest fortune in his efforts to extend it in proportion to his ambitious yearnings. He adored his daughter, and could not, for her sake, content himself with the perspective of the workshop. He gave her an education of the highest degree, and nature had conferred upon her a heart for the most elevated destinies. We need not say what dreams, misery, and misfortunes men with such characters invariably bring upon their honest families.

The young girl grew up in this atmosphere of luxuriant imagination and actual wretchedness. Endowed with a premature judgment, she early detected these domestic miseries, and took refuge in the good sense of her mother from the illusions of her father and her own presentiments of the future.

Marguerite Bimont (her mother's name) had brought her husband a calm beauty, and a mind very superior to her destiny, but angelic piety and resignation armed her equally against ambition and despair. The mother of seven children, who had all died in the birth, she concentrated in her only child all the love of her soul. Yet this very love guarded her from any weakness in the education of her daughter. She preserved the nice balance of her heart and her mind; of her imagination and her reason. The mould in which she formed this youthful mind was graceful; but it was of brass. It might have been said that she foresaw the destinies of her child, and infused into the mind of the young girl that masculine spirit which forms heroes and inspires martyrs.

Nature lent herself admirably to the task, and had endowed her pupil with an understanding even superior to her dazzling beauty. This beauty of her earlier years, of which she has herself traced the principal features with infinite ingenuousness in the more sprightly pages of her memoirs, was far from having gained the energy, the melancholy, and the majesty which she subsequently acquired from repressed love, high thought, and misfortune.

A tall and supple figure, flat shoulders, a prominent bust, raised by a free and strong respiration, a modest and most becoming demeanour, that carriage of the neck which bespeaks intrepidity, black and soft hair, blue eyes, which appeared brown in the depth of their reflection, a look which like her soul passed rapidly from tenderness to energy, the nose of a Grecian statue, a rather large mouth, opened by a smile as well as speech, splendid teeth, a turned and well rounded chin gave to the oval of her features that voluptuous and feminine grace without which even beauty does not elicit love, a skin marbled with the animation of life, and veined by blood which the least impression sent mounting to her cheeks, a tone of voice which borrowed its vibrations from the deepest fibres of her heart, and which was deeply modulated to its finest movements (a precious gift, for the tone of the voice, which is the channel of emotion in a woman, is the medium of persuasion in the orator, and by both these titles nature owed her the charm of voice, and had bestowed it on her freely). Such at eighteen years of age was the portrait of this young girl, whom obscurity long kept in the shade, as if to prepare for life or death a soul more strong, and a victim more perfect.

III.

Her understanding lightened this beauteous frame-work with a precocious and flashing intelligence, which was already inspiration. She acquired, as it were, the most difficult accomplishments even from looking into their very elements. What is taught to her age and sex was not sufficient for her. The masculine education of men was a want and sport to her. Her powerful mind had need of all the means of thought for its due exercise. Theology, history, philosophy, music, painting, dancing, the exact sciences, chemistry, foreign tongues and learned languages, she learned all and desired more. She herself formed her ideas from all the rays which the obscurity of her condition allowed to penetrate into the laboratory of her father. She even secreted the books which the young apprentices brought and forgot for her in the workshop. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the English philosophers, fell into her hands; but her real food was Plutarch.

"I shall never forget," she said, "the Lent of 1763, during which I every day carried that book to church, instead of the book of prayers: it was from this moment that I date the impressions and ideas which made me republican, when I had never formed a thought on the subject." After Plutarch, FÉnÉlon made the deepest impression upon her. Tasso and the poets followed. Heroism, virtue, and love were destined to pour from their three vases at once into the soul of a woman destined to this triple palpitation of grand impressions.

In the midst of this fire in her soul her reason remained calm, and her purity spotless. She scarcely owns to the slightest and fugitive emotions of the heart and senses. "When as I read behind the screen which closed up my chamber from my father's apartment," she writes, "my breathing was at all loud, I felt a burning blush overspread my cheek, and my altered voice would have betrayed my agitation. I was Eucharis to Telemachus, and Herminia to Tancred. Yet, transformed as I was into them, I never thought myself of becoming anything to any body. I made no reflection that individually affected me; I sought nothing around me: it was a dream without awaking. Yet I remember having beheld with much agitation a young painter named Taboral, who called on my father occasionally. He was about twenty years of age, with a sweet voice, intelligent countenance, and blushed like a girl. When I heard him in the atelier, I had always a pencil or something to look after; but as his presence embarrassed as much as it pleased me, I went away quicker than I entered, with a palpitating heart, a tremor that made me run and hide myself in my little room."

Although her mother was very pious, she did not forbid her daughter from reading. She wished to inspire her with religion, and not enforce it upon her. Full of good sense and toleration, she left her with confidence to her reason, and sought neither to repress nor dry up the sap which would hereafter produce its fruit in her heart. A servile, not voluntary religion, appeared to her degradation and slavery which God could not accept as a tribute worthy of him. The pensive mind of her daughter naturally tended towards the great objects of eternal happiness or misery, and she was sure, at an earlier age than any other, to plunge deeply into their mysteries. The reign of sentiment began in her through the love of God. The sublime delirium of her pious contemplations embellished and preserved the first years of her youth, composed the rest by her philosophy, and seemed as if it must preserve her for ever from the tempests of passion. Her devotion was ardent; it took the tints of her soul, and she aspired to the cloister, and dreamed of martyrdom. Entering a convent, she found there propitious moments, surrendering her thoughts to mysticism and her heart to first friendships. The monotonous regularity of this life gently soothed the activity of her meditations. In the hours of relaxation she did not play with her companions, but retired beneath some tree to read and muse. As sensitive as Rousseau to the beauty of foliage, the rustling of the grass, the odour of the herbs, she admired the hand of God, and kissed it in his works. Overflowing with gratitude and inward delight, she went to adore him at church. There the sonorous organ's lengthened peal, uniting with the voices of the youthful nuns, completed the excess of her ecstacy. The Catholic religion has every mysterious fascination for the senses, and pleasure for the imagination. A novice took the veil during her residence in the convent. Her presentation at the entrance, her white veil, her crown of roses, the sweet and soothing hymns which directed her from earth to heaven, the mortuary cloth cast over her youthful and buried beauty, and over her palpitating heart, made the young artist shudder, and overwhelmed her with tears. Her destiny opened to her the image of great sacrifices, and she felt within herself by anticipation all the courage and the suffering.

IV.

The charm and custom of these religious feelings were never effaced from her mind. Philosophy, which soon became her worship, dissipated her faith, but left the impression it had created. She could not assist at the ceremonies of a worship whose mysteries her reason had repudiated, without feeling their attraction and respect. The sight of weak men united to adore and pray to the Father of the human race affected her sensibly. The music raised her to the skies. She quitted these Christian temples happier and better; so much are the recollections of infancy reflected and prolonged even in the most troubled existence.

This impassioned taste for infinity and pious sentiment continued their influences over her after her return to her father's house. "My father's house had not," she writes, "the solitary tranquillity of the convent, still plenty of air, and a wide space on the roof of our house near the Pont Neuf, were before my dreamy and romantic imagination. How many times from my window, which looked northward, have I contemplated with emotions the vast deserts of heaven, its glorious azure vault, so splendidly framed from the blue dawn of morning, behind the Pont-du-Change, until the golden sunset, when the glorious purple faded away behind the trees of the Champs ElysÉes and the houses of Chaillot. I did not fail thus to employ some moments at the close of a fine day; and quiet tears frequently stole deliciously from my eyes, whilst 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."

Alas! when she wrote these lines, she no longer saw but in her mind that narrow strip of the heaven of Paris, and the remembrance of those glorious evenings only illumined with a fugitive gleam the walls of her dungeon.

V.

But she was then happy, between her aunt Angelique and her mother, in what she calls the beautiful quarter of the Isle Saint Louis. On these straight quays, on this tranquil bank, she took the air on summer evenings, watching the graceful course of the river, and the distant landscape. In the morning she traversed these quays with holy zeal, in order to go to church, and that she might not meet in this lone road any thing to distract her attention. Her father, who liked her lofty studies, and was intoxicated at his daughter's success, was still desirous of initiating her in his own craft, and made her begin to engrave. She learned to handle the burin, and succeeded in this as in every thing else. As yet she did not derive any salary from it; but at the fÊte of her grandfather and grandmother, she presented to them as her offering, sometimes a head, which she had applied herself to execute for this express purpose, sometimes a small brass plate, highly polished, on which she had engraved emblems or flowers; and they in return gave her ornaments or something for her toilette, for which she confesses always to have been anxious.

This taste, natural to her age and sex, did not, however, distract her from the more humble domestic duties. She was not ashamed, after appearing on Sundays at church, or walking out elegantly dressed, to put on during the week a cotton gown, and go to market with her mother. She used even to go out to shops in their neighbourhood to buy parsley or salad, which had been forgotten. Although she felt herself somewhat humiliated by these domestic cares, which brought her down from the eminence of her Plutarch, and her visionary wanderings, she combined so much grace, and so much natural dignity, that the fruit-woman used to take pleasure in serving her before her other customers; and the first comers took no offence at this preference. This young girl, this future HÉloÏse of the eighteenth century, who read serious books, who expounded the circles of the celestial globe, handled the pencil and burin, and in whose soul-aspiring thoughts and impassioned feelings already found space, was often called into the kitchen to prepare the vegetables for dinner. This mixture of serious shades, elegant research, and domestic occupations, ordered and sensibly mingled by her mother's sagacity, seemed to prepare her already for the vicissitudes of fortune, and in after days helped her to support them. It was Rousseau at Charmettes piling up the woodstack of Madame de Warens with the hand which was to write the Contrat Social, or Philopoemen chopping his wood.

VI.

From the retirement of such secluded life, she sometimes perceived the higher world which shone above her. The lights which displayed to her this great world offended, more than they dazzled, her sight. The pride of this aristocratic society, which saw without valuing her, weighed on her sensitive mind—a society in which her position was not assigned to her, seemed badly framed. It was less envy than justice that revolted in her. Superior beings have their places marked out by nature, and every thing that keeps them from occupying them, seems to them an usurpation. They find society frequently the reverse of nature, and take their revenge by despising it: from this arises the hatred of genius against power. Genius dreams of an order of things, in which the ranks should be marked out by nature and virtue; whilst in reality they are almost always derived from birth—that blind allotment of fate. There are few great minds which do not feel in their earliest progress the persecution of fortune, and who do not begin by an internal revolt against society. They are only quieted by their own discouragement. Some are resigned from a more lofty feeling to the place which God assigns to them. To put up with the world humbly is still more beautiful than to control it. This is the very acme of virtue. Religion leads to it in a day; philosophy only conducts to it by a lengthened life, misery, or death. These are days when the most elevated place in the world is a scaffold.

VII.

The young maiden once conducted by her grandmother to an aristocratic house, of which her humble parents were free, was deeply hurt at the tone of condescending superiority with which her grandmother and herself were treated. "My pride took alarm," she writes, "my blood boiled more than usual, and I blushed violently. I no longer inquired of myself why this lady was seated on a sofa, and my grandmother on a low stool; but my feelings led to such reflection, and I saw the end of the visit with satisfaction as if a weight was taken off my mind."

Another time she was taken to pass eight days at Versailles, in the palace of that king and queen whose throne she was one day to sap. Lodged in the attics with one of the female domestics of the ChÂteau, she was a close observer of this royal luxury, which she believed was paid for by the misery of the people, and that grandeur of things founded on the servility of courtiers. The lavishly spread tables, the walks, the play, presentations—all passed before her eyes in the pomp and vanity of the world. These ceremonious details of power were repugnant to her mind, which fed on philosophy, truth, liberty, and the virtue of the olden time. The obscure names, the humble attire, of the relatives who took her to see all this, only procured for her mere passing looks and a few words, which meant more protection than favour. The feeling that her youth, beauty, and merit, were unperceived by this crowd, who only adored favour or etiquette, oppressed her mind. The philosophy, natural pride, imagination, and fixedness of her soul were all wounded during this sojourn. "I preferred," she says, "the statues in the gardens to the personages of the palace." And her mother inquiring if she were pleased with her visit—"Yes," was her reply, "if it be soon ended; for else, in a few more days I shall so much detest all the persons I see, that I should not know what to do with my hatred." "What harm have they done you?" inquired her mother. "To make me feel injustice, and look upon absurdity." As she contemplated these splendours of the despotism of Louis XIV., which were drooping into corruption, she thought of Athens, but forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of Aristides, the condemnation of Phocion. "I did not then foresee," she writes, in melancholy mood, as she pens these lines—"that destiny reserved me to be the witness of crimes such as those of which they were the victims, and to participate in the glory of their martyrs, after having professed their principles."

Thus, the imagination, character, and studies of this girl prepared her, unknown to herself, for the republic. Her religion alone, then so powerful over her, restrained her within the bounds of that resignation which submits the thoughts to the will of God. But philosophy became her creed, and this creed formed a portion of her politics. The emancipation of the people united itself in her mind with the emancipation of ideas. She believed, by overturning thrones, that she was working for man; and, by overthrowing altars, that she was labouring for God. Such is the confession which she herself made of her change.

However, the young girl had already attracted many suitors for her hand. Her father wished to marry her in the class to which he himself belonged. He loved, esteemed commerce, because he considered it the source of wealth. His daughter despised it because it was, in her eyes, the source of avarice and the food of cupidity. Men in this condition of life were repugnant to her. She desired in a husband ideas and feelings sympathising with her own. Her ideal was a soul and not a fortune. "Brought up from my infancy in connexion with the great men of all ages, familiar with lofty ideas and illustrious examples—had I lived with Plato, with all the philosophers, all the poets, all the politicians of antiquity, merely to unite myself with a shopkeeper, who would neither appreciate nor feel any thing as I did?"

She who wrote these lines was at that moment demanded in marriage of her parents by a rich butcher of the neighbourhood. She refused every offer. "I will not descend from the world of my noble chimeras," she replied to the incessant remonstrances of her father; "what I want is not a position but a mind. I will die single rather than prostitute my own mind in an union with a being with whom I have no sympathies."

Deprived of her mother by an early death, alone in the house of a father where disorder was the consequence of a second amour, melancholy gained possession of her mind, though it did not overcome it. She became more collected and reserved, in order to strengthen her feelings against isolation and misfortune. The perusal of the HÉloÏse of Rousseau, which was lent to her about that time, made on her heart the same impression that Plutarch had made on her mind. Plutarch had shown her liberty; Rousseau made her dream of happiness: the one fortified, the other weakened her. She found the earnest desire of pouring forth her feelings. Melancholy was her rigid muse. She began to write, in order to console herself in the nurture of her own thoughts. Without any intention of becoming an authoress, she acquired by these solitary trials that eloquence with which she subsequently animated her friends.

IX.

Thus gradually ripened this patient and resolute mind, working on towards its destiny, when she believed she had found the man of the olden time of whom she had so long dreamed. This man was Roland de la PlatiÈre.

He was introduced to her by one of her early friends, married at Amiens, where Roland then carried on the functions of inspector of manufactures. "You will receive this letter," wrote her friend, "by the hand of the philosopher 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. This portrait," she adds, "was just and well depicted. I saw a man nearly fifty years of age, tall, careless in his attitude, with that kind of awkwardness which a solitary life always produces; but his manners were easy and winning, and without possessing the elegance of the world, they united the politeness of the well-bred man to the seriousness of the philosopher. He was very thin, with a complexion much tanned; his brow, already covered by very little hair, and very broad, did not detract from his regular but unattractive features. He had, however, a pleasing smile, and his features an animated play, which gave them a totally different appearance when he was excited in speaking or listening. His voice was manly, his mode of speech brief, like a man with shortened breath; his conversation, full of matter, because his head was full of ideas, occupied the mind more than it flattered the ear. His language was sometimes striking, but harsh and inharmonious. This charm of the voice is a gift very rare, and most powerful over the senses," she adds, "and does not merely depend on the quality of the sound, but equally upon that delicate sensibility which varies the expression by modifying the accent." This is enough to assure us that Roland had not this charming gift.

X.

Roland, born of an honest tradesman's family, which had held magisterial offices and asserted claims to nobility, was the youngest of five brothers, and intended for the church. To avoid this destiny, which disgusted him, he fled from his father's roof at nineteen, and went to Nantes. Procuring a situation with a ship-builder, he was about to embark for India in trade, when an illness at the moment he was to embark prevented him. One of his relations, a superintendent of a factory, received him at Rouen, and gave him a situation in his office. This house, animated by the spirit of Turgot, made experiments in the details of its business with all the sciences, and by political economy with the loftiest problems of governments. It was peopled by philosophers, amongst whom Roland distinguished himself, and the government sent him to Italy to watch the progress of commerce there.

He left his young friend with reluctance, and forwarded to her regularly scientific letters, intended as notes to the work which he proposed to write on Italy—letters in which the sentiment that displayed itself beneath science, more resembled the studies of a philosopher than the conversations of a lover.

On his return she saw in him a friend. His age, gravity, manners, laborious habits, made her consider him as a sage who existed solely on his reason. In the union they contemplated, and which less resembled love, than the ancient associations of the days of Socrates and Plato—the one sought a disciple rather than a wife, and the other married a master rather than a husband. M. Roland returned to Amiens, and thence wrote to the father to demand his daughter's hand, which was bluntly denied to him. He feared in Roland, whose austerity displeased him, a censor for himself, and a tyrant for his child. Informed of her father's refusal, she grew indignant, and went to a convent destitute of every thing. There she lived on the coarsest food, prepared by her own hands. She plunged into deep study, and strengthened her heart against adversity. She revenged herself by deserving the happiness of a lot which was not accorded to her. In the evening she visited her friends; in the day an hour's walk in a garden surrounded with high walls. That feeling of strength which steels against fate—that melancholy which softens the soul, and feeds it on its own sensibility,—helped her to pass long winter months in her voluntary captivity.

A feeling of internal bitterness, however, poisoned even this sacrifice. She said to herself that this sensibility was not recompensed. She had flattered herself that M. Roland, on learning of her resolution and retreat, would hasten to take her from this convent and unite their destinies. Time passed on. Roland came not, and scarcely wrote. At the end of six months he arrived, and was again deeply enamoured on seeing his beloved behind a grating. He resolved on offering her his hand, which she accepted. However, so much calculation, hesitation, and coldness had dissipated the little illusion which the young captive had left, and reduced her feelings to deep esteem. She devoted rather than gave herself. It appeared to her sublime to immolate herself for the happiness of a worthy man; and she consummated this sacrifice with all the seriousness of reason and without a grain of heartfelt enthusiasm. Her marriage was to her an act of virtue, which she performed, not because it was agreeable to her, but because she deemed it sublime.

The pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau is seen again at this decisive moment of her existence. The marriage of Madame Roland is a palpable imitation of that of HÉloÏse with M. de Volmar. But the bitterness of reality was not slow in developing itself beneath the heroism of her devotion. "By dint," she herself says, "of occupying myself with the happiness of the man with whom I was associated, I felt that something was wanting to my own. I have not for a moment ceased to see in my husband one of the most estimable persons that exists, and to whom it was an honour to me to belong; but I often felt that similarity was wanting between us,—that the ascendency of a dominating temper, united to that of twenty years more of age, made one of these superiorities too much. If we lived in solitude, I had sometimes very painful hours to pass: if we went into the world, I was liked by persons, some one of whom I was fearful might affect me too closely. I plunged into my husband's occupations, became his copying clerk, corrected his proofs, and fulfilled the task with an unrepining humility, which contrasted strongly with a spirit as free and tried as mine. But this humility proceeded from my heart: I respected my husband so much, that I always liked to suppose that he was superior to myself. I had such a dread of seeing a shade over his countenance, he was so tenacious of his own opinions, that it was a long time before I ventured to contradict him. To this labour I joined that of my house; and observing that his delicate health could not endure every kind of diet, I always prepared his meals with my own hands. I remained with him four years at Amiens, and became there a mother and nurse. We worked together at the EncyclopÉdie Nouvelle, in which the articles relative to commerce had been confided to him. We only quitted this occupation for our walks in the vicinity of the town."

Roland, dictatorial and exacting, had insisted from the beginning of their marriage, that his wife should refrain from seeing her young and attached friends whom she had loved in the convent, and who lived at Amiens. He dreaded the least participation of affection. His prudence outstepped the bounds of reason. To an union as solemn as marriage, the pleasure of friendship was necessary. This tyranny of an exclusive feeling was not compensated by love. Roland demanded every thing from his wife's compliance. If there was no faltering in her conduct, still she felt these sacrifices, and joyed over the accomplishment of her duties as the stoic enjoys his sufferings.

XI.

After some years passed at Amiens, Roland was promoted to the same duties at Lyons, his native place. In winter he dwelt in the town, and the rest of the year was passed in the country in his paternal home, where his mother still lived, a respectable old woman, but meddlesome and overbearing in her household. Madame Roland, in all the flower of youth, beauty, and genius, thus found herself tormented and beset by a domineering mother-in-law, a rough brother-in-law, and an exacting husband. The most passionate love could scarcely have been proof against so trying and painful a position. To soothe her she had the consciousness of discharging her duties, her occupation, her philosophy, and her child. It was sufficing, and eventually transformed this gloomy retreat into the abode of harmony and peace. We love to follow her into that solitude, when her mind was becoming tempered for her struggle, as we go to seek at Charmettes the still fresh and sparkling source of the life and genius of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

XII.

At the foot of the mountains of Beaujolais, in the large basin of the SÂone, in face of the Alps, there is a series of small hills scattered like the sea sands, which the patient vine-dresser has planted with vines, and which form amongst themselves, at their base, oblique valleys, narrow and sinuous ravines, interspersed with small verdant meads. These meadows have each their thread of water, which filters down from the mountains: willows, weeping birch, and poplars, show the course and conceal the bed of the streams. The sides and tops of these hills only bear above the lowly vines a few wild peach trees, which do not shade the grapes and large walnut trees in the orchards near the houses. On the declivity of one of these sandy protuberances was La PlatiÈre, the paternal inheritance of M. Roland, a low farm-house, with regular windows, covered with a roof of red tiles nearly flat; the eaves of this roof project a little beyond the wall, in order to protect the windows from the rain of winter and the summer's sun. The walls, straight and wholly unornamented, were covered with a coating of white plaister, which time had soiled and cracked. The vestibule was reached by ascending five stone steps, surmounted by a rustic balustrade of rusty iron. A yard surrounded by outhouses, where the harvest was gathered in, presses for the vintage, cellars for the wine, and a dove-cote, abutted on the house. Behind was levelled a small kitchen-garden, whose beds were bordered with box, pinks, and fruit trees, pruned close down to the ground. An arbour was formed at the extremity of each walk. A little further on was an orchard, where the trees inclining in a thousand attitudes, cast a degree of shade over an acre of cropped grass; then a large enclosure of low vines, cut in right lines by small green sward paths. Such is this spot. The gaze is turned from the gloomy and lowering horizon to the mountains of Beaujeu, spotted on their sides by black pines, and severed by large inclined meadows, where the oxen of Charolais fatten, and to the valley of the SÂone, that immense ocean of verdure, here and there topped by high steeples. The belt of the higher Alps, covered with snow and the apex of Mont Blanc, which overhangs the whole, frame this extensive landscape. There is in this something of the vastness of the infinite sea: and if on its bounded side it may inspire recollection and resignation, in its open part it seems to solicit thought to expand, and to convey the soul to far off hopes and to the eminences of imagination.

Such was, for five years, the bounded horizon of this young woman. It was there that she plunged into the plenitude of that nature of which, in her infancy, she had so frequently dreamed, and in which she had perceived only some small bits of sky, and some confused perspectives of royal forests, from the height of her window over the roofs of Paris. It was there that her simple tastes and loving soul found nutriment and scope for her sensibility.

Her life was there divided between household cares, the improvement of her mind, and active charity—that cultivator of the heart. Adored by the peasants, whose protectress she was, she applied to the consolation of their miseries the little to spare which a rigid economy left to her, and to the cure of their maladies the knowledge she had acquired in medicine. She was fetched from three and four leagues' distance to visit a sick person. On Sunday the steps of her court-yard were covered with invalids, who came to seek relief, or convalescents, who came to bring her proofs of their gratitude; baskets of chestnuts, goats' milk cheeses, or apples from their orchards. She was delighted at finding the country people grateful and sensible of kindness. She had drawn her own picture of the people residing in the vicinity of large cities. The burning of chÂteaux, during the outbreak and massacres of September, taught her subsequently that these seas of men, then so calm, have tempests more terrible than those of the ocean, and that society requires institutions, just as the waves require a bed, and strength is as indispensable as justice to the government of a people.

XIII.

The hour of the Revolution of '89 had struck, and came upon her in the bosom of this retreat. Intoxicated with philosophy, passionately devoted to the ideal of humanity, an adorer of antique liberty, she became on fire at the first spark of this focus of new ideas;—she believed with all her faith, that this revolution, like a child born without a mother's sufferings, must regenerate the human race, destroy the misery of the working classes, for whom she felt the deepest sympathy, and renew the face of the earth. Even the piety of great souls has its imagination. The generous illusion of France at this epoch was equal to the work which France had to accomplish. If she had not dared to hope so much, she would have dared nothing: her faith was her strength.

From this day, Madame Roland felt a fire kindled within her which was never to be quenched but in her blood. All the love which lay slumbering in her soul was converted into enthusiasm and devotion for the human race. Her sensibility deceived—too ardent, unquestionably, for one man—spread over a nation. She adored the Revolution like a lover. She communicated this flame to her husband and to all her friends. All her repressed feelings were poured forth in her opinions; she avenged herself on her destiny, which refused her individual happiness, by sacrificing herself for the happiness of others. Happy and beloved, she would have been but a woman; unhappy and isolated, she became the leader of a party.

XIV.

The opinions of M. and Madame Roland excited against them all the commercial aristocracy of Lyons, an honest right-minded city, but one of money, where all becomes a calculation, and where ideas have the weight and immobility of interests. Ideas have an irresistible current, which attract even the most stagnant populations; Lyons was led on and overwhelmed by the opinions of the epoch. M. Roland was raised to the municipality at the first election, and spoke out with all the earnestness of his principles, and the energy inspired by his wife. Feared by the timid, adored by the eager, his name, at first a byeword, became a rallying point;—public favour recompensed him for the insults of the rich. He was deputed to Paris by the municipal council, there to defend the commercial interests of Lyons, in the committees of the Constituent Assembly.

The connection of Roland with philosophers and economists who formed the practical party of philosophy, his necessary intercourse with influential members of the Assembly, his literary tastes, and, above all, the attraction and natural temptation which drew and retained eminent men around a young, eloquent, and impassioned woman, soon made the salon of Madame Roland an ardent, though not as yet noted, focus of the Revolution. The names which were found there reveal, from the first days, extreme opinions. For these opinions, the constitution of 1791 was only a halt.

It was on the 20th February, 1791, that Madame Roland returned to that Paris which she had quitted five years before, a young girl, unknown and nameless, and whither she came as a flame to animate an entire party, found a republic, reign for a moment, and—die! She had in her mind a confused presentiment of this destiny. Genius and Will know their strength,—they feel before others and prophesy their mission. Madame Roland had beforehand seemed carried on by hers to the heart of action. She hastened on the day after her arrival to the sittings of the Assembly. She saw the powerful Mirabeau, the dazzling CazalÈs, the daring Maury, the crafty Lameth, the impassive Barnave. She remarked with annoyance and intense hate, in the attitude and language of the right side, that superiority conferred by the habit of command and confidence in the respect of the million; on the left side, she saw inferiority of manners, and the insolence that mingles with low breeding. And thus did the antique aristocracy survive in blood, and avenge itself, even after its defeat on the democracy, which envied, whilst it beat it to the earth. Equality is written in the laws long before it is established in races. Nature is an aristocrat, and it requires a long use of independence to give to a republican people the noble attitude and polished dignity of the citizen. Even in revolutions, the parvenu of liberty is long seen in the vanquisher. Women's tact is very sensitive to these nice shades. Madame Roland understood them, but, so far from allowing herself to be seduced by this superiority of aristocracy, she was but the more indignant, and felt her hatred redoubled against a party which it was possible to overcome but impossible to humble.

XV.

It was at this period that she and her husband united with some of the most ardent amongst the apostles of popular ideas. It was not they who, as yet, were foremost in the favour of the people, and the Éclat of talent,—it was they who appeared to it, to love the Revolution for the Revolution itself, and to devote themselves, with sublime disinterestedness, not to the success of their fortune, but to the progress of humanity. Brissot was one of the first. M. and Madame Roland had been, for a long time, in correspondence with him on matters of public economy, and the more important problems of liberty. Their ideas had fraternised and expanded together. They were united beforehand by all the fibres of their revolutionary hearts, but, as yet, did not know it. Brissot, whose adventurous life, and unwearied contentions were allied to the youth of Mirabeau, had already acquired a name in journalism and the clubs. Madame Roland awaited him with respect; she was curious to judge if his features resembled the physiognomy of his mind. She believed that nature revealed herself by all forms, and that the understanding and virtue modelled the external senses of men just as the statuary impresses on the clay the outward forms of his conception. The first appearance undeceived, without discouraging her in her admiration of Brissot. He wanted that dignity of aspect, and that gravity of character which seem like a reflection of the dignity, life, and seriousness of his doctrines. There was something in the man political, which recalled the pamphleteer. His levity shocked her; even his gaiety seemed to her a profanation of the grave ideas of which he was the organ. The Revolution, which gave passion to his style, did not throw any passion into his countenance. She did not find in him enough hatred against the enemies of the people. The mobile mind of Brissot did not appear to have sufficient consistency for a feeling of devotion. His activity, directed upon all matters, gave him the appearance of a novice in ideas rather than an apostle. They called him an intriguer.

Brissot brought PÉtion, his fellow-student and friend. PÉtion, already member of the Constituent Assembly, and whose harangues in two or three cases had excited interest. Brissot was reputed to have inspired these orations. Buzot and Robespierre, both members of the same Assembly, were introduced there. Buzot, whose pensive beauty, intrepidity, and eloquence were destined hereafter to agitate the heart and soften the imagination of Madame Roland; and Robespierre, whose disquiet mind and fanatic hatred cast him henceforward into all meetings where conspiracies were formed in the name of the people. Some others, too, came, whose names will subsequently appear in the annals of this period. Brissot, PÉtion, Buzot, Robespierre, agreed to meet four evenings in each week in the salon of Madame Roland.

XVI.

The motive of these meetings was to confer secretly as to the weakness of the Constituent Assembly, on the plots laid by the aristocracy to fetter the Revolution, and on the impulse necessary to impress on the lukewarm opinions, in order to consolidate the triumph. They chose the house of Madame Roland, because this house was situated in a quarter equi-distant from the homes of all the members who were to assemble there. As in the conspiracy of Harmodius, it was a woman who held the torch to light the conspirators.

Madame Roland thus found herself cast, from the first, in the midst of the movement party. Her invisible hand touched the first threads of the still entangled plot which was to disclose such great events. This part, the only one that could be assigned to her sex, equally flattered her woman's pride and passion for politics. She went through it with that modesty which would have been in her a chef d'oeuvre of skill if it had not been a natural endowment. Seated out of the circle near a work table, she worked or wrote letters, listening all the time with apparent indifference to the discussions of her friends. Frequently tempted to take a share in the conversation, she bit her lips in order to check her desire. Her soul of energy and action was inspired with secret contempt for the tedious and verbose debates which led to nothing. Action was expended in words, and the hour passed away taking with it the opportunity which never returns.

The conquests of the National Assembly soon enervated the conquerors. The leaders of this Assembly retreated from their own handiwork, and covenanted with the aristocracy and the throne to grant the king the revision of the constitution in a more monarchical spirit. The deputies who met at Madame Roland's lost heart and dispersed, until, at length, there only remained that small knot of unshaken men who attach themselves to principles regardless of their success, and who are attached to desperate causes with the more fervour in proportion as fortune seems to forsake them. Of this number were Buzot, PÉtion, and Robespierre.

XVII.

History must have a sinister curiosity in ascertaining the first impression made on Madame Roland, by the man who, warmed at her hearth, and then conspiring with her, was one day to overthrow the power of his friends, immolate them en masse, and send her to the scaffold. No repulsive feeling seems, at this period, to have warned her that in conspiring to advance Robespierre's fortune, she conspired for her own death. If she have any vague fear, that fear is instantly cloaked by a pity which is akin to contempt. Robespierre appeared to her an honest man; she forgave him his evil tongue and affected utterance. Robespierre, like all men with one idea, appeared overcome with ennui. Still she had remarked that he was always deeply attentive at these committees, that he never spoke freely, listened to all other opinions before he delivered his own, and then never took the pains to explain his motives. Like men of imperious temper, his conviction was to him always a sufficing reason. The next day he entered the tribune, and profiting, for his reputation's sake, by the confidential discussions to which he had listened in the previous evening, he anticipated the hour of action agreed upon with his allies, and thus divulged the plan concerted. When blamed for this at Madame Roland's, he made but slight excuse. This wilfulness was attributed to his youth, and the impatience of his amour-propre. Madame Roland, persuaded that this young man was passionately attached to liberty, took his reserve for timidity, and these petty treasons for independence. The common cause was a cover for all. Partiality transforms the most sinister tokens into favour or indulgence. "He defends his principles," said she, "with warmth and pertinacity—he has the courage to stand up singly in their defence at the time when the number of the people's champions is vastly reduced. The court hates him, therefore we should like him. I esteem Robespierre for this, and show him that I do; and then too, though he is not very attentive at the evening meetings, he comes occasionally and asks me to give him a dinner. I was much struck with the affright with which he was agitated on the day of the king's flight to Varennes. He said the same evening at PÉtion's that the Royal Family had not taken such a step without preparing in Paris a Saint Bartholomew for the patriots, and that he expected to die before he was twenty-four hours older. PÉtion, Buzot, Roland, on the contrary, said that this flight of the king's was his abdication, that it was necessary to profit by it in order to prepare men's minds for the republic. Robespierre, sneering and biting his nails, as usual, asked what a republic was."

It was on this day that the plan of a journal, called the Republican, was arranged between Brissot, Condorcet, Dumont of Geneva, and DuchÂtelet. We thus see that the idea of a republic was born in the cradle of the Girondists before it emanated from Robespierre, and that the 10th of August was no chance, but a plot.

At the same epoch, Madame Roland had given way, in order to save Robespierre's life, to one of those impulses which reveal a courageous friendship, and leave their traces even in the memory of the ungrateful. After the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, accused of having conspired with the originators of the petition of forfeiture, and threatened with vengeance by the National Guard, Robespierre was obliged to conceal himself. Madame Roland, accompanied by her husband, went at 11 o'clock at night to his retreat in the Marais, to offer him a safer asylum in their own house. He had already quitted his domicile. Madame Roland then went to their common friend Buzot, and entreated him to go to the Feuillants, where he still retained influence, and with all speed to exculpate Robespierre before any act of accusation was issued against him.

Buzot hesitated for a moment, then replied,—"I will do all in my power to save this unfortunate young man, although I am far from partaking the opinion of many respecting him. He thinks too much of himself to love liberty; but he serves it, and that is enough for me. I shall be there to defend him." Thus, three of Robespierre's subsequent victims combined that night, and unknown to him, for the safety of the man by whom they were eventually to die. Destiny is a mystery whence spring the most remarkable coincidences, and which tend no less to offer snares to men through their virtues than their crimes. Death is everywhere: but, whatever the fate may be, virtue alone never repents. Beneath the dungeons of the Conciergerie Madame Roland remembered that night with satisfaction. If Robespierre recalled it in his power, this memory must have fallen colder on his heart than the axe of the headsman.

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