I.
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.
VIII.
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.