(1754-1793)
[Illustration: Madame Roland.]
France has produced many remarkable women; perhaps no other country
can boast such an array of illustrious names; they shine from the
pages of French history like fixed stars from the firmament. Among
them, down the long vista of a hundred years, brilliant and
beautiful, shines the name of Madame Roland, the spirit of the great
French Revolution personified.
Striking beauty, great genius, and wonderful courage in the hour of
martyrdom, rendered this woman an unusual character in an unusual
epoch. Surrounded by deceit, she was honest and fearless. In the
midst of immorality and license, she was pure, and brave enough to
resist temptation which came from without and from within, and she
went to the scaffold with an untarnished name and soul.
Manon Philipon, as Madame Roland was known in her childhood, was
born in Paris in the year 1754. Her father was a worker in enamel,
who thrived well enough in his art when he was content to toil at
it, but a restless spirit of speculation led him into ventures which
brought him neither profit nor renown.
Manon's beauty was a direct inheritance from both father and mother.
Gratien Philipon was a handsome man, and vain and frivolous as he
was handsome; but his beautiful wife was serious-minded, and much
the superior of her husband in intellect as well as morals. Of seven
children born to this couple, only one lived--Manon, the subject of
our sketch--who inherited the combined beauty of both parents, with
the rectitude and high ideals of the mother. But there lies no
explanation of inheritance from either father or mother to make us
understand how the child of these common people became at nine years
of age a student of Plutarch, Tasso, and Voltaire, and a philosopher
at the age of eleven. It requires a deeper law than that of heredity
to explain these things.
At ten, Manon developed a strongly religious tendency, which was
fostered, no doubt, by daily studying the "Lives of the Saints."
While reading the accounts of martyrs who had died at the stake
rather than resign their faith, the child often regretted that she
had not lived in those "good old days," so happy a thing it seemed
to her to die for one's principles. This privilege was granted her
in after-years, strangely enough; and she proved as courageous in
reality as she had in childhood imagined herself capable of being
under similar circumstances.
Manon's religious feelings were culminated by a request made to her
mother, in a paroxysm of tears, that she might be placed in a
convent to prepare herself for her first communion; accordingly, she
was taken to the Convent of the "Sisters of the Congregation" in
May, 1765, when she was eleven years old. Side by side with this
nunnery, where the precocious child passed one of the happiest
epochs of her life, stood the prison which was to immure her in
later years. Should such a circumstance and situation be unfolded in
the pages of fiction, we would call it strained and unnatural.
During the year Manon passed in the convent, she made the
acquaintance of two sisters, Henrietta and Sophie Cannet, who were
allied to the nobility; and she afterward attributed her facility in
writing to the correspondence with the younger of these sisters,
which continued without interruption over more than a decade of
years. In her memoirs, written under the shadow of the guillotine,
she says, "In the gloom of a prison, in the midst of political
storms, how shall I recall to my mind, and how describe, the
rapture, the tranquillity I enjoyed at that period; but when I
review the events of my life, I find it difficult to assign to
circumstances that variety and that plenitude of affection which
have so strongly marked every point of its duration, and left me so
clear a remembrance of every place at which I have been."
After she left the convent, she found her passion for reading
unabated, and as her father's library was limited, she was obliged
to borrow and hire books; from these she made copious extracts and
abstracts which formed her valuable habit of reflection upon what
she had read.
Her first feelings of contempt and bitterness toward the aristocrats
were roused by the air of condescension which the Cannets exhibited
to her in her occasional visits to Sophie. They were stupid and
arrogant people, but they made her realize that the daughter of an
artisan was not on equal footing with people allied to the nobility,
albeit she was a prodigy of beauty, learning, and talent, and they
the dullest of beings.
"I endeavored," she says, "to think with hope that everything was
right, but my pride told me things were ordered better in a
republic." So, as early as at the age of fourteen, we find this
remarkable being philosophizing upon republics, and taking part in
mind against the evils and injustice fostered by monarchies.
Madame Roland wandered from prescribed creeds, and became a liberal
in her religious ideas. She has been called an Atheist, but every
line she writes, and her life of self-sacrifice, disprove this
assertion. Her "one prayer," to which she says she confined herself,
is, to my mind, sublime with beautiful and practical religion.
"O Thou who hast placed me on the earth, enable me to fulfil my
destination in the manner most conformable to the Divine will, and
most beneficial to my fellow-creatures."
I can imagine no more perfect religious faith, no more complete
submission to, and acknowledgment of, a Supreme Power than this
prayer contains. It strikes me as far more devout and respectful
than the prayers of many people who endeavor to dictate to God and
direct Him what to do and what not to do, what to bestow and what to
withhold.
She writes of her religious agitations with great reluctance to
Sophie Cannet, fearful of disturbing the serenity of her friend's
convictions; but she continued to conform to her mother's religious
ideas during that good woman's life, and even afterward she kept up
the forms of Catholicism for the sake of a valued family servant who
was devoted to her.
This delicate consideration of the feelings of others has been
mistaken by some bigoted minds for deceit or vacillation on the part
of Madame Roland; as if such a being were capable of either.
We owe all our knowledge of her early private life to the voluminous
correspondence between her and Sophie Cannet; to this friend she
wrote those long, journal-like letters, in which one young girl
often pours out the inmost secrets of her heart and soul to another;
but, unlike the letters of the ordinary girl, Manon's contained
criticisms of the books she had read, and discussions of
philosophical subjects, which bear evidence to her wonderful
precocity of thought and feeling in her "teens."
Originality, unselfishness, genius of the rarest order, are all
displayed in these letters; already had her mind grasped some great
truths which it requires the average philosopher half a century to
discover, when at seventeen, she says, "Man is the epitome of the
universe. The revolutions of the world without are an image of those
which take place in his own soul."
Upon the news of the mortal illness of Louis XV., she writes to
Sophie this strongly humanitarian passage: "Although the obscurity
of my birth, name, and position seem to preclude me from taking any
interest in the government, yet the common weal touches me in spite
of it. My country is something to me, and the love I bear it is
unquestionable. How could it be otherwise when nothing in the world
is indifferent to me? A love of humanity unites me to everything
that breathes. A Caribbean interests me; the fate of a Kaffir goes
to my heart. Alexander wished for more worlds to conquer. I could
wish for more to love."
In spite of her philosophy, her seriousness, and her learning,
however, Manon Philipon was a girl, and a charming one; and we learn
in her letters to Sophie how she was pestered with lovers of low and
high degree, during her long maidenhood. I might better say with
proposals for her hand, since, as we know, French custom does not
permit the "love-making" which American girls consider their natural
prerogative.
Manon was so beautiful, brilliant, and magnetic, that when she went
out to promenade with her father, she was greeted with admiring
glances and remarks; and from the fruit vender of whom she made
occasional purchases, and the butcher who served the family with
joints, to dancing and drawing masters, up along the line to
merchants, professional, and literary men, she seemed to fascinate
and attract with no effort on her own part.
Each one in turn asked for her hand and was rejected; and a host of
others followed, to meet a similar fate, until her father threatened
to marry her to the first stranger who crossed his portal, whether
either one wished it or no. She says in her memoirs, "The
respectable character of my mother, the appearance of some fortune,
and my being an only child, made the project of matrimony a tempting
one to a number of persons who were strangers to me. The greater
part, finding it difficult to obtain an introduction, adopted the
expedient of writing to my father. These letters were always shown
to me. I wrote the answers, which my father faithfully copied. I was
much amused at acting the part of my own father, and dismissed my
suitors with dignity, leaving no room for resentment or hope. Here
began to break out those dissensions with my father which lasted
ever after. He loved and respected commerce, I despised it; and he
was much concerned at my rejection of suitors who possessed any
fortune."
After the death of Madame Philipon, which occurred in her daughter's
twenty-first year, Manon's life at home became almost unbearable.
Her extreme grief impaired her health, and anxiety and mortification
were added by the excesses and frivolous extravagances into which
her father plunged. He formed associations with people of bad
character, and took to gambling. Manon strove to make herself an
agreeable companion, and to entertain him at home, but the attempt
was futile. She filled her lonely hours with study, and with writing
letters to Sophie. One day a tall, thin gentleman, bald and yellow,
past forty, and looking older, presented a letter of introduction
from Miss Cannet.
It was M. Roland, an austere philosopher, of an ancient family, to
whom Sophie had often referred. Manon admired his intellect and his
respectability; and when, after some two or three years, he made an
offer of marriage, she was ready to accept; but M. Philipon bluntly
and insolently refused his consent, through a strong personal
dislike which he had conceived for the severe moralist and
philosopher.
Manon could not marry against her father's wishes, but she could
leave the home now so distasteful to her. She had saved only a small
sum from her mother's fortune, amounting to about one hundred
dollars per year. With this, she retired to the Convent of the
Congregation, and shut herself up with her books, and received only
her old friends.
M. Roland, for whose sake she had taken so decisive a step, was far
from an ardent lover in his conduct at this juncture. He wrote her
affectionately, but he made no reference to his proposal of marriage
until six months had passed. Then he came to Paris, had an interview
through iron gratings, and expressed himself determined to make her
his wife. Since she had left her father's roof, she was at liberty
to accept his somewhat tardy proposal, and she emerged from the
convent to become Madame Roland.
We have seen that M. Roland was not an ardent lover, and it is
readily understood that this beautiful, intense girl, in the very
prime of young womanhood, was not in love with him. She felt only
esteem for his virtues, and admiration for his intellect. But she
was twenty-five years old, and virtually homeless; of all the score
of men who had sought her hand in marriage, no one had ever stirred
her heart, and she married, believing, no doubt, that this cold
regard and high admiration which the character of M. Roland
elicited, was all that she could feel for any man.
It was not until the thunders of the Revolution shook the world,
that her heart awoke to real passion; and even then, in a situation
where hundreds of women who have professed greater religious fervor,
have fallen, she conquered herself, and virtually died to protect
her husband's life.
During the first year of their marriage, the Rolands lived in Paris.
Manon had imagined a happy association with her friends, the
Cannets; but her husband was morbidly jealous of these friends, and
extracted a promise from her that she would see them as little as
possible. She became his amanuensis and secretary, and scarcely ever
left his side.
During the next ten years we find her passing the greater part of
her time in the Clos de la Platière, an ancient and humble
country-seat belonging to the Roland family. Here, with her taxing
domestic duties, the exactions of her husband, the care of her child
Eudora, the tyrannies of her aged mother-in-law, this wonderful
woman had little opportunity for the exercise of her talents.
It seems strange to think of this beautiful martyr, whose name is a
synonym for all that is grand and heroic, passing the best years of
her womanhood in preparing dishes for the appetite of a dyspeptic
husband, in looking after house-linen, and arranging lessons for a
child. Matilda Blind says "This affects one with something of the
ludicrous disproportion of making use of the fires of Etna to fry
one's eggs by."
Yet Madame Roland performed these and less agreeable duties as
cheerfully and as perfectly as she had performed her chosen tasks in
the convent years before. Women doctors were not known in those
days, but the genius of Madame Roland embraced a knowledge of
medicine with other things; and she often went three leagues to
relieve a sick peasant, and was ever ready to sacrifice herself for
the good of others.
There was very little happiness for her in the companionship of her
husband. He was twenty-two years her senior, and possessed an
imperious temper and an exacting nature. But the most ardent wife
could not have better performed her duty to the most lovable of
husbands.
Naturally democratic in her feelings and sympathies, Madame Roland
took the keenest interest in the progress of the Revolution; from
her quiet retreat she studied its leading members, and when, in
1791, her husband was chosen deputy to the Constituent Assembly, she
accompanied him to Paris, and their apartments became the rendezvous
for such men as Brissot, Buzot, Danton, Robespierre, Pétion, and
many more, who met to confer with one another and to exchange ideas
and suggestions. Madame Roland sat apart with her embroidery and
listened. Of these meetings she speaks thus in her "Memoirs": "Good
ideas were started and excellent principles maintained; but there
was no path marked out, no determinate point toward which each
person should direct his views. Sometimes for very vexation, I could
have boxed the ears of these philosophers."
Had not her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from
taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand
through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius,
perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that
she might not have averted the disasters which befell the party
through its dissensions.
In March, 1792, Roland was elected minister of the interior; and
Madame Roland presided over the establishment that had been
sumptuously fitted up for Madame Necker. Roland became the idol of
the patriotic party, and was enchanted with his excellent position.
He urged upon King Louis XVI., in whom he reposed great faith, the
necessity of a decree against the priesthood, and the establishment
of a camp in the suburbs of Paris. Louis demurred, Roland insisted
in the famous letter written by his wife, and placed in the king's
hands June 11th. This letter became immensely popular. The Assembly
ordered it to be printed and copies sent to all departments,
together with expressions of national regret at the discharge of
Roland and his friends, which the letter caused. But they were
recalled to office after the dreadful August 10th.
Twice a week Madame Roland gave a dinner to fifteen of her husband's
colleagues, with whom he wished to converse. No other lady was
present. The Girondists were at the apex of society, and Madame
Roland was the life and impetus of the party. She endeavored to
infuse its members with her hatred of false pride and old
prejudices, and with her desire to establish a liberal democracy.
Always enthusiastic, and vexed with the lack of unity and direct
purpose in the Assembly, she was over-zealous in some of her
suggestions.
Among the brilliant men whom she entertained at these dinners, was
one, young, handsome, elegant, and refined, whose many manly
qualities woke in her heart that long-delayed passion which a nature
so ardent must sometime feel. This man was Buzot; and he was as
irresistibly drawn to this beautiful, brilliant woman as the magnet
to the steel.
Madame Roland was at this time thirty-eight years old; her brilliant
color and her open expression made her look much younger, and her
tall, finely developed form, her splendid eyes and engaging smile,
charmed and attracted all who came near her. But though domestic
life and morality were held at the lowest possible value in those
chaotic days, and each man made a law for himself, Madame Roland
never wavered in her loyalty and devotion to the man whose name she
bore. Only through her remarkable letters written to Buzot from her
prison cell, and never made public till 1863, does the glory and
intensity of her hopeless passion display itself.
From the very first, Madame Roland had distrusted Danton. It was not
long before her intuitions proved correct, for Danton soon showed
his jealousy and dislike of the minister, whom he found too honest
to tamper with. He feared, too, the penetration, frankness, and
genius of Roland's wife. Men who saw the insidious, selfish
qualities of Danton, began to cultivate and conciliate him out of
fear of his enmity.
Robespierre, whom Madame Roland had at first believed in as an
honest friend to liberty, became an ally of Danton and Marat, and
Roland soon realized that it was not the monarchists he had to
contend against, but the new party headed by these dissenting
Girondists, who were savage with a thirst for human blood.
The Rolands were accused of trying to establish an aristocracy of
talent on the ruins of a monarchical aristocracy; their semi-weekly
dinners were represented as sumptuous feasts where, like a new
Circe, Madame Roland strove to corrupt the unfortunates who partook
of her banquets.
She was called before the Convention December 7th, to listen to the
charges against her; her eloquence won the admiration of even her
enemies. But her safety was in danger, and she was obliged to sleep
with a pistol under her pillow for fear of the outrages of
desperadoes who lurked about her house.
The strife between the two parties grew more bitter, and the
downfall of Roland had been determined upon by his savage opponents,
once his fawning friends and colleagues. An attempt was made to
arrest Roland by six armed men, deputies of the Insurrectionists. He
replied that he did not recognize their authority, and refused to
follow them. Madame Roland at once set off for the Tuileries, where
the Insurrectionists, more cruel and blood-thirsty than the deposed
Monarchists, were in session. At the door the sentinels forbade her
to enter. Obliged to return home without having been enabled to
address the Convention, as she hoped to do, she found that her
husband had taken refuge in the house of a friend.
She sought him out, embraced him, and returned once more to the
Tuileries in another vain hope of arousing their former friends to
resolute action. But she was obliged to return to her apartment in
the evening, without having accomplished anything. Late that night
she was torn from her child and her home, and cast into the Prison
of the Abbaye, from which she was set at liberty a month later, and
wild with happiness, allowed to reach her own door; but as she
attempted to enter she was again seized and conveyed to the Prison
of Sainte Pélagie. The respite had only been given in malice to
render her second incarceration more bitter.
Under the same roof were murderers and women of the town; and in the
morning, when the cell-doors were opened, the scum of the earth, as
one authority tells us, collected in the corridor. On each side of
this corridor (the only place where the prisoners could take
exercise) were small cells, and one of these, separated only by thin
walls from the most depraved beings, whose vile language was
constantly audible to her ears, this refined and elegant woman was
forced to occupy. She suffered acutely from this proximity to
depravity and vulgarity at first; but ere long she transformed the
vicinity in which her cell was situated "from an inferno to an oasis
of peace." When she walked in the corridor, where at first she was
pointed at, abused and reviled, she was now surrounded by wretched
beings who clung to her skirts and regarded her as a divinity. Her
sweet voice soothed brawls, her words of courage inspired the most
hopeless. Everybody loved her, everybody desired her acquittal.
Meantime she was writing her famous "Memoirs," and the touching
letters to her husband, her child, and to Buzot. After an
imprisonment of more than six months, she was finally called before
the judge and the prosecution, and accused of being the wife of
Roland, the conspirator, the friend of his accomplices. Twenty-one
Girondists had already been executed, and she could not hope to
escape. She was condemned to death as guilty of traitorous relations
with conspirators. She heard the sentence proudly, and replied, "You
consider me worthy to share the fate of the great men whom you have
assassinated. I shall try to carry to the scaffold the courage they
have shown."
Robespierre signed her death-warrant. He had been her friend, guest,
and correspondent. She had helped him when he was unknown, defended
him when he was in need of a defender. But he sent her to the
scaffold; and on November 9, 1793, the tumbril came to convey her to
the guillotine. It had taken many others on that same day; and now
her only companion on that fatal ride was a trembling old man named
La Marche. He wept bitterly, but Madame Roland cheered him with
words of courage and strength.
When they arrived at the Place de la Concorde, she begged the
executioner to permit the "etiquette of the scaffold" to be waived,
and to allow La Marche to die first, that the sight of her death
might not accentuate his fear and misery. So to the last moment of
her life she was true to her religion of thoughtfulness for others.
Beautiful, self-possessed, and calm, she stood upon the scaffold in
the pride of her womanhood, and spoke those last immortal words as
she lifted her eyes to the statue of Liberty, "O Liberty, how many
crimes are committed in thy name."
Then the axe fell, and the assassins of the Revolution had added
another victim to their list. Seven days after this event, M. Roland
committed suicide by stabbing himself through the heart.
[Signature: Ella Wheeler Wilcox.]