PRISON LIFE.
1793
Liberation of Madame Roland.--She is re-arrested.--Infamous cruelty
of the Jacobins.--Anguish of Madame Roland.--Madame Roland recovers
her composure.--Intellectual enjoyments.--More comfortable
apartments.--Kindness of the jailer's wife.--Madame Roland entreated
to escape.--Rigorous treatment.--Visit of an English lady.--Kindness
of the jailers.--Cheerful aspect of Madame Roland's cell.--Henriette
Cannet.--Vain entreaties.--Robespierre in the zenith of his
power.--Madame Roland's letter to Robespierre.--Supports of
philosophy.--Influence of the Roman Catholic religion.--Energy of
Madame Roland.--She prepares for voluntary death.--Madame Roland's
prayer.--Notes to her husband and child.--Apostrophe to
friends.--Farewell to Nature.--Maternal love triumphs.--The struggle
ended.--Descriptions of Tacitus.--Madame Roland writes her memoirs.--The
spirit wanders among happier scenes.--Striking contrasts.--Madame Roland
conveyed to the Conciergerie.--Dismal cell.--Description of the
Conciergerie.--Narrow courts.--Quadrangular tower.--The daughter of the
Cæsars.--The daughter of the artisan.
Madame Roland remained for four months in the Abbayé prison. On the
24th day of her imprisonment, to her inexpressible astonishment, an
officer entered her cell, and informed her that she was liberated, as
no charge could be found against her. Hardly crediting her
senses--fearing that she should wake up and find her freedom but the
blissful delirium of a dream--she took a coach and hastened to her own
door. Her eyes were full of tears of joy, and her heart almost
bursting with the throbbings of delight, in the anticipation of again
pressing her idolized child to her bosom. Her hand was upon the door
latch--she had not yet passed the threshold--when two men, who had
watched at the door of her dwelling, again seized her in the name of
the law. In spite of her tears and supplications, they conveyed her to
the prison of St. Pélagié. This loathsome receptacle of crime was
filled with the abandoned females who had been swept, in impurity and
degradation, from the streets of Paris. It was, apparently, a studied
humiliation, to compel their victim to associate with beings from whom
her soul shrunk with loathing. She had resigned herself to die, but
not to the society of infamy and pollution.
The Jacobins, conscious of the illegality of her first arrest, and
dreading her power, were anxious to secure her upon a more legal
footing. They adopted, therefore, this measure of liberating her and
arresting her a second time. Even her firm and resigned spirit was for
a moment vanquished by this cruel blow. Her blissful dream of
happiness was so instantaneously converted into the blackness of
despair, that she buried her face in her hands, and, in the anguish of
a bruised and broken heart, wept aloud. The struggle, though short,
was very violent ere she regained her wonted composure. She soon,
however, won the compassionate sympathy of her jailers, and was
removed from this degrading companionship to a narrow cell, where she
could enjoy the luxury of being alone. An humble bed was spread for
her in one corner, and a small table was placed near the few rays of
light which stole feebly in through the iron grating of the
inaccessible window. Summoning all her fortitude to her aid, she
again resumed her usual occupations, allotting to each hour of the day
its regular employment. She engaged vigorously in the study of the
English language, and passed some hours every day in drawing, of which
accomplishment she was very fond. She had no patterns to copy; but her
imagination wandered through the green fields and by the murmuring
brooks of her rural home. Now she roved with free footsteps through
the vineyards which sprang up beneath her creative pencil. Now she
floated upon the placid lake, reclining upon the bosom of her husband
and caressing her child, beneath the tranquil sublimity of the evening
sky. Again she sat down at the humble fireside of the peasant,
ministering to the wants of the needy, and receiving the recompense of
grateful hearts. Thus, on the free wing of imagination, she penetrated
all scenes of beauty, and spread them out in vivid reality before her
eye. At times she almost forgot that she was a captive. Well might she
have exclaimed, in the language of Maria Antoinette, "What a resource,
amid the calamities of life, is a highly-cultivated mind!"
A few devoted friends periled their own lives by gaining occasional
access to her. During the dark hours of that reign of terror and of
blood, no crime was more unpardonable than the manifestation of
sympathy for the accused. These friends, calling as often as prudence
would allow, brought to her presents of fruit and of flowers. At last
the jailer's wife, unable to resist the pleadings of her own heart for
one whom she could not but love and admire, ventured to remove her to
a more comfortable apartment, where the daylight shone brightly in
through the iron bars of the window. Here she could see the clouds and
the birds soaring in the free air. She was even allowed, through her
friends, to procure a piano-forte, which afforded her many hours of
recreation. Music, drawing, and flowers were the embellishments of her
life. Madame Bouchaud, the wife of the jailer, conceived for her
prisoner the kindest affection, and daily visited her, doing every
thing in her power to alleviate the bitterness of her imprisonment. At
last her sympathies were so aroused, that, regardless of all
prudential considerations, she offered to aid her in making her
escape. Madame Roland was deeply moved by this proof of devotion, and,
though she was fully aware that she must soon place her head upon the
scaffold, she firmly refused all entreaties to escape in any way
which might endanger her friend. Others united with Madame Bouchaud in
entreating her to accept of her generous offer. Their efforts were
entirely unavailing. She preferred to die herself rather than to incur
the possibility of exposing those who loved her to the guillotine. The
kindness with which Madame Roland was treated was soon spied out by
those in power. The jailer was severely reprimanded, and ordered
immediately to remove the piano-forte from the room, and to confine
Madame Roland rigorously in her cell. This change did not disturb the
equanimity of her spirit. She had studied so deeply and admired so
profoundly all that was noble in the most illustrious characters of
antiquity, that her mind instinctively assumed the same model. She
found elevated enjoyment in triumphing over every earthly ill.
An English lady, then residing in France, who had often visited her in
the days of her power, when her home presented all that earth could
give of splendor, and when wealth and rank were bowing obsequiously
around her, thus describes a visit which she paid to her cell in these
dark days of adversity.
"I visited her in the prison of Sainte Pélagié, where her soul,
superior to circumstances, retained its accustomed serenity, and she
conversed with the same animated cheerfulness in her cheerless dudgeon
as she used to do in the hotel of the minister. She had provided
herself with a few books, and I found her reading Plutarch. She told
me that she expected to die, and the look of placid resignation with
which she said it convinced me that she was prepared to meet death
with a firmness worthy of her exalted character. When I inquired after
her daughter, an only child of thirteen years of age, she burst into
tears; and, at the overwhelming recollection of her husband and child,
the courage of the victim of liberty was lost in the feelings of the
wife and the mother."
The merciless commissioners had ordered her to be incarcerated in a
cell which no beam of light could penetrate. But her compassionate
keepers ventured to misunderstand the orders, and to place her in a
room where a few rays of the morning sun could struggle through the
grated windows, and where the light of day, though seen but dimly,
might still, in some degree, cheer those eyes so soon to be closed
forever. The soul, instinctively appreciative of beauty, will under
the most adverse circumstances, evoke congenial visions. Her friends
brought her flowers, of which from childhood she had been most
passionately fond. These cherished plants seemed to comprehend and
requite unaffected love. At the iron window of her prison they
appeared to grow with the joy and luxuriance of gratitude. With
intertwining leaf and blossom, they concealed the rusty bars, till
they changed the aspect of the grated cell into a garden bower, where
birds might nestle and sing, and poets might love to linger.
[Illustration: MADAME ROLAND IN PRISON.]
When in the convent, she had formed a strong attachment for one of her
companions, which the lapse of time had not diminished. Through all
the vicissitudes of their lives they had kept up a constant
correspondence. This friend, Henriette Cannet, one day obtained access
to her prison, and, in the exercise of that romantic friendship of
which this world can present but few parallels, urged Madame Roland to
exchange garments with her, and thus escape from prison and the
scaffold. "If you remain," said Henriette, "your death is inevitable.
If I remain in your place, they will not take my life, but, after a
short imprisonment, I shall be liberated. None fear me, and I am too
obscure to attract attention in these troubled times. I," she
continued, "am a widow, and childless. There are no responsibilities
which claim my time. You have a husband, advanced in years, and a
lovely little child, both needing your utmost care." Thus she pleaded
with her to exchange attire, and endeavor to escape. But neither
prayers nor tears availed. "They would kill thee, my good Henriette!"
exclaimed Madame Roland, embracing her friend with tears of emotion.
"Thy blood would ever rest on me. Sooner would I suffer a thousand
deaths than reproach myself with thine." Henriette, finding all her
entreaties in vain, sadly bade her adieu, and was never permitted to
see her more.
Robespierre was now in the zenith of his power. He was the arbiter of
life and death. One word from him would restore Madame Roland to
liberty. But he had steeled his heart against every sentiment of
humanity, and was not willing to deprive the guillotine of a single
victim. One day Madame Roland was lying sick in the infirmary of the
prison. A physician attended her, who styled himself the friend of
Robespierre. The mention of his name recalled to her remembrance their
early friendship, and her own exertions to save his life when it was
in imminent peril. This suggested to her the idea of writing to him.
She obeyed the impulse, and wrote as follows:
"Robespierre! I am about to put you to the proof, and to repeat
to you what I said respecting your character to the friend who
has undertaken to deliver this letter. You may be very sure that
it is no suppliant who addresses you. I never asked a favor yet
of any human being, and it is not from the depths of a prison I
would supplicate him who could, if he pleased, restore me to
liberty. No! prayers and entreaties belong to the guilty or to
slaves. Neither would murmurs or complaints accord with my
nature. I know how to bear all. I also well know that at the
beginning of every republic the revolutions which effected them
have invariably selected the principal actors in the change as
their victims. It is their fate to experience this, as it becomes
the task of the historian to avenge their memories. Still I am at
a loss to imagine how I, a mere woman, should be exposed to the
fury of a storm, ordinarily suffered to expend itself upon the
great leaders of a revolution. You, Robespierre, were well
acquainted with my husband, and I defy you to say that you ever
thought him other than an honorable man. He had all the roughness
of virtue, even as Cato possessed its asperity. Disgusted with
business, irritated by persecution, weary of the world, and worn
out with years and exertions, he desired only to bury himself and
his troubles in some unknown spot, and to conceal himself there
to save the age he lived in from the commission of a crime.
"My pretended confederacy would be amusing, were it not too
serious a matter for a jest. Whence, then, arises that degree of
animosity manifested toward me? I never injured a creature in my
life, and can not find it in my heart to wish evil even to those
who injure and oppress me. Brought up in solitude, my mind
directed to serious studies, of simple tastes, an enthusiastic
admirer of the Revolution--excluded, by my sex, from
participating in public affairs, yet taking delight in conversing
of them--I despised the first calumnies circulated respecting me,
attributing them to the envy felt by the ignorant and low-minded
at what they were pleased to style my elevated position, but to
which I infinitely preferred the peaceful obscurity in which I
had passed so many happy days.
"Yet I have now been for five months the inhabitant of a prison,
torn from my beloved child, whose innocent head may never more
be pillowed upon a mother's breast; far from all I hold dear; the
mark for the invectives of a mistaken people; constrained to hear
the very sentinels, as they keep watch beneath my windows,
discussing the subject of my approaching execution, and outraged
by reading the violent and disgusting diatribes poured forth
against me by hirelings of the press, who have never once beheld
me. I have wearied no one with requests, petitions, or demands.
On the contrary, I feel proudly equal to battle with my own ill
fortune, and it may be to trample it under my feet.
"Robespierre! I send not this softened picture of my condition to
excite your pity. No! such a sentiment, expressed by you, would
not only offend me, but be rejected as it deserves. I write for
your edification. Fortune is fickle--popular favor equally so.
Look at the fate of those who led on the revolutions of former
ages--the idols of the people, and afterward their
governors--from Vitellius to Cæsar, or from Hippo, the orator of
Syracuse, down to our Parisian speakers. Scylla and Marius
proscribed thousands of knights and senators, besides a vast
number of other unfortunate beings; but were they enabled to
prevent history from handing down their names to the just
execration of posterity, and did they themselves enjoy happiness?
Whatever may be the fate awarded to me, I shall know how to
submit to it in a manner worthy of myself, or to anticipate it
should I deem it advisable. After receiving the honors of
persecution, am I to expect the still greater one of martyrdom?
Speak! It is something to know your fate, and a spirit such as
mine can boldly face it, be it as it may. Should you bestow upon
my letter a fair and impartial perusal, it will neither be
useless to you nor to my country. But, under any circumstances,
this I say, Robespierre--and you can not deny the truth of my
assertion--none who have ever known me can persecute me without a
feeling of remorse."
Madame Roland preferred to die rather than to owe her life to the
_compassion_ of her enemies. Could she obtain a triumphant acquittal,
through the force of her own integrity, she would greatly exult. But
her imperial spirit would not stoop to the acceptance of a pardon from
those who deserved the execrations of mankind; such a pardon she would
have torn in fragments, and have stepped resolutely upon the
scaffold.
There is something cold and chilling in the supports which pride and
philosophy alone can afford under the calamities of life. Madame
Roland had met with Christianity only as it appeared in the pomp and
parade of the Catholic Church, and in the openly-dissolute lives of
its ignorant or voluptuous priesthood. While her poetic temperament
was moved by the sublime conception of a God ruling over the world of
matter and the world of mind, revealed religion, as her spirit
encountered it, consisted only in gorgeous pageants, and ridiculous
dogmas, and puerile traditions. The spirit of piety and pure devotion
she could admire. Her natural temperament was serious, reflective, and
prayerful. Her mind, so far as religion was concerned, was very much
in the state of that of any intellectual, high-minded, uncorruptible
Roman, who renounced, without opposing, the idolatry of the benighted
multitude; who groped painfully for some revelation of God and of
truth; who at times believed fully in a superintending providence, and
again had fears whether there were any God or any immortality. In the
processions, the relics, the grotesque garb, and the spiritual
terrors wielded by the Roman Catholic priesthood, she could behold but
barefaced deception. The papal system appeared to her but as a
colossal monster, oppressing the people with hideous superstition, and
sustaining, with its superhuman energies, the corruption of the nobles
and of the throne. In rejecting this system, she had no friend to
conduct her to the warm, sheltered, and congenial retreats of
evangelical piety. She was led almost inevitably, by the philosophy of
the times, to those chilling, barren, storm-swept heights, where the
soul can find no shelter but in its own indomitable energies of
endurance. These energies Madame Roland displayed in such a degree as
to give her a name among the very first of those in any age who by
_heroism_ have shed luster upon human nature.
Under the influence of these feelings, she came to the conclusion that
it would be more honorable for her to die by her own hand than to be
dragged to the guillotine by her foes. She obtained some poison, and
sat down calmly to write her last thoughts, and her last messages of
love, before she should plunge into the deep mystery of the unknown.
There is something exceedingly affecting in the vague and shadowy
prayer which she offered on this occasion. It betrays a painful
uncertainty whether there were any superintending Deity to hear her
cry, and yet it was the soul's instinctive breathing for a support
higher and holier than could be found within itself.
"Divinity! Supreme Being! Spirit of the Universe! great principle of
all that I feel great, or good, or immortal within myself--whose
existence I believe in, because I must have emanated from something
superior to that by which I am surrounded--I am about to reunite
myself to thy essence." In her farewell note to her husband, she
writes, "Forgive me, my esteemed and justly-honored husband, for
taking upon myself to dispose of a life I had consecrated to you.
Believe me, I could have loved life and you better for your
misfortunes, had I been permitted to share them with you. At present,
by my death, you are only freed from a useless object of unavailing
anguish."
All the fountains of a mother's love gush forth as she writes to her
idolized Eudora: "Pardon me, my beloved child, my sweet daughter,
whose gentle image dwells within my heart, and whose very remembrance
shakes my sternest resolution. Never would your fond mother have left
you helpless in the world, could she but have remained to guide and
guard you."
Then, apostrophizing her friends, she exclaims, "And you, my cherished
friends, transfer to my motherless child the affection you have ever
manifested for me. Grieve not at a resolution which ends my many and
severe trials. You know me too well to believe that weakness or terror
have instigated the step I am about to take."
She made her will, bequeathing such trifling souvenirs of affection as
still remained in her possession to her daughter, her friends, and her
servants. She then reverted to all she had loved and admired of the
beauties of nature, and which she was now to leave forever.
"Farewell!" she wrote, "farewell, glorious sun! that never failed to
gild my windows with thy golden rays, ere thou hiddest thy brightness
in the heavens. Adieu, ye lonely banks of the Saône, whose wild beauty
could fill my heart with such deep delight. And you too, poor but
honest people of Thizy, whose labors I lightened, whose distress I
relieved, and whose sick beds I tended--farewell! Adieu, oh! peaceful
chambers of my childhood, where I learned to love virtue and
truth--where my imagination found in books and study the food to
delight it, and where I learned in silence to command my passions and
to despise my vanity. Again farewell, my child! Remember your mother.
Doubtless your fate will be less severe than hers. Adieu, beloved
child! whom I nourished at my breast, and earnestly desired to imbue
with every feeling and opinion I myself entertained."
The cup of poison was in her hand. In her heart there was no
consciousness that she should violate the command of any higher power
by drinking it. But love for her child triumphed. The smile of Eudora
rose before her, and for her sake she clung to life. She threw away
the poison, resolved never again to think of a voluntary withdrawal
from the cares and sorrows of her earthly lot, but with unwavering
fortitude to surrender herself to those influences over which she
could no longer exert any control. This brief conflict ended, she
resumed her wonted composure and cheerfulness.
Tacitus was now her favorite author. Hours and days she passed in
studying his glowing descriptions of heroic character and deeds.
Heroism became her religion; magnanimity and fortitude the idols of
her soul. With a glistening eye and a bosom throbbing with lofty
emotion, she meditated upon his graphic paintings of the martyrdom of
patriots and philosophers, where the soul, by its inherent energies,
triumphed over obloquy, and pain, and death. Anticipating that each
day might conduct her to the scaffold, she led her spirit through all
the possible particulars of the tragic drama, that she might become
familiar with terror, and look upon the block and the ax with an
undaunted eye.
Many hours of every day she beguiled in writing the memoirs of her own
life. It was an eloquent and a touching narrative, written with the
expectation that each sentence might be interrupted by the entrance of
the executioners to conduct her to trial and to the guillotine. In
this unveiling of the heart to the world, one sees a noble nature,
generous and strong, animated to benevolence by native generosity, and
nerved to resignation by fatalism. The consciousness of spiritual
elevation constituted her only religion and her only solace. The
anticipation of a lofty reputation after death was her only heaven.
The Christian must pity while he must admire. No one can read the
thoughts she penned but with the deepest emotion.
Now her mind wanders to the hours of her precocious and dreamy
childhood, and lingers in her little chamber, gazing upon the golden
sunset, and her eye is bathed in tears as she reflects upon her early
home, desolated by death, and still more desolated by that unhonored
union which the infidelity of the times tolerated, when one took the
position of the wife unblessed by the sanction of Heaven. Again her
spirit wings its flight through the gloomy bars of the prison to the
beautiful rural home to which her bridal introduced her, where she
spent her happiest years, and she forgets the iron, and the stone, and
the dungeon-glooms which surround her, as in imagination she walks
again among her flowers and through the green fields, and, at the
vintage, eats the rich, ripe clusters of the grape. Her pleasant
household cares, her dairy, the domestic fowls recognizing her voice,
and fed from her own hand; her library and her congenial intellectual
pursuits rise before her, an entrancing vision, and she mourns, like
Eve, the loss of Eden. The days of celebrity and of power engross her
thoughts. Her husband is again minister of the king. The most
influential statesmen and brilliant orators are gathered around her
chair. Her mind is guiding the surging billows of the Revolution, and
influencing the decisions of the proudest thrones of Europe.
The slightest movement dispels the illusion. From dreams she awakes to
reality. She is a prisoner in a gloomy cell of stone and iron, from
which there is no possible extrication. A bloody death awaits her. Her
husband is a fugitive, pursued by human blood-hounds more merciless
than the brute. Her daughter, the object of her most idolatrous love,
is left fatherless and motherless in this cold world. The guillotine
has already consigned many of those whom she loved best to the grave.
But a few more days of sorrow can dimly struggle through her prison
windows ere she must be conducted to the scaffold. Woman's nature
triumphs over philosophic fortitude, and she finds momentary relief in
a flood of tears.
The Girondists were led from their dungeons in the Conciergerie to
their execution on the 31st of October, 1793. Upon that very day
Madame Roland was conveyed from the prison of St. Pélagié to the same
gloomy cells vacated by the death of her friends. She was cast into a
bare and miserable dungeon, in that subterranean receptacle of woe,
where there was not even a bed. Another prisoner, moved with
compassion, drew his own pallet into her cell, that she might not be
compelled to throw herself for repose upon the cold, wet stones. The
chill air of winter had now come, and yet no covering was allowed her.
Through the long night she shivered with the cold.
The prison of the Conciergerie consists of a series of dark and damp
subterranean vaults situated beneath the floor of the Palace of
Justice. Imagination can conceive of nothing more dismal than these
somber caverns, with long and winding galleries opening into cells as
dark as the tomb. You descend by a flight of massive stone steps into
this sepulchral abode, and, passing through double doors, whose iron
strength time has deformed but not weakened, you enter upon the vast
labyrinthine prison, where the imagination wanders affrighted through
intricate mazes of halls, and arches, and vaults, and dungeons,
rendered only more appalling by the dim light which struggles through
those grated orifices which pierced the massive walls. The Seine flows
by upon one side, separated only by the high way of the quays. The bed
of the Seine is above the floor of the prison. The surrounding earth
was consequently saturated with water, and the oozing moisture
diffused over the walls and the floors the humidity of the sepulcher.
The plash of the river; the rumbling of carts upon the pavements
overhead; the heavy tramp of countless footfalls, as the multitude
poured into and out of the halls of justice, mingled with the moaning
of the prisoners in those solitary cells. There were one or two narrow
courts scattered in this vast structure, where the prisoners could
look up the precipitous walls, as of a well, towering high above them,
and see a few square yards of sky. The gigantic quadrangular tower,
reared above these firm foundations, was formerly the imperial palace
from which issued all power and law. Here the French kings reveled in
voluptuousness, with their prisoners groaning beneath their feet. This
strong-hold of feudalism had now become the tomb of the monarchy. In
one of the most loathsome of these cells, Maria Antoinette, the
daughter of the Cæsars, had languished in misery as profound as
mortals can suffer, till, in the endurance of every conceivable
insult, she was dragged to the guillotine.
It was into a cell adjoining that which the hapless queen had occupied
that Madame Roland was cast. Here the proud daughter of the emperors
of Austria and the humble child of the artisan, each, after a career
of unexampled vicissitudes, found their paths to meet but a few steps
from the scaffold. The victim of the monarchy and the victim of the
Revolution were conducted to the same dungeons and perished on the
same block. They met as antagonists in the stormy arena of the French
Revolution. They were nearly of equal age. The one possessed the
prestige of wealth, and rank, and ancestral power; the other, the
energy of a vigorous and cultivated mind. Both were endowed with
unusual attractions of person, spirits invigorated by enthusiasm,
and the loftiest heroism. From the antagonism of life they met in
death.