1754-1793.
Madame Roland, strictly speaking, can scarcely be classed among persons
of literary reputation. Her fame rests even on higher and nobler grounds
than that of those who toil with the brain for the instruction of their
fellow creatures. She acted. What she wrote is more the emanation of the
active principle, which, pent in a prison, betook itself to the only
implement, the pen, left to wield, than an exertion of the reflective
portion of the mind. The composition of her memoirs was the last deed of
her life, save the leaving it--and it was a noble one--disclosing the
nature of the soil that gave birth to so much virtue; teaching women how
to be great, without foregoing either the duties or charms of their sex;
and exhibiting to men an example of feminine excellence, from which they
may gather confidence, that if they dedicate themselves to useful and
heroic tasks, they will find helpmates in the other sex to sustain them
in their labours and share their fate.
In giving the life of this admirable woman, we have at once the
advantage and disadvantage of drawing the details of her early years
from her autobiography. We are thus secure from false statements and
meagre conjecture; but our pages must appear cold and vapid, as
containing only an abridgment of details which she recounts with a
glowing pen. Under these circumstances, it is better to refer the reader
to her work for minutia, and to confine ourselves to results; and
instead of lingering over a dry statement of facts, to seek for the
formation of character, and to give a rapid view of the causes of her
greatness; and to find what was the position and education of a woman
who, in a country usually noted for frivolity and display, exhibited
simplicity joined to elevation of character and strength of mind, of
which few examples can be found in the history of the world.
Manon Phlipon was of bourgeoise, and even humble, though respectable
birth. Her father was an engraver; he had a slight knowledge of the fine
arts, and wished to become an enamel painter: he failed in this as well
as in an after attempt to enrich himself by trading in jewels, which
brought on his ruin. During the early years of his daughter he was well
to do, and employed several workmen under him. His wife was refined in
character, and might have hoped for a partner of a more delicate and
enlightened mind; but her sense of duty and sweetness of temper
reconciled her to her lot. Manon was the second of seven children, but
the only one who survived infancy. She was put out to be nursed by a
peasant in the country, as was the practice in those days, and returned
home when two years old, to pass the remainder of her girlhood beneath
the parental roof, under the care of her gentle and excellent mother,
who found it an easy task to regulate the disposition of one whose
earliest characteristic was sensibility. "While I remained in my
peaceful home," she writes of herself, "my natural sensibility so
engrossed every quality, that no other displayed itself--my first desire
was to please and to do good." Naturally serious and fond of occupation,
she loved reading from infancy; books and flowers were her earliest
passion; and as she records this in her prison, torn from all she loved,
expecting the death to which those about her were being led by turns,
"still," she says, "I can forget the injustice of men and my sufferings
among books and flowers."
Every sort of master was given her by her fond parents, and she applied
herself with an ardour and a delight that led her instructors to prolong
her lessons, and to take deep interest in teaching her. Her father, who
had no idea of education except by reprimand and punishment, was soon
led to cease to interfere in the guidance of her conduct; he caressed
her, taught her to paint, and showed her every kindness; while the
cultivation of her mind and heart was left to her mother, who found it
easy to lead her by appeals to her reason or her feelings. Passionately
fond of reading, she seized on hooks wherever she could find them: there
were not many in her father's house, but Plutarch fell into her hands at
nine years old, and more delighted her than all the fairy tales she had
ever read; she drank in republicanism even then. Her imagination and her
heart were warmed meanwhile by reading Fénélon and Tasso. As she
remarks, had she had indiscreet companions, this early development of
feeling might have led to an untimely awakening of passion; but under
the shelter of her mother, with her only for a companion, her heart
sympathised with the emotions of others, without any reference to
herself--occupation and innocence protected her.
She lived in all the simplicity that belonged to a tradesman easy in his
means. The bourgeoisie of Paris of those days were a remarkable class.
They detested and despised the debauchery of the noblesse, and the
servility of their parasites; while they held themselves far above the
brutal ignorance and licentiousness of the populace. The women of this
class passed laborious and secluded lives, enlivened only by the
enjoyments their vanity might gather on days of festivals, when they
showed off their fine clothes and pretty faces in the public promenades.
The habits of this class, as madame Roland describes them from
experience, were remarkable for frugality. She accompanied her mother to
market--occasionally she was sent alone, which she thought somewhat
derogatory--but did not complain. There was but one servant, and
sometimes she assisted in the kitchen; at the same time, the fondness of
her mother displayed itself by dressing her elegantly and richly on
Sundays and visiting days. Dancing, in which she excelled, was among her
accomplishments. Her mother was pious: by degrees the sensibility of her
character found a vent for itself in religion. The first time she left
her mother's roof was, at her own request, to prepare herself in a
convent to receive her first communion. During her retreat she formed a
friendship with a young companion. After leaving the convent, their
intercourse continued by letters; and this, she tells us, was the origin
of her love of writing, and caused her, by exercise, to acquire
facility.
After passing a year in the convent, she passed another with her
paternal grandmother, and then she returned to her father's roof. Her
days were chiefly passed in study; her meditative mind speculated on all
she read; her mother permitted her to read every book that fell in her
way, and the self-taught girl preferred philosophical works to every
other; she thus enlarged the sphere of her ideas; formed opinions, and
erected rigid rules of morality as her guide. The severe principles of
Pascal and the writers of the Port-Royal had a great attraction for her
ardent mind; and when she sought in philosophy for principles of equal
self-denial, she endeavoured to adopt the system of the stoics. All that
ennobled the soul and exalted the moral feeling attracted her. She was
dispirited when she turned to the pages of modern French philosophy. The
theories of Helvetius saddened her, till she was relieved by the
consideration that his narrow and derogatory view of human motive and
action was applicable only to the corrupt state of society such as he
found it in France. She believed that she ought to study this author as
a guide in the depraved world of Paris; but she rejected his doctrines
as explanatory of the movements of the human soul in a virtuous simple
state of society; she felt herself superior to the principle of self
which he made the law of our nature; she contrasted it with the heroic
acts of antiquity, and thus she became enthusiastically attached to
those republics in which virtue flourished; she became persuaded that
freedom was the parent of heroes; she regretted that her lot had not
been cast among such, and disdained the idea of associating with the
corrupt race of her day. The aspirations after the examples set by the
great, the virtuous, the generous, and the wise, which she thus
nourished, gave a charm to her solitary life; but her studies excited
far other feelings when she was led to remark how little they accorded
with the state of society in France.
Sometimes she was taken to visit certain ladies who claimed to be noble,
and who, looking upon her as an inferior, sent her to dine with their
servants. Once she paid a visit of eight days at Versailles, and
witnessed the routine of a court. How different were the impertinent
pretensions of these silly women, and the paltry pomp of royalty, from
the majesty of the solitary reveries in which she associated with the
heroes and philosophers of old! Her soul rejected distinctions of rank
such as she found them in her own country,--empty in themselves, as far
as regarded real excellence, and degrading to her in her position,--and
she hurried back to take her proper place in creation, not the humble
daughter of an obscure mechanic, but one whose mind was refined by
philosophy, enlarged by knowledge; whose heart beat with generous
impulses, and who already felt her bosom swell with the heroism which
her future actions displayed. "I sighed," she writes, "as I thought of
Athens, where I could have equally admired the fine arts, without being
wounded by the spectacle of despotism; I transported myself in thought
to Greece--I was present at the Olympic games, and I grew angry at
finding myself French. Thus, struck by all of grand which is offered by
the republics of antiquity, I forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of
Aristides, the sentence of Phocion; I did not know that heaven had
reserved it to me to witness errors similar to those of which they were
the victims, and to participate in a similar persecution, after having
professed similar principles."
She regarded the position she held in society with bitterness. Vain of
her accomplishments and knowledge, proud in the consciousness of her
integrity and of the lofty meditations in which she indulged, the
condescension of the petty noblesse towards the daughter of an artisan
made her bosom swell with haughty emotion. She does not disguise that
this feeling caused her to hail the revolution with greater transport.
It is usual to accuse the lowly of envy, so to cast a slur over their
motives when they espouse with enthusiasm the cause of freedom. In all
societies there must be difference of position, arising from the
distribution of property, and no passion is more mean than that which
causes the poor to view with envy the luxuries and ease of the rich. But
the disdain which springs from knowing that others assume superiority
from mere adventitious circumstances--that there is an impassable
barrier, on the outer side of which the ignobly born must remain, vainly
desiring a career in which to distinguish themselves--is a noble
feeling, and is implanted in the human heart as the source of the
highest virtues. Human weakness mingled, probably, some-pettiness in the
pride of the beautiful and studious bourgeoise, but she knew how to rise
above it; and when she sealed her ambition with her blood, she proved
that it was honourable, and that her desire of distinction was founded
on a generous love of the good of her species.
The only child of a prosperous artisan, it was supposed that she was an
heiress: this idea, joined to her personal attractions, elicited
numerous pretensions to her hand, and her indulgent parents conceded to
her the privilege of replying to them. Her sensibility was great, and
she looked on wedded life as the source of every felicity; but this very
notion made her scrupulous in her choice. The young men of the quarter
passed in review before her, and were, one after the other, rejected. A
little hesitation ensued when a physician proposed--she hoped for more
refinement and knowledge in one of the learned professions. In the end,
he also was refused,--her heart continued untouched; she would have been
glad if any one had appeared whom she could have looked upon as worthy
of her; but, as this did not happen, she rejoiced to escape the proposed
shackles, and turned to her peaceful studious home, the affection of her
mother, and the attachment of her friends, with renewed delight. The
account she gives of the many proposals she received, and the way in
which they were finally dismissed, is one of the most amusing portions
of her book, and affords a pleasant and vivid picture of the French
system with regard to marriages.
Her mother's health became enfeebled, and this excellent parent regarded
her daughter's future prospects with anxiety. Phlipon had become
careless in his business; his customers deserted him, his speculations
failed; he grew fond of pleasure, and habits of industry were thrown
aside. His wife was aware of the advances of poverty, and of the slight
confidence she could place in her husband; she reasoned with her
daughter, and tried to persuade her to accept the offer of a young
jeweller, who had youth and good habits to recommend him; but Manon
shrunk from uniting herself with one whom she could not regard as the
sharer of her studies nor the guide of her conduct.
Her mother died suddenly of paralysis. Madame Roland gives a vivid
picture of the affliction she felt on this event, which conducted her to
the brink of the grave. It was long before she could be roused from the
intense grief that overwhelmed both mind and body. She became incapable
of application, and struggled in vain to cast off the melancholy that
made her a burden to herself and others. By degrees, her regrets grew
less passionate and more tender. At this moment a friend, abbé Legrand,
put the "Nouvelle Heloise" into her hands,--it succeeded in exciting her
attention, and in calling her thoughts from her loss. "I was
twenty-one," she says, "and Rousseau made the same impression on me then
as Plutarch had done when I was eight. Plutarch had disposed me to
republicanism,--he had awakened the energy and pride which are its
characteristics; he inspired me with a true enthusiasm for public virtue
and freedom. Rousseau showed me domestic happiness and the ineffable
felicity I was capable of tasting." From this time, she returned to her
quiet routine of life, her studies, and her habits of observation. "I
was placed," she says, "in solitude, but on the borders of society, and
could remark much without being intruded on." Several men of letters
interested themselves in her, and delighted in her society. Finding that
she was in the habit of writing her remarks, some among them
prognosticated that she would become an author; but she had no
inclination to seek publicity in that manner. "I soon saw," she says,
"that an authoress loses more than she gains. My chief object was my own
happiness, and I never knew the public interfere with that for any one
without spoiling it. There is nothing more delightful than to be
appreciated by those with whom one lives, and nothing so empty as the
admiration of those whom we are never to meet." Other cares, however,
intruded themselves; she saw that her father's fortune was wasting away,
and anticipated ruin for him and poverty for herself. He was young--and
dissipated, and might marry again. Meanwhile, he was never at home, and
interfered in her life only to annoy her, without affording the paternal
protection or domestic society that she needed. She felt that her
situation grew precarious, and the energy of her character determined
her to meet rather than await the evil. She secured to herself a scanty
income of about 25_l_. a year from the wreck of her father's fortune,
and retired on it to a convent. She rented a small room in the
congregation, and established herself in her retreat, determined to
limit her wants to her means. Her plan demanded unflinching resolution,
and this she displayed. Her food was simple, and prepared by herself.
She only went out to visit her relations, and cast a careful eye over
her father's household. The rest of her time was spent in her little
solitary chamber. She gave herself up to study, and fortified her heart
against adversity; determined to deserve the happiness which fate denied
her.
She at this time by no means foresaw the course of life she was destined
to pursue, although she was already acquainted with her future husband.
M. Roland de la Platiere, belonged to a family of Lyons, distinguished
in what the French call the robe; that is, by having filled with credit
legal employments. As the youngest of five sons, he was destined for the
ecclesiastical profession; to avoid which, he left the paternal roof at
the age of nineteen, and, alone and almost penniless, traversed France
to Nantes, with the intention of embarking for India. He was dissuaded
by a stranger to whom he had applied for information with regard to his
projected voyage, who interested himself in his fate, and saw that he
was too weakly in health to encounter the hardships of emigration. He
found employment in the administration of manufactures at Rouen and
Amiens. He possessed great simplicity and integrity of character; he
loved study, and applied himself sedulously to gathering knowledge with
regard to the manufactories of which he had the superintendence. He
wrote several works that treated of such subjects. He was a man
generally esteemed for his sound plain sense; his austere and simple
manners inspired confidence, though he was more respected than loved on
account of a certain coldness of character that repelled. He was known
to Sophie, Mlle. Phlipon's convent friend; he heard her speak of her
correspondent with admiration, and often asked to be allowed to make
acquaintance with her during his yearly visit to Paris. At length,
Sophie gave him an introduction.
[Sidenote: 1775.
Ætat.
23.]
"This letter," she wrote, will be delivered to you by the philosopher I
have often mentioned, M. Roland de la Platiere, an enlightened and
excellent man, who can only be reproached for his great admiration of
the ancients at the expense of the moderns, whom he despises, and his
weakness in liking to talk too much about himself." Mlle. Phlipon liked
him better than this sketch promised. His manners were a little cold and
stiff; he was careless in dress, and no longer youthful either in years
or appearance; but she discerned and appreciated his simplicity and
benevolence of character. He took pleasure in the society of the serious
and reflective recluse, and paid her long though not frequent visits.
His age prevented any idea of impropriety on the score of his being an
admirer, add to which her father, while he ran after pleasure himself,
left his daughter to pursue her way without interference. Roland was
about to make a tour in Italy. He chose his new friend as the depositary
of his manuscripts, and, before he departed, introduced to her his
brother, a benedictine, prior of the college of Clugny at Paris. Through
the intervention of this brother she saw the letters and observations
that Roland sent from Italy. On his return, they continued friends; his
conversation was a great resource to her, while the habit he indulged of
seeing her often, at last rendered her society necessary to him, and
love--slow and chill, but of deep growth--arose in his heart. Five years
after the commencement of their acquaintance he disclosed his
sentiments. She was flattered by the proposal--his good birth during the
old regime was a tangible good, to which she was by no means insensible,
but her pride led her to represent to him that she was a bad match--her
family ignoble, and she herself, instead of being an heiress, ruined
through her father's imprudence. Roland persisted in his address, and
she permitted him to apply to her only surviving parent, which he did by
letter from Amiens. Phlipon did not like his austerity, and was not
pleased by the tone of his letter; thinking only of his own feelings,
and without consulting his daughter, he sent a rejection couched in rude
and even impertinent terms.
His daughter, when informed of what he had done, was a good deal
shocked; for the last few months she had looked on Roland as her future
husband, and attached herself to him. She wrote to him saying, that the
event had justified her fears with regard to her father, and that he had
better abandon his pursuit. At the same time she resolved to render
herself independent--that if Roland persisted, he should not again be
annoyed. It was on this occasion that she retired to a convent, and
bound herself to subsist on the scanty income which was all that she
possessed. At first Roland wrote to complain of her father's treatment,
and though still expressing attachment, appeared to regard the paternal
rejection as putting an end to his hopes. Six months afterwards he
visited Paris; the sight of his friend at the convent grate renewed the
feelings which absence and disappointment had blunted; he pressed his
offer, and sent his brother, the benedictine, to persuade her. I
reflected deeply," she writes, "on what I ought to do. I could not
conceal from myself that a younger man would not have delayed, for
several months, entreating me to change my resolution, and I confess
that this circumstance had deprived my feelings of every illusion. I
considered, on the other hand, that this deliberation was an assurance
that I was appreciated; and that if he had overcome his pride, which
shrunk from the disagreeable circumstances that accompanied his marrying
me, I was the more secure of an esteem I could not fail to preserve. In
short, if marriage was, as I thought, an austere union, an association
in which the woman usually burdens herself with the happiness of two
individuals, it were better that I should exert my abilities and my
courage in so honourable a task, than in the solitude in which I lived."
[Sidenote: 1780.
Ætat.
26.]
With these feelings she married. Of a passionate and ardent disposition,
she devoted herself to a life of self-control; and, resolved to find her
happiness in the fulfilment of her duty, she delivered herself up with
enthusiasm and without reserve to the task she undertook. She was her
husband's friend, companion, amanuensis; fearful of the temptations of
the world, she gave herself up to labour; she soon became absolutely
necessary to him at every moment, and in all the incidents of his life;
her servitude was thus sealed; now and then it caused a sigh; but the
holy sense of duty reconciled her to every inconvenience.
She visited Switzerland and England. In this country her husband's
connection with the scientific world led her to the society she best
liked. They then took up their abode at the family residence of Clos la
Platière near Lyons, with her husband's mother and elder brother.
Madame Roland had one child, a little girl;--to educate her; to render
her husband happy; to spread the charm of peace and love around, and in
the midst of this to cultivate in her own pure mind the most elevated as
well as the gentle virtues; to be useful to their peasantry, and
mitigate as well as she could the many hardships to which the poor in
France were exposed;--this was the scope of her life, and the entire
prospect spread out before her. Her husband had so little expectation of
change, that he endeavoured to get his right to letters of nobility
acknowledged, as, madame Roland observes, "who would not have done the
same in those days?" The time was apparently far off when it could be of
general good to reject the privileges of class; and these privileges
were so great that the sphere of usefulness was considerably extended to
any one who possessed them. Failing in this attempt, the republican pair
sometimes deliberated emigrating to America, that they might there enjoy
equal institutions, and the sight of public happiness and prosperity.
The age of M. Roland was an insurmountable obstacle, however, to this
plan.
Her letters, during this period, afford a picture of her mind; showing
her love of duty and of study; her enjoyment of the beauties of nature,
and, above all, the warm affectionateness of her disposition, which made
her supremely happy in the happiness of others, and caused her to share,
with tender sympathy, all the joys or sorrows of those she loved. Her
husband's relations were disagreeable, but she bore the interference
that prevented her living exactly in the manner she preferred with an
unruffled temper.
[Sidenote: 1786.
Ætat.
32.]
She tolerated every fault in others, and secluded herself to secure her
liberty: she never repines. "Seated in my chimney corner," she writes to
M. Bose, "at eleven before noon, after a peaceful night and my morning
tasks--my husband at his desk, and my little girl knitting--I am
conversing with the former, and overlooking the work of the latter;
enjoying the happiness of being warmly sheltered in the bosom of my dear
little family, and writing to a friend, while the snow is falling on so
many poor wretches overwhelmed by sorrow and penury. I grieve over their
fate, I repose on my own, and make no account of those family annoyances
which appeared formerly to tarnish my felicity.--I am delighted at being
restored to my accustomed way of existence." This country life was
alternated by visits to Lyons, where Roland had employment, where she
mingled in society; but the provincial tone that reigned was little
consonant with her taste.
The revolution came in the midst of this peaceful existence, to give new
life and expression to opinions which she had hitherto considered as
merely theoretical, and for which no scope for practice had been
afforded in the state of society before that epoch. All at once, from
out of ancient wrong and tyranny, from the midst of the great miseries
and intolerable oppressions which her country groaned under, the spirit
of justice, of redress, and of freedom, sprung up. It seemed, at first,
to every strong and honest mind, that France would throw off outworn,
yet still subsisting and oppressive, abuses, and grow wise, virtuous,
and happy, under the fosterage of liberty and equality.
How gladly her soul hailed these hopes! Soon she found that they were
accompanied by fears, and that the popular party grew insolent and
despotic in prosperity. "Is the question to be whether we have one
tyrant or a hundred," she writes, and she became eager to ally herself
to the liberal, but constitutional, party, by which freedom would be
secured, without anarchy or public convulsion.
[Sidenote: 1789.
Ætat.
35.]
Almost immediately on the breaking out of the revolution, her husband
was elected into the municipality of Lyons. His integrity and firmness,
and his attachment to the popular party, of course excited many enemies;
but he was immovable in his course, and denounced all the abuses which
had multiplied in the administration of the finances of the city. It was
discovered that Lyons had 40,000,000 of livres of debt; the
manufactories, meanwhile, were suffering, during a period of popular
ferment, and 20,000 workmen were thrown out of employ. It was necessary
to represent these things to the national assembly, and to ask for aid.
Roland was charged with this mission.
[Sidenote: 1791.
Ætat.
37.]
Madame Roland had not visited Paris for five years. She was familiar
with the names of the heads of the various parties, and a commerce of
letters and civilities had had place between her husband and Brissot,
chief of the girondists. He visited them, and her house became the
rendezvous of his party. Her talents, beauty, and enthusiasm, produced
an effect of which she was scarcely aware herself, and which the party
itself rather felt than acknowledged. "Roland," writes Thiers, in his
"History of the French Revolution," "was known for his clever writings
on manufactures and mechanics. This man, of austere life, inflexible
principles, and cold repulsive manners, yielded, without being aware, to
the superior ascendancy of his wife. Madame Roland was young and
beautiful. Nourished in seclusion by philosophical and republican
sentiments, she had conceived ideas superior to her sex, and had erected
a strict religion from the then reigning opinions. Living in intimate
friendship with her husband, she wrote for him, communicated her
vivacity and ardour, not only to him but to all the girondists, who,
enthusiastic in the cause of liberty and philosophy, adored beauty, and
talent, and their own opinions, in her." She, meanwhile, did all she
could to render her influence covert. She might converse with energy and
freedom with the different members of the party during their chance
visits; but when they assembled in her house to discuss present
proceedings and future prospects, she was present, but maintained
silence. Apart from the deliberators, occupied by needlework, or writing
letters, she listened, nor interfered till, the conference breaking up,
she could in privacy, and without ostentation, express her sentiments to
them individually. This reserve caused all her friends to speak of her
with respect, and yet to discuss their opinions eagerly with her. She
had the fault, in which those who are wedded to opinions are apt to
indulge, of preferring the men who agreed with her, who hated royalty
and courts, and aimed at equality and republicanism, to those of
superior endowments and virtues, but who differed from her. Discontented
at the same time with the talents of the former, she found most of the
men thus collected about her far below the estimate she had formed at a
distance: they talked at random; they had no fixed plan; theoretical
rather than practical, they could make paper constitutions, but knew
little how to deal with their fellow men during the clash of interests,
and the tempest of revolutionary passions. She had none of the vanity
that seeks to shine in conversation, and grew impatient when witty
sallies and argumentative discussions, instead of serious resolves and
heroic acts, occupied her friends.
Roland's mission retained them at Paris for seven months. They were
months crowded with events pregnant with the fate of France. Madame
Roland, in her letters to her friend, Henri Brancal, then in London,
paints the various events, and the sentiments they inspired. She was a
warm partisan of liberty and equality, and mourned over the lukewarmness
of the national assembly on these great questions; or, rather, the
number of the moderate party who wished to assimilate the government of
France to the English constitution. To prevent the extension of these
views, the jacobins agitated and excited the people. Madame Roland at
first approved their measures: she saw no safety for the newly acquired
freedom of her country, except in the enthusiasm by which it was
defended by the many. She had to learn, through tragical experience, how
much more difficult it is to restrain than to excite the French. Her
letters breathe impatience and disapprobation with regard to the actual
state of things. "Represent to yourself," she writes, "a number of good
citizens carrying on a perpetual, active, painful, and often fruitless
struggle with the mass of the ambitious, the discontented, and the
ignorant." The flight of the king filled her with alarm, mingled with
enthusiasm, as she saw danger approach herself and her friends; danger
to proceed from the triumph of despotism--she could not then imagine
that any would arise from freedom. "While we were at peace," she writes,
"I kept in the back ground, and exercised only the sort of influence
suited to my sex; but, when the departure of the king declared war, it
appeared to me that every one ought to devote himself without reserve. I
caused myself to be received in fraternal associations, persuaded that
the zeal and intelligence of any member of society must be useful in
critical moments." The arrest and return of the king and his family
kindled a thousand hopes. "It would be a folly, an absurdity, almost a
horror," she writes, "to replace the king on the throne. To bring Louis
XVI. to trial would doubtless be the greatest and most just of measures;
but we are incapable of adopting it." Little did she anticipate the
progress of events.
Meanwhile the project of her party was to suspend the king from
exercising the royal functions. It must be remembered that we, from a
distance, judge Louis from facts, as history records them: then, when
events were passing, no one could fairly judge the other; and while the
French expected invasion, and saw in the flight of their king the
infraction of the oath he had taken to maintain the constitution, those
attached to it regarded him as a traitor. Madame Roland sided with those
who regarded his dethronement as the safety of France, and the erection
of a republic as the promise of its welfare. She thought that both were
imminent. "I have seen," she writes, "the flame of liberty lit up in my
country; it cannot be quenched, and late events have served as fuel;
knowledge and reason are united to instinct to maintain and augment it;
it must devour the last remains of despotism, and subvert thrones. I
shall die when nature pleases, and my last sigh will be a breathing of
joy and hope for the generations to come." The tumults, however, that
succeeded seemed to crush these hopes. Brissot fell into disrepute:
there was an endeavour to crush the republican party, which, in the
moment of danger, had been willing to ally itself to the most violent
jacobins. In the midst of this agitation and tumult the mission of
Roland came to a close, and he prepared to leave Paris. The elections
were about to commence, and he was candidate for Lyons, but was not
elected. The autumn, therefore, was spent in the country. Madame Roland
was evidently dispirited by the obscurity of her life and absence from
the scene of action. "I see with regret," she writes, "that my husband
is cast back on silence and obscurity. He is habituated to public life:
it is more necessary to him than he is himself aware; his energy and
activity injure his health when not exercised according to his
inclinations: in addition, I had hoped for great advantages for my child
in a residence at Paris. Occupied there by her education, I should have
excited and developed some sort of talent. The recluse life I must lead
here makes me tremble for her. From the moment that my husband has no
occupation but his desk, I must remain near to amuse him, and diversify
his daily labours, according to a duty and a habit which may not be
eluded. This existence is in exact contradiction to that suitable to a
child of ten years of age. My heart is saddened by this opposition of
duties, already too deeply felt. I find myself fallen into the nullity
of a provincial life, where no exterior circumstances supply that which
I cannot do myself, and a dark veil falls over the future. If I believed
that my husband were satisfied, it would be otherwise; hope would
embellish the prospect. However, our destiny is fixed, and I must try to
render it as happy as I can."
The discontent of madame Roland was natural to her ardent disposition.
She desired to be great, not for the sake of riches, or even power; but
to have scope afforded her to exercise those virtues which, nourished in
solitude, and excited by important events, inflamed her heart to
enthusiasm. She wished to be great as her favourites in Plutarch were
great: she did not look forward to actual peril, but to a life of
activity and usefulness on a grand scale, and to be numbered among those
whose names were to be recorded in future history as the parents of the
liberty of her country.
[Sidenote: 1792.
Ætat.
38.]
In the December of the same year they returned to Paris, and in the
following March, a new ministry being formed from the girondist party,
Roland was named minister for the interior. It was a post of honour, but
heavily burdened with responsibility. Dumouriez, then fluctuating,
attracted by a court that flattered, yet desirous of conciliating his
own party, was minister for foreign affairs. At first Roland felt
assured of the good dispositions of the king towards the new state of
things. "I could not believe," writes his wife, "in the constitutional
vocation of a monarch born under a despotism, brought up for it, and
accustomed to exercise it; and I never saw my husband leave me to attend
council, full of reliance on the good intentions of the king, but I
exclaimed, in my heart, 'What new folly will now be committed!'" She
goes on pleasantly to relate the surprise excited at court, when Roland
appeared in his quaker-like costume, his round hat, and his shoes tied
with riband. The master of the ceremonies pointed him out to Dumouriez,
with an angry and agitated mien, exclaiming--"Ah! sir,--no buckles to
his shoes!" "Ah! sir," replied Dumouriez, with mock solemnity, "all is
lost!"
We have no space for the details of Roland's ministry, nor the events
then passing. The king had undertaken the difficult game of satisfying
his enemies by slight concessions and apparent good humour; but he
refused to sanction a severe decree against the clergy, which their
inveterate opposition to the party in power rendered necessary in the
eyes of the lovers of liberty; and another to establish a camp of 20,000
volunteers to protect the assembly and the capital, during a grand
federative assembly to be held during the summer. It was projected to
address a letter to the king, on this refusal, in the name of all the
ministers: but they declined presenting it. Madame Roland insisted that
her husband should singly remonstrate with the monarch, and he resolved
on so doing. She wrote the letter. It was one calculated to irritate
rather than to persuade Louis; but she liked bold measures, and Roland,
once persuaded, was obstinate. The girondists wished, in fact, to bring
the king to an explanation, and preferred a rupture to uncertainty. Some
obstacles arising to Roland's reading his letter to the king, he sent it
to him; but this was not enough; and he took a speedy occasion to read
it aloud in full council, and to force the king to hear the rebukes and
remonstrances it contained. Louis listened with admirable patience, and,
on retiring, said he would make known his intentions. On the following
day, Roland and two of his more zealous colleagues were dismissed, while
Dumouriez took on himself to reform the ministry.
It was certainly a bold, and, if not beneficial, a presumptuous act in a
woman thus to put herself forward during these political agitations.
Madame Roland hated monarchical institutions, and her desire to subvert
them in her own country partook of the vehemence with which women too
usually follow up their ideas. She had always been accustomed to copy
and arrange her husband's writings. At first she did this servilely: by
degrees she emancipated herself from the task of being a mere copyist.
The pair were agreed in views, opinions, and plans of action. There was
a driness and hardness in Roland's writings that did not please her more
demonstrative nature. When he became minister, they conferred together
as to the spirit of any proposed writing, and then she, who could better
command leisure, took up the pen. "I could not express any thing," she
writes, "that regarded reason or justice, which he was not capable of
realising or maintaining by his character and conduct; while I expressed
better than he could whatever he had done or promised to do. Without my
intervention Roland had been an equally good agent: his activity and
knowledge, as well as his probity, were all his own; but he produced a
greater sensation through me, since I put into his writings that mixture
of energy and gentleness, of authority and persuasion, which is peculiar
to a woman of a warm heart and a clear head. I wrote with delight such
pieces as I thought would be useful, and I took greater pleasure in them
than I should have done had I been their acknowledged author."
Of the letter itself, we may say that it is eloquent, but very ill
judged, if it was meant to conciliate the king; but it was not. It was
written in a spirit of contempt for Louis's conduct; of menace, if he
did not pass the decrees; and of sturdy independence and republicanism
as far as regarded the minister himself. It naturally alienated the
monarch; but Roland and his wife were too enthusiastically attached to
the cause of liberty and equality, not to glory in expressing their
sentiments openly and boldly at the foot of the throne, even at the
expense of loss of office. On this event they secluded themselves in
private life, living in an obscure and modest abode in Rue St. Jaques.
They mingled in no intrigues, while they deplored the misfortunes of
their country, being persuaded that the king and his friends were about
to call in foreign troops to destroy its new-born liberty.
After the events of the 10th of August, Roland was recalled to the
ministry. He and his wife, both hating monarchy, could not understand
why the ruins of it in France should not at once be cast aside, and a
republic erected on the vacant space. Hitherto they had feared
monarchical reaction; add to which many of the tumults in the preceding
months had been fomented by the court party under the idea that popular
outrage would cause a return to loyal feeling among the moderate party.
The fear of the success of the court had made them, together with
Barbaroux and Servan, consult how far it would be possible to found a
republic in the south of France, if monarchy triumphed in the north.
There was no fear of this now: Louis XVI. was dethroned and imprisoned;
and the lovers of their country witnessed a more frightful scene than
any that had yet stained its annals, when the more violent jacobins, who
went by the name of the Mountain, excited the people to fury, so to
maintain their own power. Marat, Robespierre, and Danton were beginning
their reign of terror.
At the beginning of September, during the massacres in the prisons,
madame Roland wrote to Brancal, "We are under the knife of Robespierre
and Marat, These men agitate the people, and endeavour to turn them
against the national assembly and the council: they have a little army,
which they pay with money stolen from the Tuileries, or which is given
them by Danton, who, underhand, is the chief. Would you believe that
they meditated the arrest of Brissot and Roland? Had the arrest been
executed, these two excellent citizens had been taken to the abbey and
massacred with the rest. We are not yet secure; and, if the departments
do not send a guard for the assembly and the council, both will be
lost." Again she wrote, "My friend, Danton leads all; Robespierre is his
puppet; Marat holds his torch and dagger: this ferocious tribune reigns,
and we are his slaves until the moment when we shall become his victims.
If you only knew the frightful details of what is going on. You are
aware of my enthusiasm for the revolution; well, I am ashamed of it: it
is deformed by monsters, and become hideous. "What may happen within a
week? it is degrading to remain, but we are not allowed to quit Paris:
they shut us in to murder us when occasion serves." From this moment
madame Roland struggled unflinchingly to overthrow the power of the
jacobins. Her ill success conducted her to the scaffold.
The moderation and opposition of the girondists rendered them hateful to
the mountain, and every endeavour was made to excite the Parisians
against them. They cast on Roland the stigma of being governed by his
wife. When it was proposed in the national assembly to invite him to
resume the ministry, Garat said, "We had better invite madame; she is
the real minister." They accused her of using every feminine art to
secure partisans. These were the mere calumnies of the day, powerful for
her ruin, but not tarnishing her after-glory. Every impartial pen
describes her as carrying her simplicity and grace into her political
enthusiasm, and charming even those whom she did not convince.
Le Montey writes of her--"I met madame Roland several times in former
days: her eyes, her figure, and hair were of remarkable beauty; her
delicate complexion had a freshness and colour which, joined to her
reserved yet ingenuous appearance, imparted a singular air of youth. She
spoke, too, well, yet there was no affectation in what she said; it was
merely nature carried to a great degree of perfection. Wit, good sense,
propriety of expression, keen reasoning, naïve grace, all flowed
without effort from her roseate lips. I saw madame Roland once again at
the commencement of her husband's first ministry. She had lost nothing
of her air of freshness, youth, and simplicity: her husband resembled a
quaker, and she looked like his daughter. Her child flitted about her
with ringlets reaching to her waist. Madame Roland spoke of public
affairs only, and I perceived that my moderation inspired pity. Her mind
was highly excited, but her heart remained gentle and inoffensive.
Although the monarchy was not yet overthrown, she did not conceal that
symptoms of anarchy began to appear, and she declared herself ready to
resist them to the death. I remember the calm and resolute tone in which
she declared that she was ready, if need were, to place her head on the
block. I confess that the image of that charming head delivered over to
the axe of the executioner made an ineffaceable impression--for party
excesses had not yet accustomed us to such frightful ideas. Thus, in the
sequel, the prodigious firmness of madame Roland and her heroic death
did not surprise me. All was in harmony, nor was there any affectation
in this celebrated woman: she had not only the strongest but the truest
mind of our revolution."
Dumont writes of her--"Madame Roland had every personal attraction,
joined to excellence of character and understanding. I saw many
assemblies of ministers, and the principal girondists, held at her
house. A woman seemed somewhat out of place among them; but she did not
mingle in the discussions: she usually sat at her desk, writing letters,
and appeared to be occupied by other things, while she did not lose a
word. Her modest style of dress did not lessen her attractions, and,
though her occupations were those of a man, she was really adorned by
all the grace and exterior accomplishments of her sex. I reproach myself
now that I did not perceive then the full extent of her merit; but I was
rather prejudiced against female politicians; and I found in her a too
great tendency to mistrust, which springs from want of knowledge of the
world."
The influence of earnestness, sincerity, and clear views were great over
her husband and his party. If she had, from a rooted disapprobation of
royalty, urged him to any extremities with Louis, not less did she abhor
anarchy, and fearlessly incite him to oppose it.
During the frightful massacres of the 2d and 3d of September Roland
displayed an energy and heroism worthy of the woman who was said to be
the soul of his counsels. On the 3d, while terror still reigned, he
wrote to the mayor, Petion, who was in ignorance of the atrocities that
were going on, and to Santerre, who remained in ignominious inaction,
pressing them earnestly to come forward. He addressed a letter also to
the assembly, in which he fearlessly denounced the crimes of the people;
offering his own head as the sacrifice, but calling on the authorities
to suppress the massacres. The assembly applauded the letter; while
Marat and his partisans denounced him as a traitor, and issued an arrest
against him. Danton, whose views were more systematic, intervened, and
prevented an act which at that time had injured the jacobins more than
the party against whom it was directed.
Roland was not awed by the danger he incurred. When, on the 23d of
September, he gave in a report on the state of the capital and of
France, he described the disorders of Paris with energy, and insisted on
their causes, and the means of preventing a recurrence of them. His
character gained with his own party, and still more with posterity, by
this unflinching and persevering struggle with the jacobins; but he was
not seconded by men of sufficient vigour, and, wearied at length by an
anarchy so opposed to his probity and inflexible love of order, he
offered his resignation. The girondists, in reply, proposed that the
assembly should invite him to remain in office, while the mountain, of
whom Danton was the mouthpiece, complained of his feebleness and of his
being governed by his wife. His letter of the 3d of September was cited
as sufficient exculpation from the charge of weakness. The assembly,
without expressing an opinion, passed to the order of the day. The
girondists, and every worthy member, entreated Roland to remain in the
ministry; and he wrote to the assembly--"Since I am calumniated, since I
am threatened by dangers, and since the convention appear to desire it,
I remain. It is too glorious," he continued, alluding to his wife, "that
my alliance with courage and virtue is the only reproach made
against me."
These accusations against madame Roland, and the hatred borne her by the
mountain, were increased by the influence she continued to exercise.
Society, such as the Parisians had once gloried in--assemblies of the
wise, the witty, and the fair--were at an end. The drawing-room of
madame Roland was the only one in which elegance, and sense, and good
breeding reigned. Barbaroux, named, from his beauty, the Antinöus of
France, Louvet, Guadet, and others, met there, and added to the elegance
of the coteries of past times, the serious and deeper spirit of the
present hour. Too soon they were swept away by the torrent of the
revolution.
On the 24th of October Roland again came forward with a report on the
state of the capital, which was written with dignity, but with a strict
adherence to truth: he described with energy, and strongly reprobated,
the crimes committed on the 2d September. He cast the accusation of
sanguinary outrage on a few; but he blamed the many for their culpable
weakness in permitting such crimes. Robespierre rose to answer him; but
his known complicity with the Septembriseurs excited abhorrence and
confusion in the chamber. It was on this occasion when Robespierre,
relying on the terror felt by his enemies, defied them to accuse him,
that Louvet crossed the chamber to the tribune and exclaimed with
energy--"Yes; I accuse you!" The rest of the girondists supported him.
The speech that followed this denunciation was full of energy, daring
truths, and resolute measures. Had they been followed up on the instant,
France had been spared the reign of terror. Robespierre, confused,
overwhelmed, ghastly with terror, could only ask a delay to prepare his
defence. A disinterested but mistaken love of order and justice caused
his adversaries to assent to his request.
Marat had also been attacked by Louvet; Danton was enveloped more
remotely in the accusation; and these men, together with Robespierre,
saw safety only in the extirpation of the girondists. They spared no
pains to calumniate the party, and madame Roland shared in the odium
they cast upon her husband. They were accused of forming a society for
the purpose of corrupting the public mind, and of conspiring to separate
France, founded on the idea already mentioned, of establishing a
republic in the south, if the king should subjugate the north. Vague
charges were magnified into crimes, and punished by death, when the
people were above law, and anarchy prevailed.
[Sidenote: 1793.
Ætat.
39.]
Roland continued to struggle with the mountain party which each day
gained ascendency. The execution of Louis XVI. showed him that these
struggles were vain. He looked on the death of the monarch as a signal
for a course of sanguinary measures which he had no power to avert.
Roland had hitherto resolved to resist the men who steeped their country
in blood and crime; but he was now discouraged, not by the dangers which
he felt gather round himself, but by the impossibility of stemming the
tide of evil, and he sent in his resignation on the 23d of January. The
moderate party in the convention dared not utter a remonstrance, so
completely were they under the domination of the mountain. Roland
published his accounts, which exonerated him from the calumnies cast
upon him, but his enemies refused to sanction them by a report. He made
no other effort, but remained in seclusion, seeing only his intimate
friends, the girondists, and often discussing with them the possibility
of awing the capital through the influence of the southern departments.
Meanwhile the advance of the foreign armies plunged the nation in
terror, and induced it to place yet more entire confidence in the
demagogues who promised victory at the cost of the lives of all the
citizens who opposed them. The struggle between the girondists and
mountain party thus continued for several months, till the latter
completely triumphed, and passed a decree of arrest against twenty-two
of the opposite party. Some among them surrendered, to display their
obedience to the law. Others fled, for the purpose of exciting the
departments to resist the tyrants of the capital.
For some time madame Roland had expected arrest and imprisonment. She
had feared the entry of the mob into her house, and had slept with a
pistol under her pillow, that, if laid hands on by ruffians, she might
deliver herself by death from outrage. Latterly, finding her husband and
herself quite powerless for good, she had made preparations for
returning to the country, whither strong personal motives caused her to
wish to retire; she was delayed by illness, and before she recovered
strength, danger thickened. When the men came, on the 31st of May, to
execute the order of arrest on Roland, she resolved to announce this
circumstance, and his refusal to obey the order, herself, to the
convention. She hurried alone, and veiled, to execute her purpose. Her
entrance was opposed by the sentinels--she persisted, and sent in a
letter she had prepared, for the president, soliciting to be heard. The
disturbance that reigned in the assembly, and want of resolution on the
part of her friends who still sat there, prevented its being read. She
waited some time; penetrated by indignation, by compassion for her
country, while all she loved were exposed to peril, she was far above
personal fear; and earnestly desired to be permitted to speak, feeling
that she should command attention. Failing in her attempt, she returned
home. Roland was absent--he had already taken measures for flight--she
sought and found him, related her ill success, and again returned to the
assembly. It was now ten at night. When she arrived at the Place du
Carrousel, she saw an armed force around; cannon were placed before the
gate of the national palace; the assembly itself was no longer sitting.
She returned home. Roland was safe--she resolved to remain and await the
event, indifferent to her own fate. Since the resignation of Roland she
had lived in great retirement. There is a belief, more a tradition than
an asserted fact, that this noble-hearted woman, whose soul was devoted
to the fulfilment of her duties, to whom life was matter of indifference
compared to her affections and her sense of virtue, had felt for the
first time, now in mature life, the agitations and misery of passion. It
is supposed that Barbaroux, deputy from the commune of Marseilles, was
the object of her attachment,--Barbaroux, who was called. Antinöus from
his beauty: he was full of courage, ardour, and those republican dreams
so dear to madame Roland. In her portraits of various chiefs of the
revolution, she says of him that he was active, laborious, frank, and
brave, with all the vivacity of a Marsellais: full of attachment to
freedom, and proud of the revolution, he was one of those whom an
enlightened party would wish to attach, and who would have enjoyed great
reputation in a republic. She adds that when Roland resigned they saw
more of him: his open character and ardent patriotism inspired them with
confidence. No word she writes shows that he was regarded by her in any
light except that of her friend; but, in other portions of her memoirs,
she alludes darkly to the struggles of love; and it is evident that her
project of retiring into the country originated in her resolution to
conquer her own heart. And now this passion was there, with its
hopelessness and misery, to elevate her far above fear of prison or
death.
Emissaries came to inquire vainly for Roland. Disappointed in their
purpose they left a sentinel at her door. She at last retired to rest;
but, after an hour's sleep, she was awakened by her servant who
announced that the officers of the section demanded to see her. She
guessed at once their errand, nor was she deceived. For a moment she
deliberated whether she should resist an arrest, which, as being made in
the night, was illegal. But she saw that would be useless. Seals were
put on her effects: the house was filled by above 100 men. At seven
o'clock she left her home, amidst the tears and cries of her child and
servants. Outside she was hailed by the sanguinary cries of the mob. "Do
you wish the windows to be closed," said one of the men seated beside
her in the carriage. "No, gentlemen," she replied; "innocence, however
oppressed, will never assume the appearance of guilt. I fear the eyes of
no one, and will not hide myself." "You have more firmness than most
men," replied her guard.
Shut up in the prison of the abbey, she delayed only till the next day
to arrange her room, and make plans for her prison life. She asked for
books--Plutarch's Lives, Thomson's Seasons, in French, and a few English
books, were those she chose. She turned her mind from her sorrows, to
occupy herself by her mode of life and duties. She resolved to limit her
wants to mere necessities. A whim seized her to try on how little she
could subsist. She retrenched the number of her meals, and gave up
coffee, and chocolate, and wine: the money she saved by these privations
she distributed among the poorer prisoners.
At first, at the instigation of friends, she addressed letters to the
convention, and to the ministers, appealing against her imprisonment:
they met with no notice. She then occupied herself by drawing up notes
concerning the revolution, her views and conduct, and the characters of
the chiefs--wishing to leave behind a full exculpation of her opinions
and actions.
On the 24th of June she was exposed to a most cruel deception. She was
told that she was free--she left the abbey--but, on alighting at her
home, she was again arrested, and carried to the prison of St. Pélagie.
The change was greatly for the worse; the prisoners were of the lowest
and most infamous class of both sexes. She roused her courage to meet
this fresh indignity, for she felt keenly the insolent play exercised on
her feelings. Some hours' reflection restored calm to her firm soul. She
resolved again to cheat time and anxiety by occupation. "Had I not my
books and leisure?" she writes: "was I no longer myself? I was almost
angry at having felt disturbed; and thought only of making use of life,
and employing my faculties with that independence which a strong mind
preserves even in chains, and which disappoints one's most cruel
enemies." "Firmness," she continues, "does not only consist in rising
above circumstances by an effort of will, but by maintaining the tone of
mind by regulations that govern it." And thus, in the midst of terror
and death, she schooled herself to fortitude and peace. She portioned
out her days in various studies. She never left her cell, for her
immediate neighbours were women of that class which is lost to decency
and shame; she could not shut her ears to the conversation they held
from their windows with the men in the opposite cells. After a time this
shocking state of things was altered. The wife of the goaler,
compassionating her situation, gave her another room above her own; and
she was thus delivered from her unhappy neighbours, the sight of
turnkeys, and the depressing routine of prison rules. Madame Bouchaud
waited on her herself, and surrounded her with all that could soften
imprisonment. Jasmine was trailed round the bars of her window; she had
a piano in her room, and every comfort that the narrow space would
admit. She could almost forget her captivity, and began to indulge hope.
Roland was in a place of safety; her daughter under safe guardianship;
her fugitive friends were at Caen, assembling partisans, and she fancied
that political events were tending towards amelioration. Resigned for
the present, she was almost happy. She saw a few friends; Bose brought
her flowers from the Jardin des Plantes; and her occupations filled up
the intervals of the day.
Seeing no speedy termination to her imprisonment, it became eligible to
choose an occupation that would carry her forward from day to day,
imparting interest to their course. She began her own memoirs; at first
she almost forgot sorrow as she wrote; but the horrors that were
happening, the massacres, guillotinings, and sufferings of her country
grew thick and dark around, and often she interrupted herself, in
pictures of domestic peace, to lament the fate of lost friends, and the
ghastly ruin that overwhelmed all France. Nor could she always keep calm
the tenour of her personal cares and feelings. Separated from her child
and all she loved best, hearing only of distress and tyranny, she was
sometimes overpowered by grief. In spite of the kindness of the gaoler
and his wife, she saw and heard too much of vice and misery, such as is
ever found within a prison, more especially at a period when so many
innocent were victims, not to be frequently dispirited. The brutality of
a prison visitor in authority disturbed the little peace she had
acquired. He saw with anger the comforts of her room; and, saying that
equality must be maintained, ordered that she should be transferred to a
cell. A hard lesson on equality was this to the republican heroine;
equality between the guilty and the innocent, which mingled in revolting
association the victim of injustice with the votaries of vice.
The reign of terror had begun. A decree was passed to bring the
twenty-two accused deputies to trial. Her prison became filled with her
friends, and, as one after the other they were led to the guillotine,
they were replaced by fresh victims. She made some struggles, by letters
to men in power, to be liberated, since, as yet, she was accused of no
crime: these failing, she meditated suicide. At the beginning of October
she writes, in the journal of her last thoughts, "Two months ago I
aspired to the honour of ascending the scaffold. Victims were still
allowed to speak, and the energy of great courage might have been of
service to truth. Now all is lost: to live is basely to submit to a
ferocious rule, and to give it the opportunity of committing fresh
atrocities." She bade adieu to her husband, her child, her faithful
servant, her friends; to the sun, to the solitary country where she had
lived in peace, to hours of meditation and serene thoughts; and she
exclaims, "God! supreme being! soul of the world! source of all I feel
of great, good, and happy! thou in whose existence I believe, for I must
have emanated from something better than what I see, I am about to
re-unite myself to thy essence." With these thoughts she wrote
directions for the education of her Eudora, and a letter, in which she
bids her child "remember her mother."
The act of accusation against the chief girondists, among whom she was
included, and her expected examination before the revolutionary
tribunal, caused her to dismiss this purpose: she hoped to do some good
by speaking the truth courageously to her assassins. One after the
other, her friends underwent the mockery of a trial, while her turn was
delayed from day to day. The tenderness, the greatness of her mind
displayed itself in the most touching manner during this suspense. She
wrote to her friends, but her thoughts chiefly lingered round her child;
and again she wrote to] the person who had the charge of her in few, and
simple, but strong words, conceived in all the energy of maternal love.
On the 31st of October, the day of the execution of her revered friend
Brissot, she was transferred to the _conciergerie_, and placed in a
squalid cell amidst all the filth of a crowded prison. Her examination
took place on the following day, and continued for several days after.
Her crime was her intercourse with her friends, the deputies of the
gironde, now proscribed. She was scarcely permitted to answer, but her
courage enforced attention. She was bid choose an advocate for her
trial: she named Marceau, and retired with serene and even cheerful
dignity, saying to her accusers, "I wish, in return for all the ill you
bring on me, peace equal to that which I preserve, whatever may be the
value attached to it."
The following night she occupied herself by writing her defence. It is
eloquent and full of feeling, and concludes by a wish that she may be
the last victim immolated to party frenzy, and a declaration that she
shall joyfully quit an unhappy land drowned in the blood of the just.
This defence was not spoken. After her examination some witnesses were
examined; the act of accusation was drawn up, and judgment delivered,
which pronounced that "There existed a horrible conspiracy against the
unity and indivisibility of the republic, the liberty and safety of the
French people; that madame Roland was proved to have been an accomplice
in this conspiracy, and was therefore condemned to death; and that the
judgment was to be put in execution within twenty-four hours."
During the few eventful and miserable days which this courageous woman
passed in the _conciergerie_, she often forgot herself in endeavours to
console her companions in adversity. Riouffe, in his "Mémoires d'un
Détenu," who was confined in the same prison, writes, "The blood of the
twenty-two victims was yet warm when madame Roland arrived at the
_conciergerie._ Perfectly aware of the fate that awaited her, her
tranquillity was not disturbed. Though past the bloom of life, she was
yet full of attractions: tall, and of an elegant figure, her physiognomy
was animated; but sorrow and long imprisonment had left traces of
melancholy in her face that tempered her natural vivacity. Something
more than is usually found in the eyes of woman beamed in her large dark
eyes, full of sweetness and expression. She often spoke to me at the
grate with the freedom and courage of a great man. This republican
language falling from the lips of a pretty French woman, for whom the
scaffold was prepared, was a miracle of the revolution. We gathered
attentively round her in a species of admiration and stupor. Her
conversation was serious without being cold. She spoke with a purity, a
melody, and a measure, which rendered her language a sort of music, of
which the ear was never tired. She spoke of the deputies, who had just
perished, with respect, but without effeminate pity; reproaching them,
even, for not having taken sufficiently strong measures. Sometimes her
sex had the mastery, and we perceived that she had wept over the
recollection of her daughter and her husband. The woman who waited on
her said to me one day--'Before you she calls up all her courage; but in
her room she remains sometimes for hours together leaning against the
window, weeping.'"
On the 10th of November she was led to die. She went to the scaffold
dressed in white. As she went, she exerted herself to inspire another
victim who accompanied her, whose fortitude failed him, with resolution
similar to her own. Twice, it is said, she won him to smile. Arriving at
the place of execution, she bowed before the statue of Liberty, saying,
"Oh, Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!" She then bade
her companion ascend first, that he might not have the pain of seeing
her die. Her turn followed; and to the last she preserved her courage,
and her calm and gentle dignity of manner.
She perished at the age of thirty-nine. Her death crowned her life, and
has bequeathed her name to an illustrious immortality.
Her husband was in safety at Rouen when he heard of her death. He
resolved not to survive her. He consulted with his friends whether he
should deliver himself up to the revolutionary tribunal, or destroy
himself. The interests of his child made him determine on the latter, as
his legalised execution would have caused his fortune to be confiscated.
He left the house where he had taken refuge, to prevent the friends who
sheltered him from suffering persecution. He stabbed himself with the
blade of a sword-stick, on the 15th of November, on a high road near
Rouen. In his pocket was found a paper, declaring the cause of his
death. "The blood that flows in torrents in my country," he wrote,
"dictates my resolve: indignation caused me to quit my retreat. As soon
as I heard of the murder of my wife, I determined no longer to remain on
an earth tainted by crime."
The grandeur, courage, and sincerity of madame Roland's character fill
us with admiration; her sweetness, and tenderness, and virtue add charms
to the impression. How easy it is in all that is human to spy defects!
Her autobiography is full of traits that betray considerable vanity; and
her husband, it is said, would have been spared much ridicule had she
not put herself so forward during his ministry. It does not appear,
however, that Roland wished to be spared his share of the ridicule which
low-minded men delight in affixing on superior beings of the other sex.
We entertain a conviction that, if her husband had wished her to mingle
less in his deliberations and labours, she would at once have yielded;
but her enthusiasm and her aid was in his eyes the reward of his upright
and manly conduct, and he gave token by his death that life was
valueless when he was deprived of her sympathy and affection.