Madame Roland (Blind 1886)/Chapter 10
MADAME ROLAND REVEALS HERSELF.
The year 1790 brought with it a promise of conciliation and concord. Not in France only were the best natures full of faith in the future, but all over Europe the hearts of men turned with yearning expectation towards the land where mankind seemed taking a fresh start in its development. In England, above all, the sympathy with the French people was widely diffused. The same generous enthusiasm prevailed which blazed forth in 1860 on the liberation of Italy by Garibaldi. Something deeper still, for, as Wordsworth wrote,
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! Oh times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in Romance!
Wordsworth, in those days drawn across the Channel, nourished such glorious visions of the coming change that the reaction from them overclouded his mind for years, and throw him —as, indeed, it did half that generation- into the opposite ranks of reaction. Coleridge, the future leader of nineteenth-century Toryism, dreamed of establishing a Pantisocrasy on the banks of the Susquehannah; Godwin, not yet "fallen on evil days," incorporated the principles of the Revolution in his Political Justice. Fox hailed the storming of the Bastile by the Parisians as the greatest event in history. If such were the feeling of Englishmen, what was the thrill of expectation in those countries adjoining France, still sorely pressed down by the shackles of Feudalism!
In France itself—where all artificial barriers obstructing the free intercourse of province with province had been abolished; where the taxes had been equitably distributed; where the division of the kingdom into districts was the basis of a system of electoral franchise approximately proportioned to population; where the suppression of monasteries, the sale of Church property, and the abolition of feudal rents, not only threw an enormous quantity of land into the market, but, by relieving the small proprietors from the pressure of innumerable trammels, infused the vigour of a new life into agriculture—in France itself, in spite of the vindictive plotting of emigrants and the smouldering rage of the clergy, there was a buoyant hope that, the Constitution once established, the regeneration of the country might be peaceably consummated. Had not the King unexpectedly gone to the Assembly, expressed adhesion to the new Constitution, exhorted them all to follow his example, taken the civic oath, and was not all France likewise about to swear it in a rapture of enthusiasm?
And now, in this spring of 1790, a spontaneous movement, originating in the heart of the people itself, swept the surface of national life with its quickening vernal breath. The conception of no single mind nor the watchword of a party, the sense of this common national revival imparted the same impulse to the inhabitants of distant provinces. To consecrate the bond of brotherly union, to seal their fidelity to the new Order, to vow mutual assistance in danger or distress, was the motive of these fraternal Feasts, which sent forth holiday-making crowds on joyful pilgrimages to the altars of the Federation. From Brest to Bordeaux, along the heaths of desolate Brittany and through the rich Norman pastures, over the rolling hills and mountainous fastnesses of picturesque Limosin, by the sounding shores of the Bay of Biscay, amid the orange-scented groves of Provence, the people were marching, with waving banners, to the strains of the Ça Ira, and converging to centres of meeting in the provincial capitals.
Before the sunrise of May the 30th, in the dewy freshness of morning, patriotic crowds were pouring through the gates of Lyons. As many as fifty or sixty thousand Federates, and two hundred thousand people in all, took their way through the plain bordering the shores of the blue winding Rhone, towards the Altar of Concord, where a colossal statue of Liberty rose through the silvery morning mists. Amid that moving throng of men with their waving flags, of women and girls festively clad, bearing palm-branches and crowned with flowers, there went one, radiant and resolute, stepping out like a goddess of old, herself, in her immaculate strength and purity, the living realisation of the liberty they adored. We know her, walking there by the side of the austere Roland, surrounded by a small group friends; but the Revolution knew her not as yet, the highest of its heroic hearts.
It knew her not, though already it received her soul into its own in that stirring narrative of the new Covenant, which, anonymously written by her, appeared in the Courrier de Lyons, edited by her friend Champagneux, and of which no less than sixty thousand copies were sold on that occasion. In the letters and manifestoes despatched from all parts of the country to the National Assembly, the spirit which animated these festivities shows itself as a recognition of the natural authority belonging to old age; participation of women in the national life; adoption of the new-born by the Communes in the name of France; renunciation of religious hatreds at the foot of the Cross. The most impressive of all those Feasts of the Federation was that celebrated in Paris itself on the 14th of July 1790, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile.
The great bond of fellowship in the cause of liberty was nowhere more deeply felt than by the Rolands. They devoted themselves to the propagation of the new ideas, and conceived the plan of an association of a few friends, who should live together and make every effort to enlighten the people as to the changes which had already taken place, and those that it was imperatively necessary to accomplish. Two of them, Lanthenas and Bancal des Issarts, intended joining the Rolands by putting their funds in common, and buying some of the national property that was then selling for, comparatively, a mere trifle. Lanthenas, an amiable young doctor, whose acquaintance Roland had made in Italy, was deeply attached to Madame Roland, whose lead he followed in all things; embodying her ideas in newspaper articles, in public speeches, and by every other means he could devise. His devotion, no doubt, made her more partial to him than she would otherwise have been; and it is painful to reflect that the man whom she often honoured with the name of brother was the only one who proved untrue to her in adversity. He had been quite contented with her friendship as long as no one else was more favoured than himself; but when, some years later, he discovered that others were preferred, he not only turned against her, but against her whole party. In so doing poor Lanthenas saved himself from sharing the fate of his Girondin friends; but at what a price! His name, having been included in the list of the proscribed, was struck out by Marat, who declared him to be a mean-spirited creature (pauvre d'esprit). Lanthenas had once written, "When the people are ripe for liberty a nation is always worthy of it." This foolish phrase turned out clever enough, for it saved his neck eventually. But Lanthenas, if not over-wise, was one of those useful men who can serve a cause well by their zeal and activity on its behalf. Bancal des Issarts, a man of strong, resolute character, had thrown up his profession of notary in order to devote himself more completely to the political questions of the day. In 1789 he had been chosen elector of Clermont-Ferrand, and, in the summer of 1790, became acquainted with the Rolands, when he passed a few days with them at the Clos de la Platière.
Similarity of interests and tastes suggested the plan of their all living together, and, in view of the contemplated association, Madame Roland addressed the following prudent remarks to Bancal: "For the happiness of an establishment in common, either in the country or elsewhere, it is not necessary to find perfect men—that would, be seeking chimerical conditions; but it is as necessary to know each other well as it is indispensable that we should tolerate each other. Every situation has its inconveniences as well as its advantages and duties. In seeking the many benefits of an association, we must not disguise from ourselves that we incur obligations in return, and will need virtues which may be more easily dispensed with in solitude."
Roland himself had no misgivings as to the perfect feasibility of the scheme. Bancal, having paid his friends another visit in the autumn of that year, received from him the following hearty letter, which not only gives one the highest idea of Roland's character, but also of that of his friends. It is a glimpse into an ideal kind of life. "What better can you do than join us?" asks Roland. "We should put our lives in common, and multiply our pleasures, inasmuch as there are more of us to enjoy them. You know our plain, outspoken ways, and one does not, at my age, alter when one has never changed. We talk every day of the approaching meeting, and the Church property at Villefranche offers us an excellent opportunity, it being now on sale to the amount of two or three hundred thousand livres; nor need we despair of finding a house. Perhaps we are building castles in the air about it all; but what a pleasant prospect! We will preach patriotism and enlarge people's ideas; the doctor shall carry on his profession; my wife will be the apothecary of the canton; you and I must have an eye to financial matters; and we will all join in exhorting people to union and concord. In doing all this in common, we shall nevertheless enjoy complete individual freedom, convinced that, in order to inculcate the love of liberty, one must be free oneself, and that we should not so if we entered into an engagement we could not break if necessary."
Nothing seemed wanting now to prevent this pleasant scheme from being carried out. Yet something had happened during this last visit of Bancal to the Clos which had entirely altered the aspect of things. It seems pretty clear that the latter—judging from hints and allusions in their correspondence—had conceived too warm an admiration for Roland's wife, and, seeing the disparity of age between her and her husband, had—with the bias natural to a Frenchman—indulged in the hope of finding his attachment reciprocated. It seems equally clear that Madame Roland, although shocked at the discovery, could not help feeling flattered, nor avoid a certain compassionate tenderness for the man she was now forced to bid renounce all idea of fixing himself in her neighbourhood. This, at least, seems to be the key to the letter she now addressed to Bancal after her husband's invitation.
"It would make the charm of our lives (this association), and we should not be useless to our fellow men. Yet this comfortable text has not put me at my ease! . . . I am not convinced it would be for your happiness, and I should never forgive myself for having troubled it. For it has seemed to me that you were inclined, to some extent, to make it depend on things which seem wrong to me, and to nurse hopes which I must forbid. No doubt the affection which unites sincere and sensitive natures, who share a common enthusiasm for what is right, must give a new value to existence; no doubt the virtues which such an affection may help to develop might turn to the profit of society . . . But who can foresee the effect of violent agitations too frequently renewed? . . . I mistake; you might sometimes be saddened, but you could never be weak . . . it is the natural impetuosity of your sex and the activity of an ardent imagination that give rise to these slight errors which resemble the illusion of dreams . . ."
The letter continues in this strain, and ends with the suggestive remark that the beautiful days which they have passed together at the Clos have not been followed by others, for since Bancal has left, she says, the thunder has never ceased to growl, its mutterings being ingeniously turned into a symbol of her inner life, as she concludes—"More thunder! How I like the grand and sombre colour given by it to the landscape; but were it terrible instead, I should not fear it."
Bancal des Issarts, at any rate, never went to live with the Rolands, but put the sea between them by going to England, where he remained for a considerable period, to study, it was said, its political institutions. The correspondence in the meanwhile was carried on briskly enough, and is the chief storehouse of materials for Madame Roland's life from the end of 1790 to March 1792, when her husband entered the Ministry. It gradually became more political in character, and two years from the date of their parting Bancal confided to Madame Roland his passion for a Miss W, whom M. Dauban, from several indications, ingeniously guesses to have been Miss Maria Williams, who then resided in Paris, and mentions Bancal in her Recollections of the French Revolution. Madame Roland, of whom this lady speaks with profound admiration, did everything in her power to advance her friend's suit with Miss W; but apparently to little purpose, for they never married.
Madame Roland's letters to Bancal in England form a running commentary on the political oscillations, the intrigues of the Court, the manœuvres of the Constitutional party, the passionate eagerness of the patriots to establish firmly the conquests of the Revolution. Among other things, we hear that the Declaration of the Rights of Man was printed on pocket-handkerchiefs and distributed by thousands; that Roland, who was a first-rate pedestrian, used to go for long excursions with his friend Lanthenas, distributing little sheets and pamphlets to everyone they met by the wayside, and to the people in cottages and country inns.
On the reform of the municipal bodies all over France, the honest and patriotic Roland had been one of the first to be sent to the Hôtel de Ville of Lyons. By his whole previous training, and wide experience of affairs, he seemed eminently fitted for practical politics. When Arthur Young, passing through Lyons at the end of 1789, sought information concerning its silk manufactures, the one man everyone told him to go to was Roland de la Platière. This gentleman he consequently met, and derived so much useful information from him, that he found he had not visited Lyons in vain. "We had a great deal of conversation," he says, on agriculture, manufactures and commerce; and differed but little in our opinions, except on the treaty of commerce between England and France," adding, what is more interesting to us, "This gentleman, somewhat advanced in life, has a young and beautiful wife—the lady to whom he addressed his letters written in Italy."
The debt of Lyons, whose finances were in as deplorable a condition as those of the rest of the kingdom, amounted to nothing less than forty millions of francs. As the silk factories had suffered much during the first year of the Revolution, it became necessary to solicit assistance; and, as was natural, the ablest citizen of Lyons was sent as extraordinary deputy to the National Assembly to make it aquainted with this state of affairs. So Roland and his wife left for Paris, where, on the 20th of February 1791, they installed themselves in the Appartement of an unpretending house in the Rue Guénégaud, near the Pont Neuf.
No sooner had Madame Roland set foot in her native city than she "ran to the sittings of the Assembly." Keenly, we may believe, did she scrutinise its members. "I saw," she says, "the powerful Mirabeau, the astonishing Cazalés, the bold Maury, the astute Lameths, and the little Barnave, with his little voice and little reasons, cold as a lemon fricassed in snow, to use the pleasing expression of a woman of another century; I observed with annoyance on the side of the Blacks that species of superiority which in public assemblies belongs to men accustomed to personal display, to purity of language, and to distinguished manners. Nevertheless the logic of reason, the daring of honest worth, the enlightenment of philosophy, the fruits of study, and the readiness acquired at the Bar, must have assured the victory to the patriots of the Left, if they were all incorruptible and could remain united." Could remain united! aye, there was the stumbling-block.
The Right, or Blacks—so called because the emigrant princes and nobles wore black—then represented the party of the Moderates, who, so far from wishing to move another step in the direction of progress, were only anxious to stop still, or, if possible, to retrograde gently. In the Left there were (as yet indiscriminately mingled) men destined in the lapse of one short year to become mortal enemies. Amongst those signalised by Madame Roland was left out one who, destined to be borne higher than any on the revolutionary tide, sat as yet inconspicuously on the back benches of the Assembly. Robespierre belonged to that small section of the extreme Left at whom the Jupiter Tonans of the Constituent Assembly once hurled his admonition of "Silence, you thirty votes." But Mirabeau had scanned that impassive figure—cadaverous in its pallor, sternly pressing forward in one straight line, deviating neither to the right nor left—and had uttered the memorable words: "That man will go far, for he believes every word he says."
Now began the potent influence which Madame Roland exercised on the Revolution. She was no sooner settled on the third floor of the Rue Guénégaud, than her house became the centre of a most advanced political group. Dominant female figure of her time though she was, 1791 was the year in which women played the most marked part in the Revolution. The philosophical disquisitions of the salons had not yet been overborne by the martial enthusiasm of 1792 and the gathering Terror of 1793. The social life of Paris was still in its fullest bloom, though the salons of 1791 differed entirely from those famous gatherings presided over by such female wits as Madame du Deffand and Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse; sparkling literary anecdote and philosophical speculations had been superseded by political and social questions. Each shade of opinion had its appropriate meeting-place. Royalism was represented in the splendid mansion of the Princesse de Lamballe. The focus of the Constitutionalists was at the salon of the youthful Madame de Staël, already in her twenty-fifth rear a leading political power. The philosophy of the Revolution found its highest expression in the group that gathered round the lovely and lovable Madame de Condorcet, who had so sincerely given her heart to the great movement that she was able to incite her husband to the composition of his noblest work, while he was daily expecting to be dragged to execution. Then there was the Cercle Social at which ultra-revolutionary and social theories were chiefly discussed. It was attended by an enthusiastic crowd of men and women, and amongst them was a Dutch lady, a Madame Palm-Aelder, who claimed political equality for her sex, a claim worthy to be made of the Revolution, and which the fervid and excitable Olympe de Gouges—who always sided with the weaker party—seconded by those telling words: "Women have surely the right to ascend the platform since they have that of mounting the scaffold."
Above these varied figures Madame Roland towered, representing, as she did, the pure Republican ideal. Coming from the country, where her great powers had lain dormant so long, coming with the bloom of her enthusiasm still fresh upon her, with energies unblunted, and a heart whose capacity for emotion had but grown by long self-suppression, she now scanned with keenest attention the various actors in the thrilling political tragedy whose heroine she was destined to become. Her scrutiny disappointed her. Too critical to cheat herself with illusions, she nowhere discovered the man at once great and disinterested enough to regulate the terrible clash of class with class, and to evolve a fresh order from the threatening chaos.
The little gatherings at Madame Roland's apartment were far too modest to bear any likeness to a salon. Four times a week a small knot of men used to meet there to discuss and concert measures in connection with the political questions of the day. The fair hostess herself sat at a little table apart, engaged in needle-work or else busy with her voluminous correspondence. If we are to take her word for it, she never joined in these discussions, but neither, in spite of her other avocations, ever lost a syllable of what passed. If she had not the faculty of being in two places at once, she must certainly have had some of Cæsar's genius for doing more than one thing at a time. And as she listened to this interminable talk, leading apparently to no practical results, her impatience often became such that she was forced to bite her lips to avoid bursting into speech, and sometimes only refrained with difficulty from boxing the philosophers' ears.
Among the men who most assiduously attended these gatherings was Brissot, whom Madame Roland now first saw face to face. His appearance and manners harmonised perfectly with the idea she had formed of him from his writings, although it struck her "that a certain volatility of mind and character did not entirely become the gravity of philosophy." Thither also came placid, ruddy-faced Pétion, honesty personified, erelong to be made the idolised mayor of Paris, and not long after to become the fugitive outlaw hiding his prematurely white head from pursuit. He was usually accompanied by his fellow-townsman Robespierre, ever scrupulously neat, with his powdered hair, the striped olive-green coat enhancing his bilious pallor, saying little, but drinking in everything that was said, and breaking now and then into his wintry smile. Madame Roland noticed that, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre would often make use as his own of the arguments and ideas he had heard overnight; but she excused it as arising from the conceit of youth, and occasionally teased him about it. Pétion and Robespierre, both members of the Constituante, had always belonged to the most advanced party in the Assembly, and on its dissolution they were triumphantly carried off on the shoulders of the people. Buzot, elected at Evreux, where he was born in 1760, also belonged to that small minority of the "thirty votes." Of all the men Madame Roland came in contact with, he was destined to exercise the greatest influence on her future life.
Mirabeau had passed away in April, and with him the massive pillar that had helped to prop the monarchy. Mirabeau's advice to the King had been to escape from Paris, advice followed by the Royal Family on the 20th of June, when they secretly escaped from the Tuileries, and directed their flight to the north-eastern frontier, where the Marquis de Bouillé, from his headquarters at Metz, was to have come to the rescue of the King. The world is familiar with the story of this thrilling flight; with the trivialities which, delaying it by an hour or so, rendered the well-concerted scheme abortive; with the recognition of Louis XVI.'s transparent disguise by Postmaster Drouet; with the latter's headlong nocturnal ride, and arrival at Varennes before the lumbering royal berline, which he successfully stopped under the gloomy gateway of that town; the seizure of the Royal party and their conveyance back to Paris by national guards, with the two deputies, Barnave and Pétion, sent to protect them from the fury of the mob. This anomalous procession moving along the sweltering highways, past the ever-renewing throngs of people with angry, menacing faces; faces stamped with the degradation of centuries, whose inherited hatred flashed in deadly looks from innumerable eyes, stabbing the King's soul with thrusts more terrible than are dealt the body with weapons of steel.
This progress through an inimical people by a sovereign who had violated his oath was in reality that King's déchéance, or, more truly, his moral decapitation. It was impossible that Louis XVI. could recover a shred of authority after so signal a collapse; although one cannot help wishing that he had made good his escape across the Rhine. Madame Roland and Brissot hoped for nothing better. On the 22nd of June she wrote to Bancal: "The King and his family are gone; it is far from a misfortune, if we act with good sense, energy, and union. The mass of the people in the capital feel this, for the mass is sound and has accurate perceptions; so much so that yesterday the indignation against Louis XVI., the hatred of kings, and the word Republic, might be heard on all sides." Madame Roland in writing to Bancal says that to replace the King on the throne would be sheer folly and absurdity: that now is the time to amend the errors of the Constitution: that they could never elect Monsieur, d'Artois, Condé, or the vicious and despised Orleans as Regent: that the King should be deposed and detained in safe keeping, the people indicted who assisted in his flight, and that, in order to insure the regular working of the Executive power, a national President should be temporarily elected.
Her life-long aspiration after the Republic seemed about to be fulfilled. She and her friends were ardently looking forward to its establishment. The people now began loudly clamouring for the déchéance, or deposition. It was proposed that a petition to that effect should be drawn up, signed by thousands on the Champs de Mars, and sent up to the Assembly. It was from the Jacobin Club that the cry for the déchéance rose most unanimously. Strange, impressive sight this, of a club of Revolutionists holding their debates in the church of a former Jacobin monastery, whence this new order of a Church Militant took its name. On the 13th of July a promiscuous crowd from the Palais Royal, and other centres of agitation, was closely packed in the sombre, ill-lighted vault, where, pre-eminent among tombs of buried monks, was a monument to Campanella, the great sixteenth-century apostle of religious liberty, whose spiritual presence there was a kind of consecration. Brissot seemed to grow with the moment, and in a memorable burst of eloquence carried the whole assembly with him.
Brissot, without absolutely attacking the monarchical principle, insisted on the necessity of the King's deposition, and ended by reassuring public opinion on the dangers which threatened France from without by a luminous exposition of the critical state of Europe. Madame Roland, who was present, describes the solemnity of this meeting, "when they all, with inexpressible enthusiasm—kneeling on the ground and with drawn swords—renewed their oaths to live free or to die." And, describing Brissot's extraordinary success, she exclaims: "At last I have seen the fire of liberty lit in my country; it cannot be quenched again . . . I shall end my days when it pleases nature. My last breath will still be a sigh of joy and hope for the generations to succeed us."
The outcome of this meeting was a monster petition to demand the déchéance, to be signed at the Champs de Mars on the following Sunday. In the brilliant sunshine of the 17th of July crowds of holiday-makers began to collect, and Madame Roland, who went there herself in the morning, bears witness to the peaceable demeanour of the citizens prepared to sign the petition. But a dreadful change soon came over the spirit of the scene. Two mysterious individuals discovered in hiding under the hollow structure of the Altar of the Federation gave rise to suspicions of the most ominous kind in the minds of the populace, and, seeing they refused to confess what had brought them there, they were struck down by some infuriated patriots, or, as others suspected, by villains set on for the purpose of bringing about a massacre. For this murder, the rumour that Lafayette had been wounded, and some stones thrown at the National Guards, sufficed for the unfurling of the Drapeau Rouge and the proclamation of martial law. Before the people—most of them armed with nothing more deadly than walking-sticks and parasols—realised the situation, a frightful detonation of artillery struck down men, women and children, till Lafayette, at his life's peril, sparred his white horse right in front of the cannon's mouth to stop the indiscriminate slaughter. That altar, where, only one short year before, citizens had sworn concord and fraternity, was now stained with blood; some hundreds, at least, of harmless people having perished on the spot.
The Massacre of the Champs de Mars fell like a blight on Madame Roland's heart. She faltered, fell ill, and lost hope for a time. "Mourning and death are within our walls," was her cry. ”But let us keep the fire of liberty alive, and transmit it in its purity to a happier generation, if our continued efforts are not able to ensure its success in our day." In the same spirit she wrote in August, "Fate, by giving us life at the period of new-born liberty, has assigned us the place of the forlorn hope of an army, bound to fight, and prepare its victory. It behoves us to do our task well, and, so prepare the happiness of future generations. For the rest, we find our own in such a glorious task. If one must struggle, is it not better to do so for the felicity of a whole nation than on one's own account? What, indeed, is the life of the sage under present conditions but a perpetual struggle with passions and prejudices?"
Numbers of the Republican addresses sent to the Assembly from the country were in reality composed under Madame Roland's inspiration at Paris. She was equally indefatigable in penning stirring missives to the Jacobin societies in the departments—offshoots of the Société Mère. How necessary it was to keep the Provinces informed of the current events and opinions in Paris we learn from Arthur Young, who, passing through some of the chief provincial towns at such a crisis, says he might almost as soon have asked for a white elephant as for a newspaper, even at the most frequented cafés.
A coup d'état of the Constitutionalists seemed imminent, and the days of the Jacobin Club to be numbered, as a detachment of soldiers, marching through the Rue St. Honoré, threatened to demolish the building, throwing the patriots therein assembled into fear and confusion. So great was the panic that one excitable member of the stronger sex jumped into the ladies' gallery, and was put to shame by Madame Roland, who "obliged him to make his exit after the fashion of his entrance." Soldiers placed to guard the entrance stopped patriots from entering, although those within were suffered to leave unmolested: fearless on her own account, although full of apprehension for her friends, Madame Roland was one of the last to make her way out.
The arrest of the chiefs of the party being expected from moment to moment, she and her husband went out late on that evening—when all peaceable citizens were only too thankful to be safe within doors—with the intention of offering Robespierre a refuge in their own house. The way to the distant Marais was long and dark, the day had been crammed full of horror and danger, yet this noble woman's chief preoccupation was to place Robespierre in security. Arrived in the desolate quarter, they found that Robespierre had not returned to his lodging—nor did he ever return to it. After leaving the Club, as he was walking down the noisy Rue St. Honoré, with groups of people hissing, others applauding, someone suddenly seized him by the hand, pulled him into a house, and shut the door after him. This was Duplay, a thriving cabinet-maker, faithfullest of Robespierre's partisans; nor would the notable Madame Duplay, having once secured such a rare guest, suffer him to depart again. In the meantime, Madame Roland, more anxious than ever concerning the fate of her mysteriously vanished friend, proceeded towards midnight to Buzot's residence, with the intention of persuading him to join the Club of Feuillans, so as to be able to warn and assist his friends in case of persecution. The Feuillans, who had seceded from the Jacobins, now formed the nucleus of the Moderate Royalist Party, of which the Lameths, Duport and Barnave, "subjugated by the smile of a captive queen," were the latest representatives. Madame Roland, tremulous with generous excitement, urged Buzot to defend Robespierre at the Feuillans, so as to ward off the apprehended Act of Accusation, which she feared the Assembly would ratify without hesitation. Buzot, although he refused to comply with her request, promised to defend Robespierre in the Assembly if necessary.
In spite of the prevalent expectation, the Assembly did not follow up its "one fell blow" with the decisive measures which might have nipped the rapidly-growing influence of the Jacobins, the Cordeliers, and the Fraternal Societies. Instead of closing the clubs, arresting the leaders, suppressing the most violent journals, it deliberated, discussed, delayed, and so lost its final opportunity—for the time of its dissolution was fast approaching. Countless addresses, too, arrived from the country, protesting against the Royalist proclivities of their representatives. One of them, addressed to the Chamber, and brought in person by Bancal des Issarts, was evidently due to the impulse of the woman who possessed the secret of communicating her own fiery energy to her friends. This address, in which the electors of Clermont accused the Deputies of having twice disappointed the hopes of the nation by the adjournment of the elections and deferring the completion of the Constitution, and in which it was further stated that, if a term were not fixed within the fortnight, steps would be taken, regardless of the Assembly, was not admitted before the Bar of the Chamber. Bancal had hurried up to Paris with the address, in spite of a dissuasive letter from Madame Roland, who, in the deepest depression at the massacre, had written all was over, and that it was useless for him to come to Paris.
Soon after these distressing events, Roland, having satisfactorily accomplished the mission with which he had been entrusted, left the capital, and his wife could now again cultivate her lettuces and superintend the vintage at the Clos de la Platière. But the fever of the Revolution burned in her veins, the thirst for action consumed her, and, having once taken her share in that stimulating, all-absorbing centre of political action, she bitterly lamented sinking back into the nothingness of provincial life, and never again found repose in the green fields and shady thickets once so dear to her.