Chapter II: Part 2

From this time Lafayette's history is bound up with that of his country. Beginning by formulating plans for meliorating the condition of the slaves on his plantation in French Guiana, his philanthropic thoughts soon turned homeward. He saw France groaning under oppression and the people suffering from a thousand antiquated abuses. Some of these he succeeded in mitigating, in his capacity of member of the Assembly of the Notables, in 1787, but, as nothing of permanent value was accomplished by that body, he urged the convocation of the States General. In this assemblage, which met at Versailles, on May 4, 1789, he sat at first among the nobility, but when the deputies of the people declared themselves to be the National Assembly--afterward called the Constituent Assembly--he was one of the earliest of his order to join them and was elected one of the vice-presidents. On July 14th the Bastille was taken by the mob, and on the following day Lafayette was chosen commandant of the National Guard of Paris; an irregular body, partly military, partly police, having no connection with the royal army and in full sympathy with the people, from which its ranks were filled. On the 17th King Louis XVI. came into the city, where he was received by the populace with the liveliest expressions of attachment and escorted to the Hôtel de Ville, where Lafayette and Mayor Bailly awaited him at the foot of the staircase, up which he passed under an arch of steel formed by the uplifted swords of the members of the Municipal Council. Bailly offered to the king a tricolor cockade, which had been recently adopted as the national emblem, Lafayette, in devising it, having added white, the Bourbon color, to the red and blue that were the colors of Paris, to show the fidelity of the people to the institution of royalty. The king accepted the badge, pinned it to his breast, appeared with it on the balcony before the vast throng, and returned to Versailles with the feeling, on his part and that of others, that the reconciliation between all parties was complete and that the era of popular government had begun. Instead of that, the troubles continually increased, and Lafayette was placed in a most trying position, equally opposed to the encroachments of the destructionists and to the intrigues of the court, and longing as eagerly for the retention of the monarchy as for the establishment of the constitution. The brutal murder of Foulon, the superintendent of the revenue, and of his son-in-law Berthier, who were torn in pieces by the enraged populace on the 22d, in spite of the commands, entreaties, and even tears of Lafayette, so disgusted him that he resigned his command, and resumed it only when the sixty districts of Paris agreed to support him in his efforts to maintain order. On October 5th a mob of several thousand women set out from Paris to march to Versailles, with vague ideas of extorting from the National Assembly the passage of laws that should remove all distresses, of obtaining in some way a supply of food that should relieve the immediate needs of the capital, and of bringing back with them the royal family. The National Guard were urgent to accompany the women, partly from a desire to protect them in case of a possible collision with the royal troops, but still more to bring on a conflict with a regiment lately brought from the frontier, and to exterminate the body-guard of the king, the members of which had, at a supper given a few nights before, been so indiscreet as to trample the tricolor under their feet and pin the white cockade to their lapels. Lafayette did all in his power to prevent the march of the National Guard, sitting on his horse for eight hours in their midst, and refusing all their entreaties to give the word of command, till the Municipal Council finally issued the order and the troops set forth. Arrived at Versailles he posted one of his regiments in different parts of the palace, to protect it in case it were really attacked by rioters, and then, in the early morning, repairing to his head-quarters in an adjoining street, he threw himself on a bed, for a short season of necessary repose. Monarchical writers generally have reproached him for this act, calling it his "fatal sleep," the source of unnumbered woes, the beginning of the downfall; but it is difficult to see wherein he can justly be blamed for yielding, wearied out with fatigue, to the imperative demand of nature, after providing as far as possible for the preservation of order. Awakened in a few minutes by the report that the worst had happened, he hurried to the scene and found that the mob, having broken down the iron railings of the courtyard, had invaded the palace and massacred two of the body-guard, and that the lives of the king and queen were in instant peril. With characteristic courage, activity, and address he prevented the further effusion of blood, and the entire royal family, together with the Assembly, migrated to Paris the same day, escorted by the citizen soldiers and a turbulent mob both male and female. July 14, 1790, was memorable for the Oath of Federation, taken in the Champ de Mars, with imposing ceremonies, upon a platform of earth raised by the voluntary labors of all the citizens. Lafayette, as representative of the nation, and particularly of the militia, was the first to take the oath to be faithful to the law and the king and to support the constitution then under consideration by the Assembly. With a shout of affirmation from all of the National Guard, the taking of the entire oath by the president of the Assembly and the king, followed by a roar of assent from nearly half a million of spectators, and the joyful spreading of the news throughout the country by prearranged signals, the dream of peace and harmony came back again, as bright and as fleeting as the year before. Three days later the National Guard of France, outside of the city, united in an address to Lafayette, expressive of their confidence in his ability and his patriotism, and regretting their inability to serve under him, for, by the terms of a law proposed by himself, the commander of the militia of Paris was to have no authority over other troops. In September the municipality made a strong appeal to him to revoke his declaration that he would accept no pay or salary or indemnity of any kind, but he refused fixedly, saying that his fortune was considerable, that it had sufficed for two revolutions and that it would be devoted to a third, if one should arise, for the benefit of the people. By the death of Mirabeau, April 2, 1791, the last chance of a compromise between the court party and the radicals was taken away. Two weeks later the royal family attempted to leave the Tuileries for St. Cloud, in order to pass the Easter holidays there and to hear mass in the royal chapel; but the populace blocked the way, and even a portion of the National Guard, in a state of semi-mutiny, threatened to interfere if the other battalions fired on the people. This, nevertheless, Lafayette offered to do, and to force a passage at all hazards, but the king positively forbade the shedding of blood on his account, and resumed his virtual imprisonment in the palace. Lafayette was so chagrined by the seditious behavior of his troops that he again threw down his commission, whereupon an extraordinary revulsion of feeling took place; the municipality and the citizens were terror-stricken lest universal anarchy should ensue, and even the National Guard, repentant of their disgraceful conduct, cast themselves at the feet of their general, joining their voices to those of others in entreating him to resume his office, which, after three days, he consented to do, upon promise of obedience in the future.

This was the meridian of Lafayette's career, when his popularity and his influence were at their height. Power we can hardly call it, for that implies some voluntary deed of assumption, and he always acted in obedience to others, to some authority constituted at least under the forms of law, or, in the absence of that, to the sovereign people. From this time difficulties thickened around him and he was constantly environed by suspicion and by intrigues of all kinds against his character and his life, but he never swerved from the line of his duty. Not one of the political parties gave him its entire confidence, and each in turn conspired against him, only to be baffled by the underlying conviction, on the part of the masses, of his supreme patriotism and integrity. After the flight of the king and his family, on June 20th, Lafayette was violently denounced in the Jacobin club as a friend to royalty, and accused of having assisted in the evasion; but the attempt to proscribe him in the Assembly failed utterly, and that body appointed six commissioners to protect him from the sudden fury of the people. The royal fugitives having been stopped at Varennes and brought back to the Tuileries on the 25th, he saved them, by his personal efforts, from being torn in pieces by the mob, but was compelled to guard them much more strictly than before. On July 17th a disorderly assemblage gathered in the Champ de Mars to petition for the overthrow of the monarchy, and, in the tumult that ensued on the appearance of the troops, Lafayette ordered a volley of musketry, whereby the rioters were dispersed with a loss of several killed and wounded, but whereby, also, while that act of firmness elicited commendation from all lovers of order, occasion was given for further intrigues on the part of his enemies and the shattering of his influence among the lower classes. A momentary gleam of sunshine broke forth in September, when, the king having accepted the new constitution, Lafayette took advantage of the general state of good feeling thereby produced to propose a comprehensive act of amnesty for all offences committed on either side during the revolution, which was passed by the Constituent Assembly just before its final adjournment on the 30th. On that day he resigned, permanently, the command of the National Guard, and retired to his estate at Chavaignac, being followed by the most gratifying testimonials of public regard, among them a sword and a marble statue of Washington, presented by the city of Paris, and a sword cast from one of the bolts of the Bastille, given by his old soldiers. Contrary to his personal wishes, his friends and his patriotism persuaded him, in November, to stand as a candidate for the mayoralty of Paris, with the result that might have been foreseen, for Pétion, being supported both by the Jacobins and by the court party, was elected by a large majority. This defeat did not prevent Lafayette's appointment, a month later, to the command of one of the three armies formed to defend the frontier against an expected invasion of the Austrians, the rank of lieutenant-general being given to him, with the exalted honor of marshal of France. War was declared against Austria, April 20, 1792, and hostilities began, but even the active service in which he was engaged could not keep his thoughts from the political condition of the country, and on June 16th he wrote to the Legislative Assembly, which had succeeded the Constituent in the previous autumn, a letter in which he pointed out the dangers that menaced the nation and denounced the Jacobins as the faction whose growing power was full of peril to the state. Four days later the mob invaded the Tuileries and passed riotously through all the rooms, insulting in the grossest manner the royal family, who were compelled to stand before them and undergo this humiliation for three hours. On hearing of this event Lafayette hurried from his camp and appeared before the Assembly, entreating the punishment of the instigators of the outrage. His sublime audacity in thus opposing his own personality to the machinations of his enemies, and that, too, before a body already irritated by his unasked advice, paralyzed the fury of his adversaries, while his eloquence charmed the hearts of his hearers; but all was in vain, and the only result of this heroic action was that a decree of accusation was brought in against him, which was rejected by a vote of 406 to 224. Upon the massacre of the Swiss Guards, on August 10th, followed by the actual deposition and imprisonment of the king, Lafayette sounded his army to ascertain if they would march to Paris in defence of constitutional government, but he found them vacillating and untrustworthy. His own dismissal from command came soon after: orders were sent for his arrest, and nothing remained for him but flight.

On August 19th he left the army and attempted to pass through Belgium on his way to England, but he was captured by Austrian soldiers near the frontier. He protested that he no longer held rank as an officer in the army and should be considered as a private citizen; but his rights were not respected in either capacity, for he was not treated as a prisoner of war neither was he arraigned as a criminal. On the contrary, without any charges being preferred against him, and without the formality of a trial of any kind, he was immediately thrown into prison and was detained in various Belgian, Prussian, and Austrian jails and fortresses for more than five years, the last three being passed in close confinement at Olmutz. An unsuccessful attempt at escape increased the severity of his detention, and he nearly lost his life through the hardships and privations that he endured, till his wife and daughters came, in 1795, and voluntarily shared his incarceration. The only reason for the savage treatment that he received, unjustified by any forms of international, of military, or of criminal law, seems to have lain in the fact that he had been a member of the National Assembly and prominent in the constitutional struggle for liberty. A feeling of revenge, as mean as it was groundless--for he had done everything in his power to protect the dignity as well as the life of Marie Antoinette, the sister of the Austrian emperor--joined with a fear that other peoples might follow the lead of the French and overthrow monarchical institutions unless deterred by some world-shocking example, formed the mainspring of this atrocious procedure. Efforts were made in this country and in England to procure the release of the prisoner, but no governmental action was taken in that direction, the United States Congress declining to pass a resolution to that effect, so that President Washington was left alone in his unceasing attempts, by instructions to our ministers abroad and by a personal letter to the emperor, to repay some of the debt that he and the whole country owed to our adopted citizen. It was not till the successes of the French republican armies enabled General Bonaparte, at the instance of the Directory, to insist upon the liberation of Lafayette as one of the conditions of the treaty of Campo Formio, that he was discharged on September 19, 1797, the Austrian Government pretending that this was done out of regard for the United States of America. Passing into Denmark and Holland he resided in those countries for two years, when he returned to France only to receive from Bonaparte a significant message recommending to him a very quiet life, a piece of advice which, as it accorded with his own desires, he followed, settling down at Lagrange, an estate inherited by his wife, as his own property had been confiscated by the National Convention, which had succeeded the Legislative Assembly. True to the principles that he had always entertained, he cast his vote, in 1802, with less than nine thousand others, and in opposition to the suffrages of more than three-and-a-half millions, against the decree to make Bonaparte consul for life, writing after his name on the polling register the statement that he could not vote for such a measure till public freedom was sufficiently guaranteed. This insured the continued displeasure of the military despot, who revenged himself by refusing to Lafayette's only son, George Washington, the promotion that he had earned by his brilliant exploits in the army. President Jefferson's offer in 1803, of the governorship of the province of Louisiana, just after its purchase from France, was rejected by Lafayette, who continued in his retirement through the time of the empire and after the first restoration of the Bourbons, till the return from Elba, in March, 1815, of Napoleon, who used every exertion to conciliate him and win his support. All these overtures he declined, but, on the other hand, accepted an election to the popular branch of the Legislature, of which he was chosen vice-president. After the battle of Waterloo, on June 18th, Napoleon returned to Paris and proposed to his council the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies and the assumption of absolutely dictatorial power; a desperate project which was frustrated only by the alertness, vigor, and energy of Lafayette, whose eloquent appeals induced the Legislature to compel the final abdication of the emperor, under the alternative threat of forfeiture and expulsion. Five commissioners, with Lafayette at the head, appointed by the chambers, proceeded to the head-quarters of the allied sovereigns, at Haguenau, to treat for peace; but, while negotiations were pending, the foreign armies pushed on toward the capital, and he returned on July 3d, to find that Paris had capitulated and was at the mercy of the conquerors, who dictated their own terms, forcibly dissolved the Corps Législatif, and replaced Louis XVIII. on the throne. Lafayette retired to Lagrange, but was again elected, in 1817, a deputy, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Government, and exerted his influence in favor of liberal measures, though with indifferent success. In 1824, on the invitation of President Monroe, he revisited this country, travelled through every State, was received with the highest honors by Congress (which voted him $200,000 and a township of land for his services), by legislatures, by colleges, by corporations of cities, by societies of all kinds by his surviving comrades of the revolution, and by the whole nation; took part in the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument June 17, 1825, and sailed for home in September, on the United States frigate Brandywine, which had been put at his disposal by the Government. Soon after his return to France he was re-elected to the Corps Législatif, and served as a member for most of the remainder of his life. The stupid tyranny of King Charles X. having caused an outbreak of the Parisians in July, 1830, Lafayette unhesitatingly espoused the popular cause, and, though nearly seventy-three years old, accepted the command of the National Guard; after a conflict of three days the royal troops gave way, the king abdicated, to be succeeded by the Duke of Orleans as King Louis Philippe, and Lafayette had the satisfaction of contributing largely to the establishment of what he had advocated so strongly forty years before--a constitutional monarchy. He died at his home, in the country, on May 20, 1834, but his remains were taken to Paris for interment, and as the funeral train passed through the streets the lamentations on every hand attested the affection and the sorrow of the people. Few men have lived who present a figure so attractive to the eye of the student; fewer still, so prominent on the theatre of history, who will bear, with so little possibility of censure, the closest scrutiny, the severest judgment. His actions were visible to all the world, his motives were transparent, his sentiments were unconcealed, his life was blameless. To the physical endowments of dignity of person and resistless charm of manner he added all desirable qualities of head and heart, a dauntless courage, an enthusiasm beautiful and yet consistent, a sublime patriotism, a disinterested generosity. If, with all these, he seems to have failed of achieving the highest success, it was because not of what he lacked but of what he possessed in the fullest degree, a lofty integrity that forbade him to pander to the passions of the mob, a supreme regard for the rights of the community and of the individual. He might have snatched the sovereign power, but in doing it he would have lost his self-respect. In place, then, of glittering success, he obtained the quiet admiration of mankind and the loving gratitude of two nations.

[Signature: William F. Peck.]

CHARLOTTE CORDAY[6]

[Footnote 6: Copyright. 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By OLIVER OPTIC

(1768-1793)

The despotism of Louis XIV. and the exhaustion of the finances by his wars and his reckless extravagance had reduced France to a very unhappy condition. His son, the Grand-Dauphin, died four years before his father, and his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, a year later. Louis the Great was therefore succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV. During this reign the nation continued on the decline. He was followed by his grandson, Louis XVI., a better man than his immediate predecessor, but too weak to carry out the reforms necessary to restore the prosperity of the nation. Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and many other writers, as well as the influence of the American Revolution, had fostered democratic ideas among the people, for the government was reeking with abuses.

The parliament had not assembled for three-quarters of a century; but representatives of the people met in 1789, in spite of the opposition of the king. The extreme of license followed the extreme of absolutism. The king opposed the Constituent Assembly, for this body changed its name several times, till the political conflict ended in the death by the guillotine of Louis XVI., and later by the execution of his queen, Marie Antoinette. For every two hundred and fifty of the gross population there was a member of the nobility who was exempted from the payment of any land tax, though this kind of property was almost exclusively in their possession, and from many other taxes and burdens, which all the more heavily weighed down the great body of the people. The latter had a long list of genuine grievances which the king and his advisers refused to remedy.

The revolution became an accomplished fact in the capture and destruction of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, which day is still celebrated as a national holiday in France. It had been for hundreds of years a prison for political offenders, and was regarded by the people as the principal emblem and instrument of tyranny. The population became as intemperate as their rulers had been, thousands perished by the guillotine, and the reign of terror was established. The National Convention proclaimed a republic; but this body was divided by conflicting opinions, and had not the power to inaugurate their ideal government. Blood flowed in rivers, and the reaction was infinitely more terrible than the tyranny which had produced it.

The Convention was divided into at least four parties, though the lines which separated them were not very clearly defined. The Jacobins were the most prominent, and the most radical. It had its origin in the Jacobin Club, formed in Versailles, taking its name from a convent in which it met. This organization soon spread through its branches all over France, and its party was the most violent and blood-thirsty in the convention. Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, and other desperate leaders were of this faction.

The Girondists were next in numbers and influence. They were the moderate republicans of the time, though at first they were inclined to accept the constitution, and favor a limited monarchy. Its name came from the earliest leaders of the party who were representatives from the department of the Gironde. Its members labored to check the violence and bloodshed of the times, and might be called the respectable party of the period. Unfortunately they were in the minority, and all the members of the party in the Convention who did not escape, were arrested, convicted, and guillotined.

The Montagnards (mountaineers) or Montagne (Mountain) was the term applied to the Democrats holding the most extreme views, though its members were also Jacobins and Cordeliers. Among them were the most blood-thirsty, unreasonable, and intolerant men of the time, for Danton, Robespierre, Marat, St. Just, and others of that stamp, affiliated with them. They took their name from the fact that they were grouped together in the uppermost seats of the chamber of the Convention. The Cordeliers was hardly more than another name for a club of the same men, so called from the chapel of a Franciscan monastery where they held their meetings.

Jean Paul Marat was one of the most prominent personages of the Revolution, whose infamy will continue to be perpetuated down to generations yet to come, with other of his red-handed associates. He was a Frenchman, though he spent considerable time in Holland and Great Britain, where he practised medicine, having studied the profession at Bordeaux. He made some reputation as a political writer, and in Edinburgh obtained a degree. It is believed that he was convicted for stealing, and sentenced to five years imprisonment at Oxford under several _aliases_. Perhaps he was sincere in his opinions, and he threw himself vigorously into the work of the Revolution in Paris, issuing inflammatory pamphlets, which he caused to be printed and circulated secretly. He established an infamous journal, attacking the king and all his supporters, and especially the Girondists, whose moderation disgusted him. His virulence caused him to be intensely hated, and twice he was compelled to flee to London, and once to hide in the sewers. In the latter he contracted a loathsome disease of the skin which soon began to eat away his life; and his sufferings from it intensified his zeal and his hatred.

Marat was elected to the Convention as a delegate from Paris. Perhaps he was to a greater degree responsible for the September massacre than any other man. While he was dying of his malady he was urging on his fanatical measures, and declared that most of the members of the Convention, Mirabeau first, ought to be executed. His most virulent hatred was directed against the Girondists, whose execution he advocated with all the venom of his nature. Though he could write only when seated in a bath, he continued to hurl his invectives against them, impatient for the guillotine to do its gory work upon them.

The avenger was at hand. Charlotte Corday d'Armont was the granddaughter of Corneille, the great tragic poet of France. Though of noble descent, she was born in a cottage, for her father was a country gentleman so poor that he could not support his family. His daughters worked in the fields like the peasants, till he was compelled to abandon them. Then they obtained admission to a convent in Caen, where they were received on account of their birth and their poverty. The library furnished Charlotte abundant reading matter, and she read works on philosophy, though she also rather inflated her imagination by the perusal of romances, which had some influence on her after life.

When monasteries and convents were abolished, she was turned loose upon the world; but her aunt, as poor almost as her father, took the young woman, now nineteen years old, to her home in Caen. Charlotte had developed into a beautiful girl, rather tall, honest, and innocent. She had imbibed republican sentiments from her father in spite of his nobility, and Caen was the head-quarters of the Girondists. She was familiar with the details of the struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondists, and they inspired her with an intense feeling against the persecutors of her people, as she regarded the latter. The members of that party who had been driven from Paris instructed her. She was a woman; but if she had been a queen she had the nerve to rule a nation and fight its battles.

A tremendous purpose took possession of her being. It was not prompted by the spirit of revenge. She was mistaken, but she believed that the removal of Marat was the remedy for the evils of the time; and this became the work of her life, upon which she entered, fully conscious that her path ended at an ignominious grave. She had an admirer in a young man by the name of Franquelin, and though she favored him she sacrificed her attachment to what she regarded as a lofty, even a sublime duty. She had the means to proceed to Paris and she went by the coach. She deceived her aunt, her father, and her sisters with the statement that she was going to England in search of remunerative employment. She went to a hotel in the great city which had been recommended to her in Caen.

A friend had given her a letter of recommendation to Duperret, a Girondist deputy, by the aid of which she hoped to get into the presence of Marat. She had arranged a plan for the assassination of the brawling fanatic, and it was to take place at the celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille, July 14th, on the Champ de Mars. She desired to do the deed as publicly as possible, not to make it sensational, but in order to produce the stronger impression upon the minds of the people. The postponement of the celebration, for the suppression of the rebellion among the Vendeans, prevented the execution of her first plan, and she then decided to strike down her victim in his seat at the "summit of the mountain," in the midst of the victim's accomplices. Then she learned that Marat was confined to his lodgings by his malady. She promptly determined to confront him in his own home.

She wrote a note to him, professing to be a sufferer at the hands of the Girondists, asking for an appointment at his house. He made it, but was unable to keep it. She wrote another note, and then went to the house in the Rue de l'École de Médecine, now a part of the Boulevard St. Germain. The woman with whom Marat lived refused to admit her, and she crowded up a short stairway. Her intended victim heard the altercation, and suspecting it was the person who had sent him two notes, he called out to Catherine Everard to admit her. Charlotte had visited the Palais Royal and purchased a knife, which was concealed in her bosom in readiness to do the deed.

Marat, though at the height of his pernicious influence, lived in mean and squalid apartments, in a sort of pride of poverty as "the friend of the people." In spite of his disease, which compelled him to work in a bath, he was always busy. The room was littered with papers and pamphlets. He was only five feet in height, with a naturally disagreeable face, increased by his malady. At the very time his visitor entered his den, he was making out on a board before him a list of Girondists to be executed. She would not look at him, but she told him a story she had invented, and gave him the names of Girondist refugees at Caen; to which he replied as he wrote them down, that "they should have the guillotine before they were a week older."

At these words, as though they had steeled her arm, she drew the knife from her bosom, and with superhuman power, plunged it to the hilt and to the heart of Marat. He called for help and then expired. Assistance came, and the house was thronged with National Guards and policemen. They were necessary to save the murderess from the fury of those who forced their way into the house. She was arrested, and conveyed in the same carriage in which she had come to the Conciergerie. All Paris groaned and howled.

She had the form of a trial, and the guillotine quickly followed it. Her fortitude did not forsake her at any time, and she died as firmly as any martyr ever went to the stake. Her beauty and her heroism excited the sympathy of the crowd, but they could not save her. She was a mistaken heroine, but her courage and fortitude were sublime.

[Signature: William S. Adams.]

MADAME ROLAND[7]

[Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

(1754-1793)

France has produced many remarkable women; perhaps no other country can boast such an array of illustrious names; they shine from the pages of French history like fixed stars from the firmament. Among them, down the long vista of a hundred years, brilliant and beautiful, shines the name of Madame Roland, the spirit of the great French Revolution personified.

Striking beauty, great genius, and wonderful courage in the hour of martyrdom, rendered this woman an unusual character in an unusual epoch. Surrounded by deceit, she was honest and fearless. In the midst of immorality and license, she was pure, and brave enough to resist temptation which came from without and from within, and she went to the scaffold with an untarnished name and soul.

Manon Philipon, as Madame Roland was known in her childhood, was born in Paris in the year 1754. Her father was a worker in enamel, who thrived well enough in his art when he was content to toil at it, but a restless spirit of speculation led him into ventures which brought him neither profit nor renown.

Manon's beauty was a direct inheritance from both father and mother. Gratien Philipon was a handsome man, and vain and frivolous as he was handsome; but his beautiful wife was serious-minded, and much the superior of her husband in intellect as well as morals. Of seven children born to this couple, only one lived--Manon, the subject of our sketch--who inherited the combined beauty of both parents, with the rectitude and high ideals of the mother. But there lies no explanation of inheritance from either father or mother to make us understand how the child of these common people became at nine years of age a student of Plutarch, Tasso, and Voltaire, and a philosopher at the age of eleven. It requires a deeper law than that of heredity to explain these things.

At ten, Manon developed a strongly religious tendency, which was fostered, no doubt, by daily studying the "Lives of the Saints." While reading the accounts of martyrs who had died at the stake rather than resign their faith, the child often regretted that she had not lived in those "good old days," so happy a thing it seemed to her to die for one's principles. This privilege was granted her in after-years, strangely enough; and she proved as courageous in reality as she had in childhood imagined herself capable of being under similar circumstances.

Manon's religious feelings were culminated by a request made to her mother, in a paroxysm of tears, that she might be placed in a convent to prepare herself for her first communion; accordingly, she was taken to the Convent of the "Sisters of the Congregation" in May, 1765, when she was eleven years old. Side by side with this nunnery, where the precocious child passed one of the happiest epochs of her life, stood the prison which was to immure her in later years. Should such a circumstance and situation be unfolded in the pages of fiction, we would call it strained and unnatural.

During the year Manon passed in the convent, she made the acquaintance of two sisters, Henrietta and Sophie Cannet, who were allied to the nobility; and she afterward attributed her facility in writing to the correspondence with the younger of these sisters, which continued without interruption over more than a decade of years. In her memoirs, written under the shadow of the guillotine, she says, "In the gloom of a prison, in the midst of political storms, how shall I recall to my mind, and how describe, the rapture, the tranquillity I enjoyed at that period; but when I review the events of my life, I find it difficult to assign to circumstances that variety and that plenitude of affection which have so strongly marked every point of its duration, and left me so clear a remembrance of every place at which I have been."

After she left the convent, she found her passion for reading unabated, and as her father's library was limited, she was obliged to borrow and hire books; from these she made copious extracts and abstracts which formed her valuable habit of reflection upon what she had read.

Her first feelings of contempt and bitterness toward the aristocrats were roused by the air of condescension which the Cannets exhibited to her in her occasional visits to Sophie. They were stupid and arrogant people, but they made her realize that the daughter of an artisan was not on equal footing with people allied to the nobility, albeit she was a prodigy of beauty, learning, and talent, and they the dullest of beings.

"I endeavored," she says, "to think with hope that everything was right, but my pride told me things were ordered better in a republic." So, as early as at the age of fourteen, we find this remarkable being philosophizing upon republics, and taking part in mind against the evils and injustice fostered by monarchies.

Madame Roland wandered from prescribed creeds, and became a liberal in her religious ideas. She has been called an Atheist, but every line she writes, and her life of self-sacrifice, disprove this assertion. Her "one prayer," to which she says she confined herself, is, to my mind, sublime with beautiful and practical religion.

"O Thou who hast placed me on the earth, enable me to fulfil my destination in the manner most conformable to the Divine will, and most beneficial to my fellow-creatures."

I can imagine no more perfect religious faith, no more complete submission to, and acknowledgment of, a Supreme Power than this prayer contains. It strikes me as far more devout and respectful than the prayers of many people who endeavor to dictate to God and direct Him what to do and what not to do, what to bestow and what to withhold.

She writes of her religious agitations with great reluctance to Sophie Cannet, fearful of disturbing the serenity of her friend's convictions; but she continued to conform to her mother's religious ideas during that good woman's life, and even afterward she kept up the forms of Catholicism for the sake of a valued family servant who was devoted to her.

This delicate consideration of the feelings of others has been mistaken by some bigoted minds for deceit or vacillation on the part of Madame Roland; as if such a being were capable of either.

We owe all our knowledge of her early private life to the voluminous correspondence between her and Sophie Cannet; to this friend she wrote those long, journal-like letters, in which one young girl often pours out the inmost secrets of her heart and soul to another; but, unlike the letters of the ordinary girl, Manon's contained criticisms of the books she had read, and discussions of philosophical subjects, which bear evidence to her wonderful precocity of thought and feeling in her "teens."

Originality, unselfishness, genius of the rarest order, are all displayed in these letters; already had her mind grasped some great truths which it requires the average philosopher half a century to discover, when at seventeen, she says, "Man is the epitome of the universe. The revolutions of the world without are an image of those which take place in his own soul."

Upon the news of the mortal illness of Louis XV., she writes to Sophie this strongly humanitarian passage: "Although the obscurity of my birth, name, and position seem to preclude me from taking any interest in the government, yet the common weal touches me in spite of it. My country is something to me, and the love I bear it is unquestionable. How could it be otherwise when nothing in the world is indifferent to me? A love of humanity unites me to everything that breathes. A Caribbean interests me; the fate of a Kaffir goes to my heart. Alexander wished for more worlds to conquer. I could wish for more to love."

In spite of her philosophy, her seriousness, and her learning, however, Manon Philipon was a girl, and a charming one; and we learn in her letters to Sophie how she was pestered with lovers of low and high degree, during her long maidenhood. I might better say with proposals for her hand, since, as we know, French custom does not permit the "love-making" which American girls consider their natural prerogative.

Manon was so beautiful, brilliant, and magnetic, that when she went out to promenade with her father, she was greeted with admiring glances and remarks; and from the fruit vender of whom she made occasional purchases, and the butcher who served the family with joints, to dancing and drawing masters, up along the line to merchants, professional, and literary men, she seemed to fascinate and attract with no effort on her own part.

Each one in turn asked for her hand and was rejected; and a host of others followed, to meet a similar fate, until her father threatened to marry her to the first stranger who crossed his portal, whether either one wished it or no. She says in her memoirs, "The respectable character of my mother, the appearance of some fortune, and my being an only child, made the project of matrimony a tempting one to a number of persons who were strangers to me. The greater part, finding it difficult to obtain an introduction, adopted the expedient of writing to my father. These letters were always shown to me. I wrote the answers, which my father faithfully copied. I was much amused at acting the part of my own father, and dismissed my suitors with dignity, leaving no room for resentment or hope. Here began to break out those dissensions with my father which lasted ever after. He loved and respected commerce, I despised it; and he was much concerned at my rejection of suitors who possessed any fortune."

After the death of Madame Philipon, which occurred in her daughter's twenty-first year, Manon's life at home became almost unbearable. Her extreme grief impaired her health, and anxiety and mortification were added by the excesses and frivolous extravagances into which her father plunged. He formed associations with people of bad character, and took to gambling. Manon strove to make herself an agreeable companion, and to entertain him at home, but the attempt was futile. She filled her lonely hours with study, and with writing letters to Sophie. One day a tall, thin gentleman, bald and yellow, past forty, and looking older, presented a letter of introduction from Miss Cannet.

It was M. Roland, an austere philosopher, of an ancient family, to whom Sophie had often referred. Manon admired his intellect and his respectability; and when, after some two or three years, he made an offer of marriage, she was ready to accept; but M. Philipon bluntly and insolently refused his consent, through a strong personal dislike which he had conceived for the severe moralist and philosopher.

Manon could not marry against her father's wishes, but she could leave the home now so distasteful to her. She had saved only a small sum from her mother's fortune, amounting to about one hundred dollars per year. With this, she retired to the Convent of the Congregation, and shut herself up with her books, and received only her old friends.

M. Roland, for whose sake she had taken so decisive a step, was far from an ardent lover in his conduct at this juncture. He wrote her affectionately, but he made no reference to his proposal of marriage until six months had passed. Then he came to Paris, had an interview through iron gratings, and expressed himself determined to make her his wife. Since she had left her father's roof, she was at liberty to accept his somewhat tardy proposal, and she emerged from the convent to become Madame Roland.

We have seen that M. Roland was not an ardent lover, and it is readily understood that this beautiful, intense girl, in the very prime of young womanhood, was not in love with him. She felt only esteem for his virtues, and admiration for his intellect. But she was twenty-five years old, and virtually homeless; of all the score of men who had sought her hand in marriage, no one had ever stirred her heart, and she married, believing, no doubt, that this cold regard and high admiration which the character of M. Roland elicited, was all that she could feel for any man.

It was not until the thunders of the Revolution shook the world, that her heart awoke to real passion; and even then, in a situation where hundreds of women who have professed greater religious fervor, have fallen, she conquered herself, and virtually died to protect her husband's life.

During the first year of their marriage, the Rolands lived in Paris. Manon had imagined a happy association with her friends, the Cannets; but her husband was morbidly jealous of these friends, and extracted a promise from her that she would see them as little as possible. She became his amanuensis and secretary, and scarcely ever left his side.

During the next ten years we find her passing the greater part of her time in the Clos de la Platière, an ancient and humble country-seat belonging to the Roland family. Here, with her taxing domestic duties, the exactions of her husband, the care of her child Eudora, the tyrannies of her aged mother-in-law, this wonderful woman had little opportunity for the exercise of her talents.

It seems strange to think of this beautiful martyr, whose name is a synonym for all that is grand and heroic, passing the best years of her womanhood in preparing dishes for the appetite of a dyspeptic husband, in looking after house-linen, and arranging lessons for a child. Matilda Blind says "This affects one with something of the ludicrous disproportion of making use of the fires of Etna to fry one's eggs by."

Yet Madame Roland performed these and less agreeable duties as cheerfully and as perfectly as she had performed her chosen tasks in the convent years before. Women doctors were not known in those days, but the genius of Madame Roland embraced a knowledge of medicine with other things; and she often went three leagues to relieve a sick peasant, and was ever ready to sacrifice herself for the good of others.

There was very little happiness for her in the companionship of her husband. He was twenty-two years her senior, and possessed an imperious temper and an exacting nature. But the most ardent wife could not have better performed her duty to the most lovable of husbands.

Naturally democratic in her feelings and sympathies, Madame Roland took the keenest interest in the progress of the Revolution; from her quiet retreat she studied its leading members, and when, in 1791, her husband was chosen deputy to the Constituent Assembly, she accompanied him to Paris, and their apartments became the rendezvous for such men as Brissot, Buzot, Danton, Robespierre, Pétion, and many more, who met to confer with one another and to exchange ideas and suggestions. Madame Roland sat apart with her embroidery and listened. Of these meetings she speaks thus in her "Memoirs": "Good ideas were started and excellent principles maintained; but there was no path marked out, no determinate point toward which each person should direct his views. Sometimes for very vexation, I could have boxed the ears of these philosophers."

Had not her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius, perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that she might not have averted the disasters which befell the party through its dissensions.

In March, 1792, Roland was elected minister of the interior; and Madame Roland presided over the establishment that had been sumptuously fitted up for Madame Necker. Roland became the idol of the patriotic party, and was enchanted with his excellent position. He urged upon King Louis XVI., in whom he reposed great faith, the necessity of a decree against the priesthood, and the establishment of a camp in the suburbs of Paris. Louis demurred, Roland insisted in the famous letter written by his wife, and placed in the king's hands June 11th. This letter became immensely popular. The Assembly ordered it to be printed and copies sent to all departments, together with expressions of national regret at the discharge of Roland and his friends, which the letter caused. But they were recalled to office after the dreadful August 10th.

Twice a week Madame Roland gave a dinner to fifteen of her husband's colleagues, with whom he wished to converse. No other lady was present. The Girondists were at the apex of society, and Madame Roland was the life and impetus of the party. She endeavored to infuse its members with her hatred of false pride and old prejudices, and with her desire to establish a liberal democracy. Always enthusiastic, and vexed with the lack of unity and direct purpose in the Assembly, she was over-zealous in some of her suggestions.

Among the brilliant men whom she entertained at these dinners, was one, young, handsome, elegant, and refined, whose many manly qualities woke in her heart that long-delayed passion which a nature so ardent must sometime feel. This man was Buzot; and he was as irresistibly drawn to this beautiful, brilliant woman as the magnet to the steel.

Madame Roland was at this time thirty-eight years old; her brilliant color and her open expression made her look much younger, and her tall, finely developed form, her splendid eyes and engaging smile, charmed and attracted all who came near her. But though domestic life and morality were held at the lowest possible value in those chaotic days, and each man made a law for himself, Madame Roland never wavered in her loyalty and devotion to the man whose name she bore. Only through her remarkable letters written to Buzot from her prison cell, and never made public till 1863, does the glory and intensity of her hopeless passion display itself.

From the very first, Madame Roland had distrusted Danton. It was not long before her intuitions proved correct, for Danton soon showed his jealousy and dislike of the minister, whom he found too honest to tamper with. He feared, too, the penetration, frankness, and genius of Roland's wife. Men who saw the insidious, selfish qualities of Danton, began to cultivate and conciliate him out of fear of his enmity.

Robespierre, whom Madame Roland had at first believed in as an honest friend to liberty, became an ally of Danton and Marat, and Roland soon realized that it was not the monarchists he had to contend against, but the new party headed by these dissenting Girondists, who were savage with a thirst for human blood.

The Rolands were accused of trying to establish an aristocracy of talent on the ruins of a monarchical aristocracy; their semi-weekly dinners were represented as sumptuous feasts where, like a new Circe, Madame Roland strove to corrupt the unfortunates who partook of her banquets.

She was called before the Convention December 7th, to listen to the charges against her; her eloquence won the admiration of even her enemies. But her safety was in danger, and she was obliged to sleep with a pistol under her pillow for fear of the outrages of desperadoes who lurked about her house.

The strife between the two parties grew more bitter, and the downfall of Roland had been determined upon by his savage opponents, once his fawning friends and colleagues. An attempt was made to arrest Roland by six armed men, deputies of the Insurrectionists. He replied that he did not recognize their authority, and refused to follow them. Madame Roland at once set off for the Tuileries, where the Insurrectionists, more cruel and blood-thirsty than the deposed Monarchists, were in session. At the door the sentinels forbade her to enter. Obliged to return home without having been enabled to address the Convention, as she hoped to do, she found that her husband had taken refuge in the house of a friend.

She sought him out, embraced him, and returned once more to the Tuileries in another vain hope of arousing their former friends to resolute action. But she was obliged to return to her apartment in the evening, without having accomplished anything. Late that night she was torn from her child and her home, and cast into the Prison of the Abbaye, from which she was set at liberty a month later, and wild with happiness, allowed to reach her own door; but as she attempted to enter she was again seized and conveyed to the Prison of Sainte Pélagie. The respite had only been given in malice to render her second incarceration more bitter.