Chapter XIII: Front Matter (13)

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.

MADAME DE STAËL

1766-1817.

According to the custom of the people of Geneva, which is to throw their children on their own resources very early in life, the parents of Necker sent him to Paris at the age of fifteen, as clerk in the banking-house of Vernet. He quickly displayed talents for business, and, becoming a partner in the house of Thellusson, laid the foundation of his fortune. He quitted the bank, as better speculations opened, when he was named resident for the republic of Geneva at the French court. The duke de Choiseul liked and advanced him. He named him administrator of the French East Indian company; and at this post, and by speculations in the English funds, he made a large private fortune.

His early years were devoted to these pursuits, and he was so absorbed by them that he enjoyed few of the pleasures of youth. He, meanwhile, acquired both experience and knowledge in finance. Wishing to bring himself into notice, he wrote the "Eloge de Colbert" in 1773, which gained the prize in the French academy. His essay on the corn laws increased his reputation. Maurepas consulted him when alarmed by the disastrous state of the finances; and, by degrees, all eyes turned towards him as the man who alone could save France from bankruptcy, through his knowledge of business, and the great resources which his plans opened in the regulation of the taxation and expenditure of the country. As difficulty, distress, and alarm gathered thick and dark round the government, and the expectation of a war rendered it necessary to supply the requisite expenses, the hopes placed in Necker caused him, in 1777, to be raised to the office of director-general.

Soon after his appointment as minister from the republic of Geneva, he had married mademoiselle Churchod. The name of this lady is familiar to the English reader as being that of the object of the first and only love of the historian Gibbon. On the mother's side she was descended from a high French protestant family of Provence, which had been driven into exile by the edict of Nantes. Her father was a clergyman, and exercised the function of minister in a Swiss village. He had spared no pains in the education of his daughter. She was versed in several dead and living languages; her understanding was sedulously cultivated, and her beauty and amiable disposition combined to render her an extraordinary woman. She was devotedly attached to her husband, and he regarded her with a mixture of admiration, reverence, and love. The object of her life was to make him happy. She gathered the beaux esprits of Paris round their table to divert him after the fatigues of the day. Their house became the resort of the best society. They were considered exemplary and clever, yet dull and pedantic. The talents of Necker, however, were respected; and madame Necker, though she was adorned by none of the light and trifling, yet winning and elegant, manners and conversation of a Parisian lady, yet pleased by her beauty, and a certain ingenuousness and purity of mind, that gave sweetness to her countenance and a native grace to her manners.

This exemplary pair had an only daughter. She was born in Paris on the 22d April, 1766. Her mother was desirous of bestowing on her a perfect education. Madame Necker possessed great firmness of character, and a strong understanding. She submitted every feeling and action of her life to the control of reason. She carried her love of logical inference into the smallest as well as the most important events of life; and fulfilled to the letter every the slightest duty of daily and hourly occurrence. Finding her young daughter apt and willing to learn, she thought she could not teach her too much, nor store her mind with too many facts and words. This was not done as an English mother would have practised in the seclusion of the schoolroom, but in the midst of society, in which the young lady soon learnt to shine by her eloquent sallies and vivacious spirits. We have a sketch of what mademoiselle Necker was at eleven years of age, which presents a singular picture of the diversity of the objects and modes of education on the continent from our quiet and reserved notions of what is becoming in childhood. Madame Necker was desirous of establishing a friendship between her daughter and a mademoiselle Huber, the child of an old friend of the family. The young people were introduced to each other, and mademoiselle Necker showed transports of delight at the idea of having a companion, and promised her, on the instant, to love her for ever. "She spoke," mademoiselle Huber writes, "with a warmth and facility which were already eloquence, and which made a great impression on me. We did not play like children. She immediately asked me what my lessons were, if I knew any foreign languages, and if I went often to the play. When I said I had only been three or four times, she exclaimed, and promised that we should often go together, and when we came home write down an account of the piece. It was her habit, she said; and, in short, we were to write to each other every day.

"We entered the drawing-room. Near the arm-chair of madame Necker was the stool of her daughter, who was obliged to sit very upright. As soon as she had taken her accustomed place, three or four old gentlemen came up and spoke to her with the utmost kindness. One of them, in a little round wig, took her hands in his, held them a long time, and entered into conversation with her as if she had been twenty. This was the abbé Raynal; the others were Messrs. Thomas, Marmontel, the marquis de Pesay, and the baron de Grimm. We sat down to table. It was a picture to see how mademoiselle Necker listened. She did not speak herself; but so animated was her face that she appeared to converse with all. Her eyes followed the looks and movements of those who talked: it seemed as if she guessed their ideas before they were expressed. She entered into every subject; even politics, which at this epoch was one of the most engrossing topics of conversation. After dinner, a good deal of company arrived. Each guest, as he approached madame Necker, addressed her daughter with some compliment or pleasantry: she replied to all with ease and grace. They delighted to attack and embarrass her, and to excite her childish imagination, which was already brilliant. The cleverest men were those who took greatest pleasure in making her talk. They asked her what she was reading, recommended new books, and gave her a taste for study by conversing concerning what she knew, or on what she was ignorant."

Thus this extraordinary woman imbibed, as it were with her mother's milk, a taste for society and display. She learnt to take intense pleasure in the communication of ideas with intelligent men, and in sharing in the sparkling wit that gathered round her. She enjoyed the excitement of spirits that results from the sense of expressing her thoughts, and at the same time having the sphere enlarged by the instant interchange with others. The sensations of success in society, of praise and reputation, were familiar to her in childhood, and no wonder they became as necessary as her daily bread in after years.

It was her mother's plan to tax her intellects to their height. She was incited to study diligently, to listen to conversation on subjects beyond her years, to frequent the theatre; her pleasures and occupations alike were so many exertions of mind. She wrote a great deal. Her writings were read in society, and applauded. The praises she received developed also the feelings of her heart. She passionately loved her parents and her friends; she read with an enthusiasm and interest that made books a portion of her existence. She was accustomed to say, that the fate of Clarissa Harlowe was one of the events of her youth. Susceptible of impression, serious in the midst of her vivacity, she rather loved what made her weep rather than laugh.

The species of perpetual excitement in which she lived, and the excessive application and attention required of her by her mother, had at length a bad effect on her health. At the age of fourteen it became apparent that she was declining. The advice of Tronchin was asked; he was alarmed by the symptoms, and ordered her to be removed into the country, to spend her life in the open air, and to abandon all serious study. Madame Necker was deeply mortified. She saw all the materials for a prodigy of learning and knowledge in her daughter, and was almost angry that her frame was injured by the work she required from her to bring her to the perfection she meditated. Unable to continue to its height her system of education, she abandoned it altogether. Henceforth no longer looking on her as her own work, she ceased to take interest in her talents, which she regarded as superficial and slight; when she heard her praised, she replied, "Oh! it is nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison to what I intended to make her."

The young lady meanwhile enjoyed the leisure she obtained: no longer called upon to store her mind with words and facts, she gave herself up to her imagination. She and her friend passed the summer at St. Ouen, a country-house of Necker, two leagues from Paris; they dressed themselves like muses; they composed poetry, and declaimed it; they wrote and acted plays. Giving the rein to her fancy, and impelled by natural vivacity, she became poetess, tragedian, actress, thus, almost in childhood. The carelessness that her mother showed, after her disappointment with regard to her education, had the effect of developing in the young girl the chief passion of her heart--filial affection towards her father: she had now leisure to seek his society; and his great goodness, his admiration of herself, and the perfect friendship and openness of communication that subsisted between them, gave rise to the passionate attachment towards him which she dwells upon in her writings with so much fervour. She seized every opportunity of enjoying his society; and he perceived and delighted in her talents, which displayed themselves with peculiar advantage when with him. She saw that, overwhelmed as he was by public cares and engrossing business, he needed to be amused in his moments of leisure. He adored his wife, but no one was ever less amusing; his daughter, on the other hand, exerted herself to divert him: she tried a thousand ways and risked any sally or pleasantry so to win him to smile, and smiles quickly came at her bidding. He was not prodigal of his approbation; his eyes were more flattering than his words; and he believed it to be more necessary and even more amusing to rally her for her defects, than to praise her for her excellences. She saw that his gay reproofs were just, and modelled herself by them. She often said to her friends, "I owe to the inconceivable penetration of my father the frankness of my character and the sincerity of my mind: he unmasked every affectation or pretension, and when near him I got into the habit of thinking that every feeling of my heart could be read." Madame Necker grew a little jealous of the superior power her daughter possessed of amusing her husband; besides, although she had ardently wished her to shine in society, yet she had desired her to be remarkable for her attainments and knowledge, not for her wit and imagination. She looked coldly therefore on the admiration she excited, and even protested against it. The young girl turned from her chilling and prim rebuffs to the encouragement she found in her father's sympathy and gladdening smiles. In the drawing-room she escaped from the side of Madame Necker, who regarded the mistakes which her giddiness and vivacity caused her to make with severe and correcting eyes. She listened with respect when reproved, but gladly sheltered herself behind her father's chair; at first silently, then throwing in a word, till at last, one after the other, the cleverest men in the room gathered round to listen to her sallies and to be charmed by her eloquence.

The position that her parents held was exceedingly calculated to enchain the affections and raise the enthusiasm of the ardent girl. Her father was looked up to as the man whose exertions and talents were saving France. When named director-general of finances, he had refused the salary appended to the situation, that he might feel more free to diminish that of others, and benefit France by his economy with a clearer reputation. Her mother used his power for the most admirable purposes. She ameliorated the condition of the hospitals in the capital; and established near Paris, at her own expense, a charitable institution, so well directed that it became the model of every other. The young are apt to think their parents superior to the rest of the world. The claims which M. and Madame Necker possessed to real superiority, from their virtues and talents, naturally added to the warmth of their daughter's affection. The distinction in which they were held made the path of her life bright; and even the first check that occurred in her father's career tended to excite still more her admiration for him, as opposition gives form and strength to every power exerted to overcome it. Necker was too conscientious and too firm in his schemes of reform not to have enemies: he was too vain also not to desire to have his plans universally known and approved. Publicity is indeed the proper aim of every honest public man; but it was in utter variance with the policy of the old French government. [Sidenote: 1781. Ætat. 15.] For the purpose of making his system known to the nation, Necker published his "Compte Rendu," which was a statement of the past and present condition of the finances, addressed to the king. It occasioned a great clamour. His daughter read his pamphlet, and heard the discussions concerning it. She addressed an anonymous letter to her father on the subject: he recognised the style; and his affection was increased by this testimony of her talents and filial affection. The "Compte Rendu," however, increased the number and importance of his enemies; the impropriety of the act was urged upon the king: Maurepas had already become hostile to him. Necker was attacked and calumniated. He, and his wife still more, were very susceptible to public blame: they wished to silence the libellers, who grew the more bitter and active the more they perceived that their stings were felt. Necker then demanded a sign of favour from the king, necessary, he thought, for the support of his influence: he asked for the _entrée au conseil_ (a seat in the cabinet), which was refused on the score of his being a protestant. On this he committed an act which he ever after regretted, an act that showed that he preferred his own private feelings to the good of the country which he had promised to save,--he resigned his office.

His daughter gathered pleasure rather than mortification from his resignation. It was acknowledged that by so doing he had plunged the royal family in distress. He had repaired, on the first moment of his returning to a private station, to St. Ouen: all France, as she calls it--that is, all the nobility and all the best society of the capital, the magistrates, the clergy, the merchants and men of letters--came to see him, to express their regrets, their fears for France, their hopes that he would return to office. She heard that Paris was in commotion. At the theatre, every verse in the play of the night ("Henri IV." was acted, and the mention of Sully afforded wide scope) that could be converted into an allusion to the favourite minister was applauded with acclamations; the public walks, the _cafés_, every public place, were filled by an eager yet silent crowd. Consternation was painted on every face--ruin was anticipated for the country which Necker had abandoned. From St. Ouen the ex-minister proceeded to Switzerland. He bought the mansion and estate of Coppet; on the lake of Geneva, and varied his residence between that place and visits to Paris. He was addressed by various sovereigns--Catherine II., Joseph, emperor of Austria, and the king of Naples, to undertake their affairs as minister of finance; but he preferred literary leisure and domestic peace, with a wife whom he adored, and a daughter who was becoming each day dearer and more interesting.