Chapter XIV: Those Left Behind 303 (3)

Twelve years later, in her Memoirs, Madame Roland gave an account of this courtship and marriage, which is a curious contrast to that one finds in the letters written at the time. If these letters show anything, it is that she was, or at least imagined herself, desperately in love; that after having outlined a Platonic relation she had broken it by telling Roland she loved him too well to endure the restrictions of mere friendship; that she had been extravagantly happy in her betrothal, and correspondingly miserable in her liberation; and that when the marriage was finally effected she was thoroughly satisfied.

But in her Memoirs she says of Roland’s first proposal: “I was not insensible to it because I esteemed him more than any one whom I had known up to that time,” but—“I counselled M. Roland not to think of me, as a stranger might have done. He insisted: I was touched and I consented that he speak to my father.” She gives the impression that as far as she was concerned her heart was not in the affair, that she merely was moved by Roland’s devotion, and that she saw in him an intelligent companion. Of his coming to her at the convent, she says that it was he alone who was inflamed by the interview, and she gives the impression that his renewed proposal awakened in her nothing but sober and wise reflections: “I pondered deeply what I ought to do. I did not conceal from myself that a man under forty-five would have hardly waited several months to make me change my mind, and I confess that I had no illusions.... If marriage was, as I thought it, a serious tie, an association where the woman is for the most part charged with the happiness of two persons, was it not better to exercise my faculties, my courage, in that honorable task, than in the isolation in which I lived?”

But at the time that Madame Roland wrote her Memoirs she was under the influence of a new and absorbing passion. The love, which twelve years before had so engulfed all other considerations and affections that she could for it break up her home, desert her father, take up a solitary and wretched existence, even contemplate suicide, had become an indifferent affair of which she could talk philosophically and at which she could smile disinterestedly.

III
SEEKING A TITLE

The first year of their marriage the Rolands spent in Paris. New regulations were being planned by the government for the national manufactures, and Roland had been summoned to aid in the work. It was an irritating task. His principles of free trade, and free competition, were sadly ignored, even after all the concessions obtainable from the government had been granted, and Madame Roland saw for the first time the irascibility and rigidness of her husband when his opinions were disregarded.

They lived in a _hôtel garni_, and she gave all her time to him, preparing his meals even, for he was never well, and spending hours in his study aiding him in his work. Roland’s literary labors seem to have awed her a little at first, and she took up copying and proof-reading with amusing humility and solemnity. It was not an inviting task for a young and imaginative mind accustomed to passing leisure hours with the best thinkers of the world. Roland was writing on manufacturing arts and getting his letters from Italy ready for the printer. As always, he was overcrowded with work. He was particular and tenacious, careless about notes, and wrote an execrable hand,—about the most aggravating type possible to work with. But his wife accommodated herself to him with a tact, a submission, a gentleness which were perfect. He found her judgment so true, her devotion so complete, her notions of style so much better than his own, that he grew to depend upon her entirely. It was the object she had in view. She wanted to make herself indispensable to him.

Thus the first year of her marriage was largely an apprenticeship as a secretary and proof-reader. In order to be better prepared for her duties, she determined to follow the lectures in natural history and botany at the Jardin des Plantes. This study, begun for practical reasons, was in reality a delight and a recreation; for she had already a decided taste for science, and was even something of an observer. The lectures led to her forming one of the most satisfactory relations of her life, that with Bosc, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and well known in Paris for his original work. Bosc took an active interest in Madame Roland and her husband, and was of great use to them in their studies, as well as a most congenial comrade. In fact, they saw almost no one but him at this time. Absorbed in her husband and her new duties, Madame Roland relished no one who was not in some way essential to that relation. Even Sophie was neglected; only six letters to her during the year 1780, after the marriage, appearing in the published collection, and evidently from their contents they are about all she wrote.

The year was broken towards its close by a two months’ visit to the Beaujolais, where Roland’s family lived. That she was heartily welcomed by her new relatives and charmed by her visit, her reports to Sophie show. “We are giving ourselves up like school children to the delights of a country life,” she wrote from Le Clos, “seasoned by all that harmony, intimacy, sweet ties, pleasant confidences, and frank friendship can give. I have found brothers to whom I can give all the affection that the name inspires, and I share joyfully bonds and relations which were unknown to me.” When she returned to Paris she declared that she was delighted with her trip, that the separation from her new family was painful in the extreme, and that the two months with them were passed in the greatest confidence and closest intimacy.

From Paris they went to Amiens, which was to be their home for some time. The old city, with its glorious cathedral, its remnants of middle age life, and its industrial atmosphere, interested her but little. In fact, she never had an opportunity to get very near to it. The first year of her stay she was confined by the birth of her only child, Eudora. Good disciple of Rousseau that she was, she concluded to nurse her baby herself, in defiance of French custom, and naturally saw little of Amiens society.

When she was able to go out, Roland’s work had become so heavy that she had little time for anything but copying and proof-reading. He was preparing a serious part of the famous _Encyclopédie méthodique_, the continuation of the work of Diderot and D’Alembert. Of this great undertaking four volumes—numbers 117–120—are devoted to manufactures, arts, and trades; the first three of these are by Roland, and appeared in 1784, 1785, and 1790.

The plan Roland followed in this work is an excellent example of the methodic mind of the man, bent on analyzing the earth and its contents, and putting into its proper place there each simplest operation, each smallest article. He devised an ingenious diagram in which he classified according to the historic, economic, or administrative side everything he treated—one is obliged to master this system before he can find the subject he wants to know about. A botanical analysis is play beside it. Roland’s contributions to the _Encyclopédie méthodique_ are valuable no doubt, but one needs a guide-book to find his way through them.

Roland’s attempt to run over everything which directly or indirectly concerned his subject, and the enormous number of notes he made, encumbered his work wofully. He could not resist the temptation to use everything he had at hand, and as a result his articles are frequently diffuse and badly arranged, though always full of instruction, even if it is sometimes a little puerile. Neither could he resist the temptation to condemn and to argue.

But though burdened with details sometimes irrelevant, not properly and sufficiently digested, too personal, indulging in much criticism of his authorities, not to say considerable carping, the volumes on manufactures and arts are a colossal piece of work, most valuable in their day, but which never had their full credit because of the stormy times in which they appeared, and, perhaps, not a little too, because of the chaotic series of encyclopedias to which they belonged; for certainly there could with difficulty be a greater mass of information published in a more inaccessible shape than that in the _Encyclopédie méthodique_.

It was in arranging notes, copying, polishing, and reading proofs of articles on soaps and oils, dyes and weaving, skins and tanning, that Madame Roland spent most of her time from 1780 to 1784. A part of the work which was more happy was the botanizing they did. During their four years at Amiens, she made, in fact, a very respectable herbarium of Picardy.

Of society she saw less than one would suppose, since the Cannets were here, and since her husband occupied so prominent a place. She did, of course, see Sophie and Henriette, but not often. Roland did not wish her to be with them much, and she, obedient to his wishes, complied. They had one intimate friend—a Dr. Lanthenas that Roland had met in Italy, and who, since their marriage, had become a constant and welcome visitor in their home. Then there were their acquaintances in the town—but for them she cared but little.

Indeed, she was thoroughly submerged in domestic life. She seems to have had no thought, no desire, no happiness outside of her husband and her child. A great number of her letters written at this period to Roland, who was frequently away from home, have been preserved; one searches them in vain for any interest in affairs outside her house. She wrote pages of her _bonnes_, of the difficulty of finding this or that in the market, of the price of groceries, of the repairs to be made, above all, of her own ills and of those of Eudora, and she counselled Roland as to his plasters and potions. Her absorption in her family went so far that public questions rather bored her than otherwise, as this remark in a letter in 1781 shows:

“M. de Vin [one of their friends at Amiens] came to see me yesterday expressly to tell me of our victory in America over Cornwallis. He saluted me with this news on entering, and I was forced to carry on a long political conversation—I cannot conceive the interest that a private person, such as he is, has in these affairs of kings who are not fighting for us.”

Her calm domestic life was broken in 1784. Roland was dissatisfied at Amiens. His health was miserable. His salary was small. He was out of patience with the men and circumstances which surrounded him. His idea was to seek a title of nobility. Such a concession would give him the rights of the privileged, freedom from taxes of all sorts, a certain income, a position in society. He would be free to pursue his studies. There were grounds on which to base his claim. His family was one of the most ancient of Beaujolais. Then there were his services,—over thirty years of hard work, long tedious travels, solely for the good of the country.

It was decided, in the spring of 1784, that Madame Roland undertake the delicate and intricate task of presenting the matter at Versailles. In March she went to Paris, armed with the _mémoire_ which set forth Roland’s claim. It is a collection of curious enough documents; showing how one must go back to very ancient times to find the origin of the Rolands in Beaujolais, how the name is “lost in the night of time, a tradition placing it between the eleventh and twelfth centuries.”

The memoir which presents this family tree of Roland is further strengthened by the names of the foremost of Beaujolais, testifying that it is “_sincère et véritable_”; and by a row of big black seals. Of actual connected genealogy the memoir goes no further than 1574. Roland, however, took a lofty tone, and declared his services were a more solid and real reason for granting his request. Evidently they had thoroughly studied the situation, had gathered all the facts which would support their case, and had enlisted all their relations of influence, so that when Madame Roland began her diplomatic career she was furnished with all the arms which reflection on a desired object give a woman of imagination, eloquence, and beauty.

The daily letters which they exchanged in the period she was in Paris, give a fresh and charming picture of favor-seeking in the eighteenth century. They wrote to each other with frankness and good humor of everything—rebuffs or advancement. They evidently had concluded to leave nothing unturned to secure the reward which they were convinced they deserved.

Madame Roland established herself, with her _bonne_, at the Hôtel de Lyon, Rue Saint Jacques, then the Boulevard Saint Michel of the Left Bank. Her brother-in-law, a prior in the Benedictine Order of the Cluny, lived near by and helped her settle; brought her what she needed from his own apartment; passed his evenings with her; did her errands, and helped her generally. She seems not to have seen her father at all.

In order to secure the grant of nobility, a favorable recommendation to the King from the Royal Counsel of Commerce, of which body the _conseiller ordinaire_ was M. de Calonne, _Contrôleur-général des finances_, was necessary. To obtain this all possible recommendations must be brought to M. de Calonne’s attention; particularly was it necessary to cultivate the directors of commerce, with whom the Controller-general consulted freely, and on whom he depended for advice. They had arranged, before she left Amiens, a list of the people upon whom they could rely directly or indirectly for letters of introduction and for other favors.

No sooner was she settled than she began the work of seeing them. At the very commencement she encountered prejudice and irritation against Roland. One of her friends, who evidently had been investigating affairs ahead, assured her that Roland was viewed everywhere with dissatisfaction, and that the common opinion was, though he did a great deal of work, he did not know how to keep his place. One of the directors told her: “Take care how you present him to us as a superior man. It is his pretension, but we are far from judging him as such.” “Pedantry, insupportable vanity, eagerness for glory, pretensions of all sorts, obstinacy, perpetual contradiction, bad writer, bad politician, determination to regulate everything, incapable of subordination,” were among the criticisms upon her husband, to which Madame Roland had to listen.

All of these complaints she faced squarely, writing them to Roland with a frankness which is half-amusing, half-suspicious. One wonders if she is not taking advantage of the situation to tell her husband some wholesome truths about himself. She did not hesitate, in repeating these criticisms, to add frequent counsels, which support the suspicion and show how thoroughly she realized the danger of Roland’s fault-finding irritation. “Above all, as I told you before my departure, do not get angry in your letters, and let me see them before they are sent. You must not irritate them any more. Your pride is well enough known, show them your good nature now.”

The criticisms on Roland’s character did not disconcert her. She pressed ahead, talked, reasoned, urged, obtained promises; in short, showed herself an admirable intrigante. She was afraid of no one. “As for my rôle, I know it so well that I could defend it before the King without being embarrassed by his crown,” she wrote Roland. After she had secured what she wanted from each person, she did her best to keep them friendly; for she had decided to ask for a pension if she did not secure the letters. She succeeded admirably, even M. de Tolozan, one of the directors whom she called her “bear,” telling her one day: “You have lost nothing by this trip, Madame. We all do honor to your honesty and your intelligence, and I am very glad to have made your acquaintance.”

She seems not to have despised rather questionable methods even: “Did I not let a certain person who was asking about my family, and who was astonished that I should take so much trouble for a daughter, believe that I expected an heir in a few months? That makes the business more touching. They look at me walk and I laugh in my sleeve. I do not go so far, though, as to tell a deliberate lie, but, like a good disciple of Escobar, I give the impression without talking.”

Whenever she was successful she was frankly delighted, and she began to think herself capable of great things in diplomacy: “If we were at Paris with just fifteen thousand livres income, and I should devote myself to business—I almost said intrigue—I should have no trouble in doing many things.” Her friends at Paris had as good opinion of her ability as she herself did. Bosc wrote Roland of her surprising _finesse_ in managing difficult relations, in interesting people, and of turning even objections to her own credit. “In fact, she is astonishing,” he says.

But it was not easy after all. There were delays which wore out her spirit. And she experienced to the full the effects of the French vice of doing nothing on time. The continual trips back and forth to Versailles exasperated her. Then the business of each counsel was so great that even after she had gotten to M. de Calonne she was obliged to wait her turn. The money all this cost was, of course, a constant annoyance. They were poor and could not afford the carriage hire, the finery, and the presents that favor-seeking in the simplest way cost. The business of solicitation in itself was much less rasping for her than one would suspect. In fact, she seemed to enjoy it. Her successes set her writing bubbling letters to Roland. She rarely showed irritation, almost never impatience of the greatness of others, nor any sign of feeling her position as a solicitor. It was only the failure to see her cause advance rapidly that disheartened her.

The uncertainty lasted until the middle of May, when it became evident all had been done that could be, and that the title was impossible. She decided to retire to Amiens and to return later to seek a pension. Suddenly she got a new bee in her bonnet. When making her farewell calls, she heard a bit of news which persuaded her that changes were to be made in the department of commerce by which Roland might be sent to Lyons as inspector. It was a larger and more interesting city than Amiens. It was near his home. The salary would be larger, the work easier. There was no time to consult Roland. If done at all, it must be done on the spot. She went to work and almost immediately secured her request. The directors with whom she had been laboring so long to secure the impossible, were glad enough to grant her what appeared to them reasonable. At the same time that she received word of the appointment, a letter came from Roland saying that the change to Lyons, of which she had written him as soon as it came into her head, would suit him if it would her.

Roland took this leadership and decision on the part of Madame in most excellent spirit. The change was the best that they could do, he wrote; as for the work, that would go on “in slippers.” He even showed no resentment at a curtain lecture she gave him adroitly by the way of a third person, telling him of his duties at Lyons. He cast out of the account her fears for his health and peace of mind. It was she who occupied him—if the change pleased her he had no other care.

Indeed, from the beginning of the campaign, Roland’s letters to his wife were full of consideration for her position, of anxiety for her health, of longing for her return. Every ache or fatigue she wrote of caused him the greatest anxiety. Throughout the correspondence, the expression of confidence, of mutual help, of tenderness, was perfect. Their interest extended to every detail of the other’s life, Madame Roland insisting upon her husband’s wearing a certain plaster for some of his ailments, and he counselling her not to come home without a new hat.

They gave each other all the news of Paris and Amiens, and there are many pages of her letters, especially, which are interesting for those studying the life of that day: thus, during her stay in Paris, two famous pieces—the _Danaïdes_ of Gluck and the _Figaro_ of Beaumarchais—were given for the first time, and her letters on them are long and vivid. More curious than opera or theatre is the place mesmerism takes in the letters; the Rolands had taken up the new fad, presumably to see what it would do for Roland, and were members of the Magnetic Club of Amiens; Madame Roland repeated to her husband everything she heard on the subject.

Wire-pulling, favor-seeking, letter-writing, theatre-going and Mesmer-studying were over at last, and the end of May she started home, and glad to go. The separation had been severe for them both. There is scarcely a letter in the two collections not marked by tenderness; many of them are passionate in their warmth and longing. It is evident that at this time Madame Roland had no life apart from her husband.

Madame Roland reached Amiens early in June. The first day of July she and her husband left for a trip in England which they had long planned. She counted much on it; for many years she had been an enthusiastic admirer of the English Constitution and its effects on the nation. Roland had been there before and was somewhat known, and naturally she saw what he thought best to show her.

The journey lasted three weeks and she wrote full notes of what she saw for her daughter. These notes were published in Champagneux’s edition of her works. They are in no respect remarkable for originality of observation, or for wit. But they are always intelligent and practical, a result, no doubt, of Roland’s companionship. They touch a wide range of subjects and they are entertaining as a look at what an eighteenth-century traveller saw. It is easy to see that Madame Roland, as most travellers do, sought to confirm her preconceived ideas. England, for her, was the country of freedom, and she saw that which was in harmony with her ideas.

IV
COUNTRY LIFE

It was in September of 1784 that the Rolands arrived in Beaujolais. Although Roland’s new position kept him the greater part of the time at Lyons, they settled for the winter some twenty-eight kilometres north, in Villefranche-sur-Saône. It was mainly for economical reasons that they did not go to Lyons. Roland’s mother had a home at Villefranche and they could live with her through the winter. The summers and autumns they meant to spend at Le Clos de la Platière, the family estate about eleven miles from Villefranche, which had recently come under their control. With such an arrangement it was necessary to take only a small apartment at Lyons. As M. Roland could come often to Villefranche and Le Clos, Madame planned to spend only about two months of the year at Lyons.

Villefranche, their first home in the Beaujolais, is to-day a manufacturing town of perhaps twelve thousand inhabitants. There is a wearisome commonplace about its rows of flat-faced houses, a dusty, stupid, factory atmosphere about it as a whole. It seems to be utterly destitute of those _genre_ pictures which give the flavor to so many French towns, utterly lacking in those picturesque corners which make their charm.

Save Notre Dame des Marais and the hospital, it has no buildings of note, but Notre Dame des Marais makes up for a multitude of architectural deficiencies. It is an irregular fifteenth-century Gothic church whose unbalanced façade is enriched with an absolute riot of exquisite carvings. Every ogive is latticed with trefoils and flowing tracery, every niche is peopled, every line breaks into tendrils, everywhere is the thistle in honor of the house of Bourbon, everywhere are saints and angels, devils and monsters. A hundred years ago Villefranche must have been more interesting than it is now. Certainly it was more picturesque; for its towers and crenellated walls were still standing, and at either extremity of its chief thoroughfare were massive gates, doubled with iron. Its picturesqueness interfered somewhat with its comfort and sanitary condition in Madame Roland’s eyes. She detested particularly its flat roofs, its little streets, with their surface sewers. In its organization it was much more complicated than to-day, and it possessed at least one institution, since disappeared, which placed it among the leading French towns of the period, that is, an academy, one of the oldest in the realm.

The household which the Rolands entered at Villefranche was made up of Madame de la Platière, Roland’s mother, and an older brother, a priest of the town. The latter is a pleasant example of the eighteenth-century curé, half man of pleasure, half priest, spirited and versatile in conversation, something of a diplomat, faithful to his dogmas and duties, _bon enfant_ in morals, but in questions of politics and religion, domineering and prejudiced.

The _chanoine_ Roland occupied an excellent position at Villefranche. He was one of the three dignitaries of Notre Dame des Marais; he was the spiritual adviser of the sisters at the hospital, and he had been for over thirty years an Academician. With these offices, his family, and his agreeableness, he was of course received by all the families of the town and country worth knowing.

Madame Roland was on very good terms with the _chanoine_ in all the early years in Beaujolais, caring for him when sick, making visits with him, talking with him over the fire winter evenings when Roland was away from home. No doubt he found her a welcome addition in a house which up to that time had been under the more or less tyrannical rule of his mother, a woman “of the age of the century,” and “terrible in her temper.” Madame Roland found him a welcome relief from the care of her mother-in-law, whom she seems to have regarded rather as an object for patience and philosophy than for affection. The old lady was trying. She had the child’s vice of gormandizing, and after each _petite débauche_, as her daughter-in-law called it, was an invalid for a few days. Then she invited recklessly, a habit that made much work and expense, and was particularly obnoxious to Madame Roland because the company passed all their time at cards. To see the house filled every evening with people who had not intellect and resources to entertain each other intelligently was exasperating.

All these annoyances Madame Roland repeated to her husband in the long letters she sent him almost every day. More questionable than her habit of writing these petty vexations to him was her retailing of them to Bosc, with whom she was in constant correspondence.

In spite of the drawbacks there was much brightness in the new home, much of that close intimacy which is the charm of the French interior. Madame Roland realized this and frequently painted pleasant pictures to Bosc as contrasts to the disagreeable ones she gave him.

Although Madame Roland was greeted cordially at Villefranche by the leading people, as became the wife and sister-in-law of two prominent men, she never came any nearer to what was really good and enjoyable in the place than she had in Amiens. The town displeased her, as it naturally would, since she insisted on comparing it with Paris. She amused herself in studying the _soul_ of the place, and she found it frequently small, false, and distorted. Now an analysis of one’s surroundings is certainly amusing and instructive, but if one is to be a good neighbor and agreeable member of the society he dissects, he must keep his observations to himself; must place humanity and courtesy higher than analysis. Madame Roland did not do this; she showed often what she thought and felt, and became unpopular in return. Roland, too, made himself disliked in the Academy of Villefranche by his domineering ways.

The Abbé Guillon de Montléon, of Lyons, who was a fellow academician of Roland’s, relates that whenever he went to the town to attend Academy meetings, Madame Roland and her husband tried to secure him as their guest, and he suggests that this attention was due simply to the fact that they were on bad terms with their townsmen and were obliged to find their company in outsiders. It seems that a satire on a number of the leading people of the town had been sent from Paris, and that it was believed to be the work of M. and Madame Roland. Whether true or not, those who had been caricatured revenged themselves by cutting them and by ordering sent to them each day from Paris satirical epigrams and songs.

The Abbé Guillon also tells that Roland left the Academy of Villefranche in a pet because that body refused in 1788 to adopt the subject he had suggested for a prize contest—“Would it not serve the public good to establish courts to judge the dead.”

However, all that the Abbé tells of Roland must be regarded with suspicion. He wrote after the Revolution, with his heart full of bitter contempt and hatred of everybody who had been connected with the movement which led up to the Reign of Terror in Lyons, and, at that moment, was not capable of impersonal judgments.

Madame Roland was not much better pleased with Lyons than with Villefranche. She did not love the place too well. At Lyons she mocked at everything, she said. She was well situated there, however. Their apartment was in a fine house in a pleasant quarter, and Madame had the equipage of a friend to use when she would. She saw many celebrities who passed through the town; was invited constantly; made visits; in fact, had an admirable social position, as became the wife of one of the most active citizens of the town, and Roland certainly was that. His reputation for solid acquirements had preceded him. On arriving in Lyons he was made an honorary member of the Academy, and afterwards an active member, and from that time he constantly was at the front in the work of the institution.

In the archives of the Academy of Lyons there are still preserved a large number of manuscripts by Roland, some of these in the hand of his wife. They discuss a variety of subjects: the choice of themes for the public séances of the provincial academies; the influence of literature in the country and the capital (this paper was given a place in the published annals); the outlook for a universal language—to be French of course. One peculiar paper, to come from so dry a pen as his, is on the “Means of Understanding a Woman.” Plutarch comes in for a eulogy, and there is an exhortation on the wisdom of knowing our fellows. Most of the manuscripts are purely scientific, and treat the subjects in which M. Roland was particularly at home,—the preparation of hides and leather, of oils and soaps; the processes of drying. Others consider means for quickening the decaying manufacturing interests of Lyons. Altogether, it is a very honorable collection. The annals of the Academy contain also a full printed report of a contest over cotton velvet which had embroiled Roland in the North. Both sides of the discussion, which Roland’s efforts to spread the knowledge of the new industry awakened, are given.

I have examined all of these manuscripts, as well as Roland’s printed articles in the _Encyclopédie_, and elsewhere, for a trace of the idea the Abbé Guillon de Montléon credits to him, in his Memoirs,—that dead bodies, instead of being buried, be utilized for the good of the community, the flesh being used for oil and the bones for phosphoric acid. This idea was advanced, it is said, to settle a dispute over the cemeteries, which had long agitated Lyons; but as there is no reference to it in any of Roland’s manuscripts or printed articles, it is probable that it was never pushed to public attention, as the Abbé would have his reader believe. The story is told too naturally not to have at least a shadow of truth, and such a proposition is so like the utilitarian Roland that, if anybody in France suggested such a thing, it probably was he.

If their life in Villefranche and Lyons was not satisfactory, that at their country home was entirely so; indeed, Madame Roland seems never to have been so happy, so natural, so charming, as she was at Le Clos, where she spent much time each year.

Le Clos is easily reached from Villefranche. One goes to-day, as one hundred years ago, in carriage, or, as Madame Roland usually did, on horseback, by one of the hard, smooth roads which have long formed a network over the Lyonnais. The road runs from the town along a narrow valley of luxuriant pasture land, strewn in May, the month in which I visited the place, with purple mints and pure yellow fleur-de-lys. On either hand are low, steep hillsides, all under cultivation, but so divided under the French system of inheritance that they look like patch-work quilts or Roman ribbons. A kilometre from town one begins to wind and climb. Hill after hill, mountain after mountain, is passed; the country opens broad and generous. There is a peculiar impression of warmth and strength produced by the prevailing color of the soil and building-material. This part of the Lyonnais is clad in a dark stone, and walls and churches, roads and fields, are all in varying tones of terra-cotta; here is the fresh, bright reddish-yellow of a plot recently cultivated and not yet planted; there the dull and worn-out brown of an ancient wall; but, though the shades are varied, the tone is never lost. The green of the foliage and fields is peculiarly dark and positive in contrast with this coloring of the stone. The whole makes a landscape of originality and a certain rude strength. It looks like a country where men worked and where there was little to tempt them to idleness. When one comes to Beaujolais, after the soft gray tone of the Côte-d’Or and the Seine-et-Marne, or the dull slate which prevails in Bourbonnais, the contrast is harsh and a little saddening.

It is a thickly settled country, and one passes many hamlets, all in terra-cotta, with high walls and old churches topped by Romanesque towers. At the centre of these hamlets are ancient crucifixes, some of them of grotesque carvings. On the distant hillsides are châteaux.

After climbing many hills, one passes along the side of a mountain ridge. At the end of this ridge one sees a yellow town, of some fifty houses, a château with its tower razed to the roof, and a small chapel. It is the village of Theizé.

While his eyes are still on the village, he falls into a hamlet, at the end of whose one street is a high wall and gate. It is Le Clos. Shut in by high yellow walls,—one might almost say fortifications, they are so long and so high,—the quaint country house, dating from the first of the last century, is a tranquil, sheltered spot which gives one the feeling of complete seclusion from the world. On one side of the house lies the court, with its broad grass-plot, its low wall, its long rows of stone farm, and vintage buildings; on the other, lies an English garden, planted thickly with maples, sycamores, and hemlocks, with lilac clumps and shrubs, with roses and vines. Enclosing this garden on two sides is a stone terrace, forming a beautiful promenade. From here all the panorama of the Beaujolais hills, mountains, and valleys opens, with their vineyards, yellow houses, forests, and here and there a tower—the bellevue of some rich nineteenth-century proprietor or the relic of some ancient château. Far beyond the farthest, faintest mountain outline rises, on clear nights, the opal crest of Mont Blanc.

To the left of garden and house are vines and fruit trees; to the right, a long lane and vegetable garden; and everywhere beyond are vines, vines, vines, to the very brook in Beauvallon at the foot of the hillside.

In Madame Roland’s time the country about Le Clos was much more heavily wooded than now. There was less of vine raising and more of grain, but many features are unchanged. These trees are of her time no doubt, these vines, these walls, and she doubtlessly gathered blossoms, as one does to-day, from the long hedge of _roses panachés_, the wonderful striped roses of Provence now almost unknown in France, though still rioting the full length of one of the walls of Le Clos,—fanciful, sweet things which by their infinite variety set one, in spite of himself, at the endless search of finding two alike, as in the play of his childhood with the striped grass of his grandmother’s yard.

LE CLOS DE LA PLATIÈRE.
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From the terrace she saw, as we do, in the valley at the right, the château of Brossette, the friend of Boileau; and on the hillside in front, the curious little chapel of Saint Hippolyte; and she must often have heard the story the country folk still tell of the place, how centuries ago the Saracens ravaged all the country as far as this valley, but here were driven back. The Franks, in honor of their victory, raised a chapel to Saint Hippolyte and many miracles were performed there, and the people came to the shrine in pilgrimage from long distances. Now, certain neighbors, wishing to possess this miracle-working statue of Saint Hippolyte, had it carried off, but at the moment that the person carrying the saint attempted to cross the brook in Beauvallon, the holy image jumped from his shoulder and ran at full speed back to the chapel. The pious thieves, seeing the preference of the saint, like good Christians, gave up their project.

The mountains of Beaujolais changed from faintest violet to darkest purple for her as for us, and the crest of Mont Pilate, or the Cat Mountain as the Lyonnais peasants call Mont Blanc, startled and thrilled her by its mysterious opalescent beauty when now and then it appeared on the horizon suddenly, like some celestial thing.

The house, a white, square structure, with pavilions at the corners of the court side, and red tiled roof, is unchanged without, though rearranged somewhat within. Nevertheless, there are many things to recall the Rolands and their immediate friends; the ancient well; the brass water-fountain; now and then a book, with Roland de la Platière on the fly-leaf, in the well-filled cases which one finds in every room; a terra-cotta bust of Roland himself (by Chinard, dated 1777); portraits of the family, including one called Madame Roland, which nobody supposes to be she; photographs of the beautiful La Tour pastels of M. and Madame Phlipon, now in the museum of Lyons; an oil of the _chanoine_; a few fine old arms in the collection which decorates the billiard room; a table whose top is made of squares of variegated marbles brought from Italy by Roland.

There is now and then a sign about the house of what it suffered in the Revolution; for Le Clos was pillaged then and stripped of its contents at the same time that the château above had its towers razed. On several of the heavy doors is still clinging the red wax of the official seal placed by the revolutionary officers. The _chanoine’s_ crucifix is there, a graceful silver affair darkly oxidized from long burying, he having hid it in the garden. In the raids on the property nearly all the furniture was taken, and for many years the peasants were said to account for new pieces of furniture in their neighbors’ houses by saying, “Oh, it came from Le Clos.” Some time after the Revolution, M. Champagneux, who married Eudora, the daughter of Madame Roland, received a notice from the curé at Theizé that a sum of “conscience money” had been given him for the family.

Life must have been then at Le Clos—a hundred years ago—much what it is now,—a busy, peaceful round of usefulness and kindliness, of generous hospitality, of unaffected intelligence. Madame Roland entered it with sentiments kindled by Rousseau. Her imagination had never been more actively at work than it had over the prospect of this country retirement. She had shed tears over the prospect of their future Clarens, its bucolic pleasures, the delicious meditations, the sweet effusions of friendship, the healthy duties. And Le Clos realized many of her dreams; largely because she took hold of the practical life of the house and farm with good-will and intelligence. She was no woman to allow work to master her,—she managed it. Nor was she weak enough to fret under it or to regard it as “beneath her.” She respected this most dignified and useful of woman’s employments and gave it intelligence and good-will. This acceptance of and cheerfulness over common duties is one of the really strong things about Madame Roland.

Some of the prettiest passages in her letters of this period are of her homely duties. She kept the accounts, directed the servants, interested herself in every detail of farm and house. She used her scientific acquirements practically for the benefit of Le Clos and its neighbors. Bosc she continually applied to for information. Now it was a remedy, “sure and easy,” against the bites of the viper, of which there were many in the country—and they still exist; now for the caterpillars which were troubling the apples; again it was against an enemy of her artichokes that she demanded, as a service to the province, a remedy.

She took a lively interest in agricultural discussions, and many were the flowers, from the rich flora of Le Clos, which she sent her friend to analyze, or for a confirmation of her own analysis.

Her devotion to her neighbors was genuine. In her Memoirs she speaks with pride of their love for her, and this was no meaningless recollection. Constantly in her letters there was question of service rendered to this or that one, and we see that it was not without reason that her husband was worried lest she make herself ill in caring for the domestics of Le Clos and the peasants of Boitier and Theizé.

She did more than care for them and instruct them,—she set them a good example. Especially in religious matters was she careful to do this. One who has climbed the long steep hill from Le Clos to the church at Theizé, has a genuine respect for the unselfishness of a woman who would get out of bed at six o’clock in the morning for her neighbor’s sake,—“climbing up the rocks,” she called it. This she did, though Le Clos possessed its own chapel where the curé came to say the Mass.

She exercised a delightful hospitality. Le Clos was always open for their friends. Lanthenas spent much of his time there, and one of the apartments still is called by his name. Bosc she was always urging to come, and she drew him many a pretty picture of their summer companies. There was now and then a friend of Bosc, from Paris, who sought them; for in those days of stage-coaches one had time to stop over _en route_. There were foreign and French _savants_ who had heard of Roland and came to pay their respects, and there were the country counts and abbés.

And there were amusements besides—an occasional _petit bal_ given by a _locataire_, where she danced “and contre-danced,” and, in spite of her thirty-one years, only retired at midnight from “wisdom and not from satiety.” And there was the watch-meeting which she kept with her people, and the _vogue_, as the Beaujolais people call their provincial fêtes. Le Clos had one peculiar to itself—a _vogue_ existing to-day.

It is one of the events of the year at Theizé—this _vogue_—on Ascension Sunday and Monday. The place is invaded the day before for preparation: a stand is put up for the musicians; the wine rooms are cleared out for the lunch tables; the trees and walls are decorated; outside the gate, too, before night there is sure to establish itself one of the travelling lotteries which infest France.

The morning of Ascension Day there comes, between masses, a committee headed by a band to take possession of the place and present the fête to Madame. After dinner come the merry-makers,—young and old from all the country round; a friendly, pleasant company who dance and walk and talk, only quitting their sports long enough for the traditional service of cutting the _brioche_,—a ceremony which begins with a grave promenade of the big cake around the premises, fanfare ahead. This done, the chief of the _vogue_, in the midst of a respectful silence from all the two or three hundred peasants looking on, cuts the cake with a flourish so solemn that it would be worthy of a sacrifice, and passes around the pieces among the guests.

The _brioches_ eaten, they dance again, and that until after the night falls and the stars come out and the children and the old people go home—a grave dance now and silent; for the night, the wind in the trees, the simpler music too changes the gay and romping mood of the afternoon to one of dreaminess and silence. But Monday they come back gayer than ever and the dance and romp do not end until, late in the evening, Madame declares the _vogue_ over.

In this life at Le Clos Madame Roland’s most serious occupation was the education of her daughter Eudora. She evidently hoped to find in her little girl a second Manon Phlipon,—an infant prodigy in sentiment and taste. She discovered early that Eudora was a rollicking, mischievous, saucy youngster, who would rather frolic than study and who liked to play with her doll better than to read Plutarch. She was in despair over this lack of feeling. At the least sign of sentiment she wrote to her husband or to Bosc, but as a rule she could only complain of the indifference of the little miss.

She had begun by nursing her baby,—Rousseau demands it,—but when she came back from her favor-seeking at Paris the child—three years old—did not recognize her. “I am like the women who do not nurse their children; I have done better than they but I am no farther advanced.” At Le Clos she became thoroughly discouraged and decided to take up Rousseau again and study _Émile_ and _Julie_ on the education of children. She arrived at certain conclusions and as she was about to write her husband of them one day received a letter from him containing similar reflections. She replied with her full plan. The letter, hitherto unpublished, is very sensible.

“What a pleasure to find that we are one in our ideas as in our feelings, and for one never to have a plan that the other has not already thought of. For the last twenty-four hours I have been trying the method that you suggest with our little one. I had re-read Julie’s plan, and I had decided that we were too far away from it. Controlled by circumstances, we have either thought too much or not enough of our child. Busy in a kind of work which demands quiet, we have kept her at her tasks and her lessons, without taking time to cultivate a taste in her for them, or of choosing the times when she was the most disposed for them. When she has rebelled, and we have wanted her to be quiet, we have been willing to do anything to silence her, so that we could go on with our work.

“‘That which makes children cry,’ Julie says, ‘is the attention that is paid to them. It is only necessary to let them cry all day, a few times, without paying any attention to them, to cure them of the habit. If one pets them or threatens them, it has no effect. The more attention that you give to their tears, the more reason they have for continuing them. They will break themselves of the habit very soon when they see that no one takes notice; for, great and small, no one cares to give himself useless trouble.’ There, my good friend, is where we have been wrong. Julie’s children were happy and peaceable under her eyes, but they were subject to no one and only obliged to allow others the same liberty they enjoyed themselves.

“We want to be left in peace; that is just, but sometimes we constrain our child, and she takes her revenge as she can. Moreover, there is no use denying it, our little one has a strong will, and she has no sensibility and no taste. It must be that this is, in part, our fault, and because we have not known how to direct her. More than that, we risk making a still greater mistake in conquering her by force or by fear, though we have believed that it could be done in no other way. In acting thus, we are going to be unhappy, and our child is going to develop a hard and an unendurable obstinacy.

“I have resolved: first, never to get angry, and always to be calm and cold as justice itself when it comes to a question of correction.

“Second, never to use either whip or blow, movement or tone, which show impatience. Blows of whatever kind seem to me odious. They harden, debase, and prevent the birth of sentiment. On this score we have been guilty. When, as an infant, Eudora put her hands on something that she ought not to have touched, and did not take them off at the first word, it seemed to us that a little blow on her rebellious hand might have good effect. But that little blow has led to the whip; the child has become a torment, and we are annoyed by it; that little blow was a great mistake; it is time that we began over again, and we have not a moment to lose.

“Third, the child must be happier with us than with any one else; it is a question then of making her time pass more pleasantly when she is in our presence than it does elsewhere. That would not be very difficult if the mother was sewing or at housework, was free to talk with her sometimes and to teach her little tasks. In a library, between two desks, where severe research is going on and where silence is necessary, it is quite natural that the child grow weary; above all, if she is forbidden to sing or to chatter, and cannot play with any one.

“None of those persons who have written treatises on education have considered the student or those of a similar profession; they have treated the father or the mother as occupied solely in carrying out their duties, everything else being set aside for them. But the case is different here; you must carry on your work, and I am only too happy to aid you in it. I am a wife as well as a mother, and was the one before becoming the other.

“Let us try, then, while at our desks to have our child with us, and to see to it that she is happy beside us. For that we must leave her free as much as possible. If nature has not fitted her for study, let us not insist. Let us form her character as well as we can, and let the rest come by inspiration, not by punishment or caresses. Let us hold ourselves to these rules, and I am sure that the child will soon feel the justice and the necessity as well as the effect of our tenderness.

“For three days now I have not compelled her to do anything. She reads five or six times a day to amuse herself, and she seems to think that it is a good act. Without entirely lending myself to her little hypocrisy, I nevertheless pretend to be partially, at least, her dupe. In the evening she begs for music and I make a thousand excuses in order to have the lesson short, gay, and easy. The great thing is obedience. There have been scenes, I have punished her and she has wept; but I have pretended not to notice it, and have gone on with my work in perfect indifference. She has been obliged to stop some time, and it has never been very long.”