Mathilde Blind

“ All her life she had loved this people, even with the love of a mother yearning for her firstborn. All her life she had been ready to shed her blood for it, in the conviction that a new generation would arise which should live to enjoy the freedom for which she was content to perish. That conviction made her passage to the scaffold a triumphal path, and invested her, as she stood in the death cart, with a splendour as of victory. ”

“ And while a young girl on the Quai de l'Horloge felt the deep stirrings of a woman's heart for a people whose suffering condition she had not apprehended as yet, another girl—also in her first bewitching bloom—ascended the throne of France, and was hailed by Burke as "just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy." ”

“ The grim towers of the Bastile, the impassable moat of the Bastile, the dumb, dull grip of the walls of the Bastile—this was the dreaded object which cast its deadly shadow on the muzzled thought of France! This was the living tomb from which they shrank back aghast, and which made so many of them, as soon as they touched English soil, breathe our heavy, fog-laden, smoke-begrimed atmosphere as if it were the very elixir of life. ”

“ Only a fortnight before Marie Jeanne Roland entered its precincts Marie-Antoinette had quitted them for the scaffold; so that the woman who hated the Republic most bitterly was condemned almost simultaneously with that other woman who had the most adored it. But such was the turbid confusion of the times that the most heterogeneous kind of people were mixed up together in that foulest of prisons. Great nobles were cheek by jowl with felons; great ladies jostled women of the streets; by a freak of fate the Du Barry and Roland's wife slept under the same roof. ”

“ Here, on this circumscribed arena, shaken by such fierce debates, all members turning towards her—Madame Roland might distinguish amid a confused mass of men the wintry face of Robespierre, Marat, the Angel of Death St. Just, leonine Danton, Condorcet, Brissot, the waspish Guadet, and, above all the others, brave, manly-hearted Buzot, who thrilled at the sight of her, as she entered with that proud, erect bearing of hers, such mingled dignity and sweetness in her expression that the Convention broke into thunders of applause. ”

“ Now it is a Lucile, fair young wife of Desmoulins, who glides round the prison like his shadow, and, like his shadow, too, follows uncomplainingly to the guillotine.
That whole generation, while the social fabric was yielding and cracking beneath its feet, and while death encompassed it, was consumed by the thirst for life. Into its brief existence it crammed centuries of thought, action, suffering. It was ready to shatter all obstacles that hindered the current of its passions. ”

“ The humble little closet on the Quai de l'Horloge was changed into a temple where the best and bravest of men again became incarnate in the shaping imagination of a visionary child. Who can precisely explain or define that strong historic grasp, which is almost like a sixth sense, and seems inborn with some children. Give to such a one a history of Rome, and it comes with a power and a passion and a haunting reality as of memories called up from an obliterated past. Plutarch became a landmark in the life of Manon Phlipon. ”

“ Some of the Commissioners obligingly offered to pull down the blinds.
"No, gentlemen," she replied; "innocence, however oppressed, should not assume the attitude of guilt. I fear the eyes of no one, and do not even wish to escape from those of my enemies."
"You have much more character than many men," they said. "You can calmly await justice."
"Justice!" cried she. "If it existed I should not now be in your power. I would go to the scaffold as calmly if sent there by iniquitous men. I only fear guilt, and despise injustice and death."
They reached the prison. ”

“ I imagine that we all of us love strong impressions, because they give us a lively sense of existence, and the same taste which takes the educated people to the theatres carries the populace to the Place de la Grève. Yes, the pitiless mob applauded the tortures of the criminal as if at a play. Of course his crime was horrible; but at such instants one forgets the criminal and his crime, only to feel the agony of a fellow-being, and suffering nature makes herself one with pain. I confess that I feel contempt for men, as well as love ”

“ Had not the King unexpectedly gone to the Assembly, expressed adhesion to the new Constitution, exhorted them all to follow his example, taken the civic oath, and was not all France likewise about to swear it in a rapture of enthusiasm?
And now, in this spring of 1790, a spontaneous movement, originating in the heart of the people itself, swept the surface of national life with its quickening vernal breath. The conception of no single mind nor the watchword of a party, the sense of this common national revival imparted the same impulse to the inhabitants of distant provinces. ”

“ In the same year, 1787, the Rolands paid a visit to Switzerland, whither Roland, who was frequently ailing, repaired in search of health. His wife kept a record of her tour, but for us of the latter half of the nineteenth century, to whom Switzerland has become the hackneyed playground of Europe, it contains nothing that is not already perfectly familiar. What does strike one as new and strange is the fact that there were then no big, barrack-like hotels, defacing with pompous tastelessness the beautiful solitude of the Alps. ”

“ The Gironde tried to found the new order on law; the Mountain on terror. The Gironde considered that the Revolution had gone far enough, and that the crying need was to inspire the nation with a sense of security; the Mountain held that whole sections must be exterminated before a reorganization could take place. It is the fashion now to praise up the last as the strong party, who knew what they wanted and managed to get it; but, if success is the test of capacity, their twelve months more of rule, or so, does not give them such vast superiority over the Girondins. ”

“ This single axiom, from which the correlative notions of the Rights of Man—Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality—are natural outcomes, became the lever which helped to set the vast forces of the Revolution in motion, as well as the lode-star of its reconstructive tendencies. Rousseau's leading conception is, that Might is not Right, and that, although the power of the strong may enable him to frame laws which force the weak to obey him, the moment the weak becomes strong enough to refuse, he is justified in doing so. ”

“ Insufficiently nourished, poorly clad, and solitary, she neither lost her courage, nor her gaiety, and, curled up on a high school desk to look out over the snow-covered roofs of Paris, she, from her lofty perch, could see the people moving like midges through the white, narrow thoroughfares, or at times would seem very near to the beatified calm when the great, still, winter moon flooded her little garret with a solemn splendour. ”

“ Cries of "Recall of the Ministers!" "Repeal of the Veto!" were heard at intervals; but, without committing himself to any promise, the King knew how to amuse the people by pinning a cockade to the red cap of liberty, and joining in the shouts of "Long live the Nation!" At last, admonished by the Mayor, the crowd dispersed peaceably enough, and this singular insurrection ended in the Royal apartments being thrown open to the populace to see on its way out! ”

“ Fonfrède flung his arms round Ducos, that young martyr of friendship, who had scorned Marat's mercy, sobbing, "I have brought you to this!" Ducos answered quietly, "Be comforted, friend; do we not die together?" Vergniaud was for taking poison; but there was not enough for all, so he flung it from him, in contempt; he would not be divided from them in his death.
As they left the room where Valazé's corpse lay stretched on the table, one by one the condemned went up to him and kissed him on the forehead, saying, "Till to-morrow!" ”

“ Yes, the Terror came in with the Revolutionary Tribunal, planting the guillotine en permanence on the Place de la Revolution, stalking spectre-like through the realm where it made converts by fear instead of argument; cramming the prisons with promiscuous crowds consisting of persons of every shade of opinion; setting aside individual liberty by breaking into houses at all hours of the night, and bringing death to the Suspects. ”

“ They died like martyrs, too, scorning death for that which transcends death, passing away with that smile on their lips, that rapture in their hearts, which those who sacrifice themselves for a great idea bequeath as the most precious of legacies. We may say that none of those who had sent the Girondins to the scaffold ascended it in their turn with the same spiritual exaltation. ”

“ Certainly we, bred up in the Darwinian era, we who have felt the full significance of that modern Shibboleth, the struggle for existence, we who have ached in dull despair at this grim law of life with which Nature, "red in tooth and claw," proclaims that Might is Right—we cannot help smiling at Rousseau's rose-coloured visions of a primitive state of nature, wherein the leopard was supposed to have lain down with the kid, and to which society was exhorted to return. ”

“ The impression of this secluded spot, of the regulated contemplative life, of the religious services, where the full organ tones mingled with the soaring voices of the nuns as they chanted their anthems, filled the young devotee with rapture. In spite of her intense affection for her mother, Manon dreamed of taking the veil, though well aware that as an only child she would meet with the strongest opposition from her parents. In the meanwhile she assiduously applied herself to devotional exercises, and became a favourite with the nuns. ”

“ The Massacre of the Champs de Mars fell like a blight on Madame Roland's heart. She faltered, fell ill, and lost hope for a time. "Mourning and death are within our walls," was her cry. ”But let us keep the fire of liberty alive, and transmit it in its purity to a happier generation, if our continued efforts are not able to ensure its success in our day." In the same spirit she wrote in August, "Fate, by giving us life at the period of new-born liberty, has assigned us the place of the forlorn hope of an army, bound to fight, and prepare its victory. ”

“ Everyone knows that the great art of conversation is to ask people the right kind of questions. Only give a man the opportunity of bringing out his pet theories and favourite stories, and he will pronounce you the most admirable talker he ever met. Manon, who possessed the talent of listening, was, no doubt, mistress of the art of drawing people out; but whether she failed on this occasion or not, Roland not only gave free vent to his opinions, but he startled and shocked her by his contemptuous mention of some of her favourite authors. ”

“ However fair-seeming these threats, veiled under an appearance of good intentions, civil war must have inevitably followed them, but for one insuperable obstacle, that of the sincere republicanism of the Girondins. Rage might have blinded them for an instant to the consequences of their proceedings; but they had no sooner clearly realised them than they gave up all thought of fomenting the insurrection. If their enemies could only be reached by striking at the Revolution first, then let their enemies triumph. ”

“ Vergniaud, presiding, surpasses himself in the splendour of his thoughts; the practical Gensonné has nothing at heart but his country's future; leaning shoulder to shoulder, the Ninus and Euryalus of the Revolution feel blest in their friendship; Brissot, graver than the rest, is absorbed in meditation; the republican priest, Fauchet, speaks of that Last Supper seventeen hundred years ago, and of Christ on Calvary; and all the while, like the mummy at the Egyptian banquets, stretched beside them lies the cold corpse of Valazé. ”

“ But Marseilles and Lyons had become centres of reaction in the south-east, La Vendée had burst into fierce rebellion for Church and King, and in the north and east foreign armies held the fortresses on the frontiers.
The great soul of Vergniaud grasped the situation: saw the strife of parties hurrying France to its ruin: felt that, as they never could unite again, one of them must perish. ”

“ She, a royalist, had seen nothing of Roland's wife since the Revolution had swept them asunder. But misfortune is a great peace-maker. Madame de Vouglans was a widow and childless; the prisoner had an old, suffering husband who needed her care and a young, interesting daughter. What more simple than to propose to die for her—save a useful at the expense of a useless life! Henriette wanted to exchange clothes with Manon, and tried to convince her that, by the time the trick was discovered, she could have made good her escape: a perfectly feasible plan, provided the captive were willing. ”

“ Writing to her friend at Amiens on the 9th May 1774, Manon remarks: "Although the obscurity of my birth, name and position seem to preclude me from taking any interest in the Government, yet I feel that the common weal touches me in spite of it. My country is something to me, and the love I bear it is most unquestionable. How could it be otherwise, since nothing in the world is indifferent to me. I am something of a cosmopolitan, and a love of humanity unites me to everything that breathes. ”

“ For all the best minds began to lose faith in this uprising of the French nation, which they had hailed as the dawning of a new era. With the rivers of blood spilt so ruthlessly they sullied the pure, new-born idea of equality; with the red glare of their terror they blotted out the clear sunrise that had promised a better day. "You know my enthusiasm for the Revolution," was Madame Roland's cry to Bancal. "Well, I am ashamed of it! Scoundrels have defiled it! It is become hideous! . . . To remain in power is degrading, yet we are not allowed to leave Paris . ”

“ Let only the home I live in be embellished by order, peace, and harmony, let me only feel that I have helped towards making it so, and be able to tell myself at the close of each day that it has been usefully spent for the good of a few, and I shall value existence and daily bless the rising of the sun."
With her high conception of the responsibilities of marriage, it cannot surprise us that Marie Phlipon could not make up her mind to accept one of the many wooers who had asked for her hand, in spite of her forlorn position, feeling, as she did, a stumbling-block in her father's way. ”

“ Terse and limpid in style, they are free from that academic sententiousness characteristic of Manon's youthful letters, uniting shrewdest criticism and description of character with the idyllic sentiment so dear to the eighteenth century—a book with a life crushed out on its leaves: the life of a woman in the plenitude of existence, yet already practically cut off from it. ”

“ How many were the good Samaritans sent to the scaffold in those stormful days for harbouring a suspect or a suspect's helpless offspring! Blue-eyed Eudora must go forth from the hospitable roof—whither was not so clear. Poor little black lamb! who would gather it to the fold, with that Girondin brand upon it? Every schoolmistress shrank from the charge. One at last consented to admit the gentle child, if for the dreaded name of Roland another were substituted. ”

“ If Madame Roland possessed more originality and genius than Buzot, she gloried in the fearlessness of the man who invariably fought her battles by leading the attack in the Convention.
Doomed passion-flower of love to have bloomed in so stormy a time! Brief gleams of tenderness illumining the lurid back-ground of Revolution and civil war! Flashes of love to be quenched at the stern voice of duty and self-sacrifice! ”

“ To name Danton is not so much to speak of a single man as of a whole section of the people. He was great because he represented such a vast mass of the national life; but his greatness was disfigured because this national life itself was turbid and corrupt. If Robespierre might be called the abstract idea of the Revolution, its will was Danton, just as Marat seems to have been its avenging demon.
No man of the Revolution inspired Madame Roland with such instinctive antipathy as Danton. Robespierre she admired, before their common party had split into the hostile camps of Gironde and Mountain ”

“ Madame Roland herself never entertained any illusions. Very early she perceived the interests of the Royalist and popular party to be diametrically opposed to each other, and in the summer of 1789 she wrote with her unflinching judgment: "You busy yourselves about a municipality and you suffer heads to escape which are about to conjure up new horrors. You are nothing but children; your enthusiasm is a momentary blaze; and if the National Assembly do not bring two illustrious heads to a formal trial, or if some generous Decrees do not strike them off, you will all go to the Devil together." ”

“ Here we surprise the most intimate movements of Madame Roland's heart, when she had left the world behind her and was speaking to one only, and that one for ever separated from her. Is it possible for a noble nature to express intenser affection than by rendering thanks to the dungeon for having at last reconciled duty and love? And yet love itself is subordinated to her country, ever first with her.
Was it likely that she or her friends would wish to ruin France by fomenting a civil war? ”

“ These massacres had opened an abyss between the leaders of the Gironde and the three great revolutionary chiefs, Danton, Marat, Robespierre. The last, as often before, had kept personally aloof from a movement which he may have deplored, but of which he was now appropriating the advantages. The Girondins, so far from imitating this crafty, or statesman-like, policy, raised the hue and cry against the Septemberers. Madame Roland, who in her girlhood had endured an agony of pity at the racking of two criminals, now suffered tortures at this desecration which liberty had undergone. ”

“ For in the long, painful process of education through which humanity is slowly advancing towards higher phases of development, the best of systems must remain waste sheets of paper but for the lives of noble men and women capable of transmuting abstractions into realities. Lives that shall illumine the path where others are groping, kindle the moral energies of men; lives such as Madame Roland's stirring her sex to a generous emulation, handing on, as she falls, the sacred tradition of heroes and martyrs. ”

“ The rare beauty of Madame Roland's character and her winning manners could not fail to gain the hearts of all who came in contact with her. The gaoler's wife showed her every kindness, made her sit in her own room, where the air was purer, and where she was able to receive friends. Even the turnkeys, some most villainous of appearance, became humanised in her presence. Her faithful friends rallied round her, Bosc assuring her of the safety of her daughter, placed by him under the protection of a worthy, kind-hearted lady, in whose family she remained like one of her own children. ”

“ There lived yet another man on earth whose fate was indissolubly linked with the departed heroine. Buzot—who, in those terrible months of the Red Terror, had been dragging from hiding-place to hiding-place, in company with Pétion and Barbaroux, often exposed to all the inclemency of winter, or crouched half-starved at the bottom of caverns and old wells—was at this time roaming along stormy coves and cliffs of the Western coast, seeking an uncertain refuge. When at last the news of Madame Roland's execution reached the unfortunate Girondin, his despair bordered on frenzy. ”

“ So fell the Gironde, and it is refreshing to find among the list of the proscribed the heroic name of Ducos, that martyr to friendship, who, when Marat would have saved him because of his extreme youth, scorned his mercy and cast in his lot with Fonfrède, be his fate what it might.
"Things are rarely what they seem," says Madame Roland in her Memoirs, "and the periods of my life that have been the sweetest were the reverse of what outsiders would imagine. Happiness, in fact, belongs to a state of feeling, and not to external circumstances." ”

“ LOVE IN A PRISON.
On the 31st of May, Madame Roland had sat at home listening with a thrill of excitement to the now familiar sounds of insurrection. She heard the beating of the rappel and the générale in the faubourgs; she saw armed men quickly tramping through the streets; the ill-omened tocsin sounded lugubriously. She was still in Paris, although long prepared to leave it. Having returned to private life, she considered herself free to go, and judged that, in case of danger, Roland would be more unencumbered if she and Eudora were out of the way. ”

“ He entered magnanimously into his wife's trouble, and there goes a tradition that he had formed a resolution of voluntarily leaving her, should she not succeed in stifling her love; but she would never have consented to this, knowing as she did how closely the fibres of his life were bound up in hers: having so completely fulfilled her maxim—that a woman must make the man's happiness in marriage—that he could not live without her. Truly there seemed no way of disentangling this moral knot, when the Revolution came and cut it in two by throwing Madame Roland into prison. ”

“ If ever in her life Madame Roland was greatly at fault, she was so in her persistent repulse of Danton. Considering the tremendous issues at stake and the critical position of France, she would not only have shown far greater political sagacity, but have proved more humane in the long run, to have let the dead bury their dead, and to have averted the greater terrors to come by a truce with Dantan. The Gironde, with Danton for its ally, might have triumphantly carried out its programme, and so have saved the Republic. ”

“ Madame Roland, called from privacy to take part in public affairs at a most momentous crisis, now discovered with dismay how difficult it was for a small knot of men to act in concert, even when agreed as to principles. She was equally struck by the scarcity of men whose "energy of soul, solidity of judgment, and extensive views," might entitle them to be called great. ”

“ In the beginning of August 1784, the Rolands returned from the political land of Goshen to their own poor, suffering country, then so miserably "cabined, cribbed, confined"; and Madame Roland writing of this tour remarks, flatteringly to English feelings: "I shall ever remember with pleasure a country of which De Lolme taught me to love the constitution, and where I have witnessed the happy effects which that constitution has produced. Fools may chatter, and slaves may sing, but you may take my word for it that England contains men who have a right to laugh at us." ”