V.
The Girondists remained a moment overwhelmed by the humiliation of their fall and the joy of their coming vengeance. "Here I am dismissed," was Roland's exclamation to his wife, on his return home. "I have but one regret, and that is, that our delays have prevented us from taking the initiative." Madame Roland retired to a humble apartment, without losing any of her influence and without regretting power, since she carried with her into her retreat, her genius, her patriotism, and her friends. With her the conspiracy only changed place; from the ministry of the interior she passed at once into the small council which she gathered about her, and inspired with her own earnest enthusiasm.
This circle daily increased. The admiration for the woman mingled in the hearts of her friends with the attraction of liberty. They adored in her the future Republic. The love which these young men did not avow for her made, unknown to her, a portion of their politics. Ideas only become active and powerful when vivified by sentiment. She was the sentiment of her party.
This party was joined about this time by a man unconnected with the Gironde; but his youth, his remarkable beauty, and his energy naturally threw him into this faction of illusion and love, controlled by a woman. This young man was Barbaroux.
At this time he was only twenty-six years of age. Born at Marseilles, of a sea-faring family, who preserved in their manners and features something of the boldness of their life and the agitation of their element. The elegance of his stature, the poetic grace of his countenance, recalled the accomplished forms which antiquity adored in the statues of Antinous. The blood of that Asiatic Greece of which Marseilles is a colony revealed itself in the purity of the young Phocian's profile.[21] As richly endowed with the gifts of the mind as those of the body, Barbaroux early used himself to public oratory, that gift of the men of the south. He became a barrister, and pleaded several causes with success; but the power and honesty of his mind revolted from that exercise of eloquence, so often mercenary, which simulates earnestness. He required a national cause, to which a man should give with language his soul and blood. The Revolution with which he was born offered this to him. He awaited with impatience the occasion and the hour to make use of it.
His youth still kept him away from the scene into which he ardently longed to cast himself. He passed his time near the village of Ollioules, on a small family estate, concealed beneath tall cork-trees, which threw their slight shade over the calcined declivities of this valley. He there attended to the cultivated patches which the aridity of the soil and the burning sun dispute with the rocks. In his leisure he studied natural sciences, and kept up a correspondence with two Swiss, whose systems of physics then occupied the learned world—M. de Saussure and Marat. But science was not sufficient for his mind, which overflowed with sensitiveness, and which Barbaroux poured forth in elegiac poetry as burning as the noonday, and vague as the horizon of the sea beneath his view. There is felt that southern melancholy whose languor, is closer allied to pleasure than weakness, and which resembles the songs of man seated in the broad sunshine, before or after labour. Mirabeau had thus begun his life. The most energetic lives frequently open in gloom, as if they had in their very germ presentiments of their contrary destiny. It would seem as though we read in the verses of this young man that through his tears he contemplated his faults, his expiation, and his scaffold.
VI.
After Mirabeau's election, and the agitations which followed, Barbaroux was named secretary of the municipality of Marseilles. At the troubles of Aries he took arms, and marched at the head of the young Marseillais against the rulers of the Comtal. His martial figure, his gestures, his ardour, his voice, made him conspicuous everywhere: he fascinated all. Being deputed to Paris in order to give an account of the events of the south to the National Assembly, the Girondists, Vergniaud and Guadet, who were desirous of obtaining an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon, did all in their power to attach this young man to their party. Barbaroux, impetuous as he was, did not justify the butchers of Avignon; but detested the victims. He was a man requisite to the Girondists. Struck by his eloquence and his enthusiasm, they presented him to Madame Roland: no woman was more formed to seduce, no man more formed to be seduced. Madame Roland—in all the freshness of her youth, in all the brilliancy of her beauty, and also in all the fulness of sensibility, which all the purity of her life could not stifle in her unoccupied heart—speaks thus tenderly of Barbaroux: "I had read," she says, "in the cabinet of my husband, the letters of Barbaroux, full of sense and premature wisdom. When I saw him I was astonished at his youth. He attached himself to my husband. We saw more of him after we left the ministry; and it was then, that reasoning on the miserable state of things, and the fear of a triumph of despotism in the north of France, we formed the plan of a republic in the south. This will be our pis aller, said Barbaroux, with a smile; but the Marseillais army here will dispense with our attempting it."
VII.
Roland then lived in a gloomy house of the Rue St. Jaques, almost in the garrets: it was a philosopher's retreat, and his wife illumined it. Present at all the conversations of Roland, she witnessed the conferences between her husband and the young Marseillais. Barbaroux thus relates the interview in which the first idea of a republic was mooted: "That astonishing woman was there," said he. "Roland asked me what I thought the best means of saving France. I opened my heart to him: my confidence called for his. 'Liberty is gone,' he replied, 'if we do not speedily disconcert the plots of the court. La Fayette is meditating treason in the north: the army of the centre is systematically disorganised: in six weeks the Austrians will be at Paris. Have we then laboured at the most glorious of revolutions for so many years to see it overthrown in a single day? If Liberty dies in France, it is lost for ever to the rest of the world!—all the hopes of philosophy are deceived—prejudices and tyranny will again grasp the world. Let us prevent this misfortune, and if the north is subjected, let us take Liberty with us into the south, and there form a colony of free men.' His wife wept as she listened to him, and I myself wept as I looked at her. Oh! how much the outpourings of confidence console and fortify minds that are in desolation. I drew a rapid sketch of the resources and hopes of Liberty in the south. A serene expression of joy spread over Roland's brow: he squeezed my hand, and we traced on a map of France the limits of this empire of Liberty, which extended from the Doubs, the Ain, and the Rhone to La Dordogne, and from the inaccessible mountains of Auvergne to Durance and the sea. I wrote, by dictation of Roland, to request from Marseilles a battalion and two pieces of cannon. These preliminaries agreed upon, I left Roland with feelings of deep respect for himself and his wife. I have seen them subsequently, during their second ministry, as simple minded as in their humble retreat. Of all the men of modern times, Roland seems to me most to resemble Cato; but it must be owned that it is to his wife that his courage and talents are due."