Her pride was wounded by the evident superiority of the aristocrats in manner and in expression. It aroused in her an altogether illogical bitterness against them. She was irritated because she and her friends, who alone, she was convinced, understood unselfish patriotism, who alone held the doctrines in all their purity and simplicity, should yet be inferior in externals to their rivals. This distinction became a personal grievance with her.
After having followed the Assembly two months, she left a session at the end of April in anger, persuaded that it was incapable of anything but folly, and vowing never to look at it again,—an engagement she faithfully kept. At the same time she told Champagneux, with whom she and Roland were both in correspondence, that she was not going any more to the theatre: “It is much too frivolous for my taste in such serious circumstances.” And to Bancal she wrote: “In other days the fine arts and all that concern them was the greatest charm of the capital in my eyes, but now that I know that I have a country I feel differently; the solicitude of the patriot leaves but little place for matters of taste.”
To the patriotic clubs she did go, however, and one of them, the Cercle Social, especially interested her. She even sent letters to it sometimes, without signing them, however. “I do not believe that our customs permit women to show themselves yet,” she said; “they ought to inspire and nourish the good, inflame all the sentiments useful to the country, but not appear to take part in political work. They can act openly only when the French shall merit the name of free men; until then, our lightness, our corrupt customs, would make what they tried to do ridiculous; and would destroy the advantage which otherwise might result.” While the Cercle Social pleased them both, the Jacobins were too conservative. “The Jacobins have lost their credit, no longer doing, or doing badly, the duty that they took upon themselves, to discuss the subjects before the Assembly,” Madame Roland wrote. “They are led by their directors’ board, which is under the thumb of two or three individuals who are much more careful about preserving their own ascendency than of propagating public spirit and of serving liberty efficiently. In the club formerly so useful everything is now done by a clique.” “We have seen those precious Jacobins,” Roland wrote to Champagneux. “If objects increase in size as we approach them, it is rare that it is not the contrary with mortals.” No doubt much of their dissatisfaction with the Assembly and the public was due to the difficulty Roland had in pushing the claims of Lyons. Paris was crowded with commissioners from all the towns between Marseilles and Dunkirk, and there was the greatest trouble in getting hearings from the committee charged with such affairs, and in persuading the deputies of the department to present the business to the Assembly. Roland worked night and day almost, to push the claim of his town. “I sleep less and walk much more. Truly I have scarcely time to live.” He besieged the committee rooms, waiting for hours before the doors to collar his man as he entered or retired. He ate his morsel of bread alone in order to run to the Assembly, where one was obliged to arrive early in order to find a seat.
The spirit in which he went into the work was one of declared war to the aristocratic party at Lyons and to the old régime. He was determined to show up the situation, and exhorted his friends at Lyons to uncover all the rascality and pillage of the old administration. The deputies from the Lyonnais were not too sympathetic. They found the persistency, the vertu, the incessant indignation, the insistency of Roland, tiresome. After sitting so many long months, under such exciting circumstances, they were weary. They saw the difficulties of getting a hearing, too, from the Assembly.
Roland poured out all his impatience to Champagneux, who was his confidant and sympathizer. Long letters, written in his fine, nervous, execrable hand, went almost daily to Lyons. They were full of indignation at everything and everybody; especially was the delay irritating to him. “If affairs do not go backwards like the crab,” he says, “at least they go no faster than the tortoise.” The delay disgusted Madame Roland as much as it did her husband. Both committee and Assembly were blamed by her. She even wished that she were a man that she might do something herself.
Of much more importance to their political lives at this moment than Assembly, clubs, or committee meetings, were the frequent gatherings of patriots held at the Rolands’ apartments, in the Rue Guénégaud. They were “grandly lodged,” the quarter was agreeable, and many of their friends lived but a short distance away. As Roland found it necessary to see the deputies frequently, he gathered them about him in his home. Brissot was the nucleus of the little circle. The relation with Brissot had been, up to this time, purely by correspondence. When they came to Paris naturally they were anxious to see him. They liked him at once. His simple manners, his frankness, his natural negligence, seemed in harmony with the austerity of his principles. A more entire disinterestedness and a greater zeal for public affairs were impossible, it seemed to them. He was admirable, too, as a man, a good husband, a tender father, a faithful friend, a virtuous citizen. His society was charming; for he was gay, naïve, imprudently confident, the nature of a sweet-tempered boy of fifteen. Such Brissot seemed to Madame Roland, who esteemed him more and more the longer she knew him.
Brissot brought several of his friends to see them. Among the most important of these were Pétion and Robespierre. The most interesting of the group was Buzot, of whom we shall hear much, later. To Pétion, Robespierre, and Buzot were added Clavière, Louis Noailles, Volfius, Antoine, Garran (“Cato Garran”), Grégoire, Garaud, and several others. In April Thomas Paine appeared. So agreeable and profitable were these informal reunions found to be that it was arranged to hold them four times a week. The guests came between the close of the sessions of the Assembly and the opening of the Jacobins. The condition of affairs in general and of the Assembly in particular was discussed; the measures which should be taken were suggested, and means of proposing them arranged; the interests of the people, the tactics of the Court and of individuals, were constantly criticised.
To Madame Roland these gatherings were of absorbing interest. She calculated carefully her relation to them, the place she ought to occupy in them, and she affirms that she never deviated from it. “Seated near a window before a little table on which were books, writing materials, and sewing, I worked, or I wrote letters while they discussed. I preferred to write; for it made me appear more indifferent to what was going on, and permitted me to follow it almost as well. I can do more than one thing at a time, and the habit of writing permits me to carry on my correspondence while listening to something quite different from what I am writing. It seems to me that I am three; I divide my attention into two as if it were a material thing, and I consider and direct these two parts as if I were quite another. I remember one day, when the gentlemen, not agreeing, made considerable noise, that Clavière, noticing the rapidity with which I wrote, said good-naturedly that it was only a woman’s head which was capable of such a thing, but he declared himself astonished at it all the same. ‘What would you say,’ I asked, smiling, ‘if I should repeat all your arguments?’
“Excepting the customary compliments on the arrival or departure of the gentlemen, I never allowed myself to pronounce a word, although I often had to bite my lips to prevent it. If any one spoke to me, it was after the club work and all deliberation were at an end. A carafe of water and a bowl of sugar were the only refreshments they found, and I told them it was all that it seemed to me appropriate to offer to men who came together to discuss after dinner.”
She was not always satisfied with the results of these gatherings. There were plenty of good things said, but they rarely ended in a systematic résumé. Ideas were advanced, but few measures resulted. It was fruitless conversation, in short, and she generalized: “The French do not know how to deliberate. A certain lightness leads them from one subject to another, but prevents order and complete analysis. They do not know how to listen. He who speaks always expands his own idea; he occupies himself rather in developing his own thought than in answering that of another. Their attention is easily fatigued; a laugh is awakened by a word and a jest overthrows logic.” A more just observation on French conversation would be impossible. It is its delight. A constant bound from one idea to another, indifference to the outcome if the attention is kept, insistence by each individual upon expressing his thought at will, with eloquence and with fantasy, lawlessness, recklessness of expression, characterize all groups of clever Frenchmen who meet to talk. But this is conversation for pleasure, not discussion for results. It was in mistaking this intellectual game of words and sentiments for reflections and reason that one of the greatest mistakes of the Rolands lay. It was these vagaries of speech in public, in private, in print (the pamphlets which poured from the press were little more than random bits of conversation and as little reflective), which kept the public, the Assembly, the Court, in a constant state of ebb and flow. But Madame Roland herself was a victim to this popular weakness. Her letters, which are almost invariably outbursts of feeling rather than of reflection, may safely be considered an index to what she was in conversation.