But this is an alarmist’s letter, a repetition of rumors, not a serious effort to picture what actually occurred. Compare simply its statement of the number of killed at the Champ-de-Mars—“hundreds”—with the most trustworthy accounts, and Roland’s and his wife’s state of mind is clear. Gouverneur Morris, who was in Paris at the moment, went to the “elevation opposite”—the present Trocadéro—to see the trouble. He says there were a “dozen or two” killed; Prudhomme says fifty; the official report gives twelve killed and the same number wounded. The same exaggerated statements characterize all their letters.
Before the summer of 1791 was over Madame Roland was certain that public opinion could not be aroused to another revolution; that the “stick” was going to stay in the “wheel”; that the Republic could not be established. As this conviction grew on her, she lost heart. “I have had enough of Paris, at least for this time.” She wrote: “I feel the need of going to see my trees, after having seen so many dolts and knaves. One rejoices in this little circle of honest souls when his cause triumphs, but when the cabale is on top, when the wicked succeed and error is ahead, there is nothing to do but go home and plant cabbages.”
And this she decided to do very soon, for the beginning of September she left Paris for Villefranche. Everything on the trip discouraged her. She wrote Robespierre: “I find the people on the route, as in Paris, deceived by their enemies or ignorant of the true state of things; everywhere the mass is well disposed; it is just because its interest is the general interest, but it is misled or stupid. Nowhere have I met people with whom I could talk openly and advantageously of our political situation; I contented myself by distributing copies of your address in all the places through which I passed; they will be found after my departure and furnish an excellent text for meditation.”
It was even worse at Villefranche, where, on arriving, she made a tour of observation. She was convinced that the most of the inhabitants were utterly despicable, and made so by the existing social institutions; that they loved the Revolution only because it destroyed what was above them, but that they knew nothing of the theory of free government, and did not sympathize with that “sublime and delicious theory which makes us brothers”; that they hated the name of Republic, and that a king appeared to them essential to their existence.
She was as disgusted with Lyons for its devotion to the aristocracy. Its elections she declared detestable and the deputies nothing but enemies of liberty. The officers in the department were as badly chosen as the representatives; “if one was to judge of representative government by the little experience we have had of it so far, we cannot esteem ourselves very happy”; the elections were bought, so were the administrators, so the representatives, who in their turn sold the people. Even at Le Clos, where she went immediately for the fall vintage, there was a cloud; for the calumnies spread at Lyons about Roland when it was a question of nominating him for the Assembly, had reached the hills, and the people attributed their absence in Paris to the supposed arrest of Roland for counter-revolution. When she went out to walk she heard behind her the cry Les aristocrates à la lanterne.
Although Madame Roland sighed to escape from the “dolts and knaves” of Paris and longed for the peace of the country, the sentiment was only a passing one. The charm of the little circle she criticised so freely, the friendships she had formed, her devotion to the public cause, all these things made the absence from Paris hard to bear. On leaving she had hoped it would be only temporary. Roland was much talked of as a candidate for the new Assembly, and if he succeeded, it would take them back to Paris. She knew before her arrival at Le Clos that he had failed to secure the nomination. The news deepened her irritation at the condition of public affairs, strengthened the sense of oppression which the province produced, made her dissatisfied with Le Clos, her husband’s future, Eudora.
She had not seen her little daughter for seven months. She was deeply disappointed that she had changed so little. It seemed to her that she had gained nothing in the interval of separation, and that she had no idea of anything but loving and being loved. There was one way of awakening the child, however, in her judgment. She told Roland of it in one of the first letters she wrote him after reaching Villefranche, when she said: “Hasten back so that we may put our affairs in shape, and arrange to return to Paris as often as possible. I am not ambitious of the pleasures there, but such is the stupidity of our only child that I see no hope of making anything of her except by showing her as many objects as possible, and finding something which will interest her.”
For Roland, too, she felt that Paris was necessary. She was pained at the idea that he was going to be thrown back into silence and obscurity. He was accustomed to public life; it was more necessary to him than he himself thought, and she feared that his energy and activity would be fatal to his health, if they were not employed according to his tastes.
When Roland came back, he shared her feelings. He soon finished his affairs at Lyons, for the National Assembly had abolished the office of inspector of manufactures, and they spent the fall at Le Clos, occupied with the vintage, but they were restless. They had but little income and they turned their minds again to the idea of the pension, to which Roland’s forty years of service had certainly entitled him. If they were at Paris, perhaps it could be obtained. Then Roland’s work, which was simply the encyclopædia, would certainly be easier “at the fireside of light among savants and artists than at the bottom of a desert”; for such their retreat seemed to them. They felt the need, too, of being near the centre of affairs; they ought to be where they could “watch”; where they could help bring about the “shock” which must come soon or the public cause would be lost forever. Their dissatisfaction became so great in the end, and public affairs so exciting, that they decided to go to Paris.