Madame Roland: A Biographical Study

by Ida M. Tarbell

To Buzot, harassed by petty criminal trials, and married to a woman who, whatever her worth, could never be more to him than his housekeeper and the mother of his children, this intimacy of thought, and hope, and despair appeared like a realization of the perfect Platonic dream, and Madame Roland became a sacred and glorified figure in his imagination.

But if a man and woman carry on such a correspondence for a few months and then are suddenly thrown into constant intercourse, their relation becomes at once infinitely delicate. It is only experience, wisdom, womanly tact, and an enormous force of self-renunciation which can control such a situation and save the friendship.

When Buzot and Madame Roland first met at the end of September, 1792, she was ill prepared for resistance. The Revolution had suddenly appeared to her fierce, bloody, desperate,—a thing to disown. She could no longer see in it the divinity she had been worshipping. Her disillusion had been terrible. The impotence and languor which follow disillusion enfeebled her will, weakened her splendid enthusiasm, and threatened to drive her to the conclusion that all effort is worthless.

It must have been already evident to her that the men upon whom she relied as leaders were inefficient. Roland, who had been the idol of the people until since the installation of the Commune, was utterly powerless to cope with the new force. She saw him reduced to defending his actions, to answering criticisms on his honesty; she felt that he was no longer necessary to the public cause; it was a humiliation to her, and her interest in Roland lessened as his importance decreased. Brissot had no influence; with a part of the Gironde, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Guadet, she was not intimate; Robespierre was alienated; Danton she had refused to work with. But in Buzot there was hope. He had no record at Paris to hurt him. There were infinite possibilities in his position in the new Convention. Why should he not become the leader of the party, the spirit of the war between Gironde and Mountain, the opponent of Danton, the incarnation of her ideals? The hope she had in him as her spokesman, as a saviour of the situation, intensified the interest she felt for him as a friend and comrade.

Personally, too, apart from all public questions, Buzot attracted her. His noble face, elegant manners, careful toilette, pleased her. She was a woman to the tips of her fingers, and Buzot’s courtly air, his deference to her, his attentions, flattered and satisfied her. She found in him something of that “superiority,” that “purity of language,” that “distinguished manner,” the absence of which she had regretted in the patriots of the Constituent Assembly when she first came up to Paris. He presented, too, a relief to Roland’s carelessness in dress, to his indifference to conventionalities. This superiority was the more attractive because it was in a man so young. Buzot’s youth explains something of the ideality of the relation between them. A woman who preserves her illusions, her enthusiasms, her sentiments, as Madame Roland had, up to thirty-eight, rarely finds in a man much older than herself the faith, the disinterestedness, the devotion to ideals, the purity of life and thought which she demands. She is continually shocked by his cynicism, his experience, his impersonal attitude, his indifference. Life with him becomes practical and commonplace. It lacks in hours of self-revelation, in an intimacy of all that she feels deep and inspiring; there is no mystery in it—nothing of the unseen. But with a young man of a character and nature like Buzot, she finds a response to her noblest moods, her most elevated thoughts.

A young man sees in a relation with a woman of such an elevation of thought as Madame Roland the type of his dreams, the woman to whom sentiments and ideals are of far more importance than amusement and pleasure—the woman capable of great self-sacrifice for duty, of untiring action for a noble cause, of comprehension of all that is best in him, of brave resistance to temptation—and yet a woman to the last, dainty in her love of beauty, flattered by his homage, untiring in her efforts to please him, capable of a passion wide as the world.

Buzot’s relation to Madame Roland must have been the dearer to her because at the moment the intimacy which she had had with several of her friends was waning. With Roland working twenty hours out of the twenty-four, tormented by false accusations, conscious of his helplessness, irritated by dyspepsia and over-work, there could have been very little satisfactory personal intercourse. Their relation had come to the point to which every intimate human relation must come, where forbearance, charity, a bit of humorous cynicism, courage, self-sacrifice, character, and nobility of heart must sustain it instead of dreams, transports, passion. She was incapable of the effort.

Bosc was an old friend and a loving one, but their friendship had reached the stage where all has been said that could be, and while there was the security and satisfaction in it which comes from all things to which one is accustomed,—and it was necessary to her no doubt,—there was no novelty, no possible future.

Bancal was interested in a Miss Williams, and since he had made that known to Madame Roland, she had been less expansive. No woman will long give her best to a man who holds another woman dearer.

Lanthenas, who had been for years their friend, to whom she had given the title of “brother” and received in a free and frank intimacy, had begun to withdraw his sympathy.