Madame Roland: A Biographical Study

by Ida M. Tarbell

A stolid and unimaginative mind might have endured her position with equal calm; a dull and sluggish nature might have been equally indifferent to the revolting sights; but never was an imagination more responsive, a nature more vibrant and sensitive than hers. It was no lack of life and vigor. She was brave and indifferent because the fact of being so stirred her imagination. This sort of endurance seemed to her worthy of a hero of antiquity. Her whole nature was kindled by the thought of being superior to circumstances, of thwarting her enemies by her courage.

The training of her whole life helped her to carry out this idea. Rousseau never drilled and trained Émile more rigidly in the doctrine of submitting to necessity than she had herself. The more severe her trial, the higher her courage rose. This she felt was a supreme test, a martyrdom worthy of a Greek. Her classic conception of patriotism was satisfied by the thought that she, like the ancients, was in prison for the country and would undoubtedly die for it.

Her imprisonment made her a prominent actor, too, in the tragedy. Hitherto she had been behind the scenes, an influence recognized, to be sure, by all parties, but acting through others. A woman’s place was not in public, she believed, and she conformed carefully to her idea. But in serious natures, feeling deeply their individual responsibility, there is a demand for action. So long as Roland was minister she had ample chance to satisfy her patriotic longings for helping. But after his retirement and since the Gironde had been so demoralized that Buzot could do little or nothing, she had felt bitterly her impotence.

Now all was changed; she was in the fight, not as the amanuensis of her husband, the inspirer of her friend, but as an independent actor. She must show an example of how a patriot should endure and die, and she must strike a blow for truth whenever she had a chance. What she did and said would not only have its influence to-day, it would be quoted in the future. This conviction of her obligation to help the cause and make herself a figure in history, exalted her mind. She took a dramatic pose, and she kept it to the end. If there was a shade of the theatrical in it,—and there is almost always such a shading in Madame Roland’s loftiest moods and finest acts,—there is so much indifference to self, hatred of despotism, contempt of injustice, courage before pain, that the lack of perfect naturalness is forgotten.

From the beginning of her imprisonment she lost no opportunity to give a lesson in civism to those about her. To the guard who brought her to the Abbaye, and who remarked on leaving her that if Roland was not guilty it was strange that he absented himself, she said that Roland was just, like Aristides, and severe, like Cato, and that it was his virtues which had made his enemies pursue him. “Let them heap their rage on me. I can brave it and be resigned; he must be saved for his country, for he may yet be able to render great service.”

She neglected no opportunity of obtaining her liberty, not so much for the sake of liberty as that it gave her a means of expressing her opinions. By the advice of Grandpré, an inspector of prisons, protected formerly by Roland, and who hurried to her aid the first day of her imprisonment, she wrote to the Convention. In a haughty tone she described her arrest, the fact that no motive for it was given, the indignities and illegalities she had suffered, and demanded justice and protection.

So severe was the letter that Grandpré, after consulting Champagneux, brought it back to her to soften a little. After reflection she consented. “If I thought the letter would be read,” she told Grandpré, “I would leave it as it is, even if it resulted in failure. One cannot flatter himself that he will obtain justice of the Assembly. It does not know how to practise to-day the truths addressed to it, but they must be said that the departments may hear.”

Grandpré did his best to have her letter read at the Convention, but in the turmoil of the early days of June there was nothing to be obtained from this body save through fear or force. Madame Roland, hearing that the section in which she lived had taken her and Roland under its care, wrote to thank them, and to suggest that they try to secure a reading of the letter. But she took care that they should feel that she was no tearful suppliant: “I submit this question to your judgment; I add no prayer; truth has only one language; it is to expose facts; citizens who desire justice do not care that supplications should be addressed to them, and innocence does not know how to make them.”

The letter was read at the section and debated, but the Terrorists from other quarters filled the hall, and by their menaces prevented any effectual interference by those disposed in Madame Roland’s favor. Grandpré insisted that she should write to the ministers of justice and of the interior. She despised the weakness and mediocrity of both, and declared she would write nothing unless she could “give them severe lessons.” Grandpré found the letters she prepared humiliating, and persuaded her to change them. Even after the changes they were intensely hostile and contemptuous, anything but politic.

The “lessons” she gave in her letters she never failed to put into any conversation she had with public officials. One of these conversations she relates. It was with a committee of five or six persons who had come to look after the condition of the prisoners.