Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

Up to the time of the Revolution, Madame Roland's life glided peacefully away without any remarkable incidents. In the Close of Platière, which she calls her dovecot, she appears as a good housekeeper who looks after everything, from the cellar to the garret; who plays the doctor among the poor villagers; who is delighted to find in nature a savor of frank and free rusticity. The life she leads is not merely honest, but edifying. She is very careful at this period to hide her philosophy. She writes to Bosc, one of her friends, February 9, 1785: "My brother-in-law, whose disposition is extremely gentle and sensitive, is also very religious; I leave him the satisfaction of thinking that the dogmas are as evident to me as they appear to him, and my exterior actions are such as become the mother of a family out in the country, who is bound to edify everybody. As I was very devout in my early youth, I know my prayers as well as my philosophy, and I prefer to make use of my first erudition." She wrote again to Bosc, October 12, 1785: "I have hardly touched a pen for a month, and I think I am acquiring some of the inclinations of the beast whose milk refreshes me; I am extremely asinine, and I busy myself with all the petty cares of the hoggish country life. I make preserved pears that are delicious; we dry grapes and plums; we wash and make up linen; we have white wine for breakfast, and we lie down on the grass to rest; we follow the vintagers; we repose in the woods and fields."

Before looking at the female politician, let us glance once more at the woman in private life, the charitable, devoted, honorable mother of a family, such as she paints herself in a letter of November 10, 1786: "From the corner of my fire, at eleven o'clock, after a quiet night and the various morning cares, my husband at his desk, my little girl knitting, and I chatting with one and superintending the other's work, enjoying the happiness of being snugly in the bosom of my dear little family, writing to a friend, while the snow is falling on so many wretches weighed down by poverty and sorrow, I am touched with compassion for their fate; I turn back sweetly to my own, and at this moment I count as nothing the annoyances of relations or circumstances which seem occasionally to mar its felicity."

Alas, why did not Madame Roland stay in her modest country-house to dry her grapes and plums, to superintend her washing, mend her linen, and spread out in her garret the fruits for winter use? Were not obscurity, repose, peace of heart, better for her than that fictitious glory which was to pass so quickly and end upon the scaffold? One might say that before quitting nature, that great consoler which calms and does not betray, in order to plunge herself into the odious world of politics, which spoils and embitters the most beautiful souls, she experiences a certain vague regret for the sweet and tranquil joys which her folly was about to cause her to renounce forever.

"The weather is delightful," wrote Madame Roland, May 17, 1790; "the country has changed almost beyond recognition in only six days; the vines and walnuts were as black as they are in winter, but a stroke of the magic wand does not alter the aspect of things more quickly than the heat of a few fine days has done; everything turns green and leafs out; a soft verdure is visible where there was nothing but the dull and faded tint of torpor and inaction. I could easily forget public affairs and men's controversies here; content to arrange the manor, to see my fowls brood, and take care of my rabbits, I would care nothing more about the revolutions of empires. But, as soon as I am in the city, the poverty of the people and the insolence of the rich rouse my hatred of injustice and oppression: I have no longer any soul or desire except for the triumph of great truths and the success of our regeneration."

The die is cast. The daughter of Philipon the engraver is about to become a political woman. The hour is come when this great actress, who has long known her part, is at last going on the stage. She has a presentiment of the risk she is running in assuming a task which is beyond her sex. But, like soldiers who love danger for danger's sake, and prefer the emotions of the battle-field to garrison life, she will joyfully quit her province and throw herself into the seething furnace of Paris. Even though she is to meet persecution and death at the end of her new career, she will not recoil. A short but agitated life will seem better to her than a long and fortunate existence without violent emotions. A clear sky pleases her no longer. She is homesick for storms and lightning flashes.

VI.

MADAME ROLAND'S ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE.

The hour of the Revolution had struck, and, ambitious, unbelieving, full of disdain for the leading classes, full of confidence in her own superiority, active, eloquent, impassioned, uniting the language of an orator to the seductions of a charming woman, Madame Roland was ripe for the Revolution. Her epoch suited her, and she suited her epoch. This pagan who, according to her own expression, roamed mentally in Greece, attended the Olympic games, and despised herself for being French; this fanatical admirer of antiquity who, at eight years of age, carried Plutarch to church with her instead of a missal, who styled Roland the virtuous as the Athenians called Aristides the just, who will die like her heroes, Socrates and Phocion; this student who, at another period, would have been rated as an under-bred woman of the middle class, a more or less ridiculous bluestocking, suddenly found herself, in consequence of a general panic and circumstances as strange as they were unforeseen, the very ideal of the society in which she lived. For several months she was to be its fashionable type, its favorite heroine. But the Revolution was a Saturn who devoured his children, male and female, and the Egeria of the Girondins expiated bitterly the intoxication caused by her brief popularity.