It was early in the morning of a bleak and dismal day as Madame Roland accompanied the officers through the hall of her dwelling, where she had been the object of such enthusiastic admiration and affection. The servants gathered around her, and filled the house with their lamentations. Even the hardened soldiers were moved by the scene, and one of them exclaimed, "How much you are beloved!" Madame Roland, who alone was tranquil in this hour of trial, calmly replied, "Because I love." As she was led from the house by the gens d'armes, a vast crowd collected around the door, who, believing her to be a traitor to her country, and in league with their enemies, shouted, "A la guillotine!" Unmoved by their cries, she looked calmly and compassionately upon the populace, without gesture or reply. One of the officers, to relieve her from the insults to which she was exposed, asked her if she wished to have the windows of the carriage closed.
Conversation with officers.
"No!" she replied; "oppressed innocence should not assume the attitude of crime and shame. I do not fear the looks of honest men, and I brave those of my enemies."
"You have very great resolution," was the reply, "thus calmly to await justice."
"Justice!" she exclaimed; "were justice done I should not be here. But I shall go to the scaffold as fearlessly as I now proceed to the prison."
"Roland's flight," said one of the officers, brutally, "is a proof of his guilt."
She indignantly replied, "It is so atrocious to persecute a man who has rendered such services to the cause of liberty. His conduct has been so open and his accounts so clear, that he is perfectly justifiable in avoiding the last outrages of envy and malice. Just as Aristides and inflexible as Cato, he is indebted to his virtues for his enemies. Let them satiate their fury upon me. I defy their power, and devote myself to death. He ought to save himself for the sake of his country, to which he may yet do good."
The Abbayé.
Kindness of the jailer's wife.
When they arrived at the prison of the Abbayé, Madame Roland was first conducted into a large, dark, gloomy room, which was occupied by a number of men, who, in attitudes of the deepest melancholy, were either pacing the floor or reclining upon some miserable pallets. From this room she ascended a narrow and dirty staircase to the jailer's apartment. The jailer's wife was a kind woman, and immediately felt the power of the attractions of her fascinating prisoner. As no cell was yet provided for her, she permitted her to remain in her room for the rest of the day. The commissioners who had brought her to the prison gave orders that she should receive no indulgence, but be treated with the utmost rigor. The instructions, however, being merely verbal, were but little regarded. She was furnished with comfortable refreshment instead of the repulsive prison fare, and, after breakfast, was permitted to write a letter to the National Assembly upon her illegal arrest. Thus passed the day.
Madame Roland enters her cell.
Her first night there.