Six months elapsed, and M. Roland once more presented himself to her at the convent. He renewed his offer, and it was accepted. "I reflected deeply," says Madame Roland, "on what I ought to do. I could not conceal from myself that a younger man would not have delayed, for several months, entreating me to change my resolution, and I confess this circumstance had deprived my feelings of every illusion. I considered, on the other hand, that this deliberation was an assurance that I was appreciated; and that, if he had overcome his pride, which shrunk from the disagreeable circumstances that accompanied his marrying me, I was the more secure of an esteem I could not fail to preserve. In short, if marriage was, as I thought, an austere union, an association in which the woman usually burdens herself with the happiness of two individuals, it were better that I should exert my abilities and my courage in so honorable a task, than in the solitude in which I lived." Such were the feelings with which she married. She was then twenty-six years old. She discharged with fidelity the duties she assumed. She was her husband's friend and companion, and soon became absolutely necessary to him. With him she visited England and Switzerland, and finally they took up their abode at the family mansion near Lyons. She had one child, a daughter; and to educate her, and make her husband and those about her happy, was apparently to be the whole scope of her life. At this period, she writes to a friend, "Seated in my chimney corner, at eleven before noon, after a peaceful night and my morning tasks,--my husband at his desk, and my little girl knitting,--I am conversing with the former, and overlooking the work of the letter; enjoying the happiness of being warmly sheltered in the bosom of my dear little family, and writing to a friend, while the snow is falling on so many poor wretches overwhelmed by sorrow and penury. I grieve over their fate. I repose on my own, and make no account of those family annoyances, which appeared formerly to tarnish my felicity." The revolution came to disturb this peaceful existence. At first she hailed it with joy; but fears soon arose. "Is the question," she says, "to be whether we have one tyrant or a hundred?" She attached herself zealously to that party which advocated liberty without anarchy. The confusion of the times proved destructive to the manufacturing interests of Lyons; twenty thousand workmen were thrown out of employment, and were without means of support. M. Roland was selected to proceed to Paris to make known the distresses to the National Assembly, and to solicit relief.