men thus collected about her far below the estimate she had formed at a distance: they talked at random; they had no fixed plan; theoretical rather than practical, they could make paper constitutions, but knew little how to deal with their fellow men during the clash of interests, and the tempest of revolutionary passions. She had none of the vanity that seeks to shine in conversation, and grew impatient when witty sallies and argumentative discussions, instead of serious resolves and heroic acts, occupied her friends. Roland's mission retained them at Paris for seven months. They were months crowded with events pregnant with the fate of France. Madame Roland, in her letters to her friend, Henri Brancal, then in London, paints the various events, and the sentiments they inspired. She was a warm partisan of liberty and equality, and mourned over the lukewarmness of the national assembly on these great questions; or, rather, the number of the moderate party who wished to assimilate the government of France to the English constitution. To prevent the extension of these views, the jacobins agitated and excited the people. Madame Roland at first approved their measures: she saw no safety for the newly acquired freedom of her country, except in the enthusiasm by which it was defended by the many. She had to learn, through tragical experience, how much more difficult it is to restrain than to excite the French. Her letters breathe impatience and disapprobation with regard to the actual state of things. "Represent to yourself," she writes, "a number of good citizens carrying on a perpetual, active, painful, and often fruitless struggle with the mass of the ambitious, the discontented, and the ignorant." The flight of the king filled her with alarm, mingled with enthusiasm, as she saw danger approach herself and her friends; danger to proceed from the triumph of despotism--she could not then imagine that any would arise from freedom. "While we were at peace," she writes, "I kept in the back ground, and exercised only the sort of influence suited to my sex; but, when the departure of the king declared war, it appeared to me that every one ought to devote himself without reserve. I caused myself to be received in fraternal associations, persuaded that the zeal and intelligence of any member of society must be useful in critical moments." The arrest and return of the king and his family kindled a thousand hopes. "It would be a folly, an absurdity, almost a horror," she writes, "to replace the king on the throne. To bring Louis XVI. to trial would doubtless be the greatest and most just of measures; but we are incapable of adopting it." Little did she anticipate the progress of events.