She was especially influential when it came to choosing persons for the positions in the department which Roland controlled. She flattered herself on her ability to tell a true patriot, and criticised and praised candidates fearlessly. A minister of war was wanted soon after Roland’s call to the cabinet. He thought of Servan, because the man had exposed patriotic principles in a creditable book, because he had a reputation for activity, because he had lost a court position on account of civism, and above all because he declaimed bitterly against the aristocrats. They wished to found a journal to represent their party, and wanted a man “wise and enlightened” as editor. They decided on Louvet, the author of the most licentious novel of the day, because of his “noble forehead, the fire which animated his eye,” and the fine and eloquent political pamphlets he had published. Because Pache had the simplicity suitable to a republican and the manners of the ancients, because he came to his office at seven o’clock in the morning and stayed until three in the afternoon with only a morsel of bread brought in his pocket for lunch, because he was prudent, attentive, zealous as a clerk, he was thought fit to be a minister. They mistrusted all their colleagues who lacked these qualities. In the ministry was General Dumouriez, a diplomat of skill, devoted to the constitution, skilful with men, wise with the King. He had come to see the Rolands in the Rue de la Harpe with Brissot to announce to them the call to the ministry. When he left, Madame Roland said to her husband: “There is a man I have seen for the first time. He has a penetrating mind, a false eye; perhaps it will be more necessary to suspect him than anybody in the world. He has expressed great satisfaction with the patriotic choice he has been charged to announce, but I should not be astonished if one day he caused you to be dismissed.” She mistrusted Dumouriez at once because of his courtly manners, and his belief that the King was sincere in his efforts to support the constitution. There was so great a difference between him and Roland that she could not imagine the two working together. In the one she saw “uprightness and frankness personified, severe equity without any of the devices of the courtier or of the society-man.” In the other she believed she recognized “an intelligent _roué_, a bold knight, who sneered at everything except his own interests and his own glory.” She did not change her idea of Dumouriez, although obliged to confess that he had more _esprit_ than any one else in the ministry, that he was “diligent and brave,” “a good general, a skilful courtier, writing well, capable of great enterprises,” but his “manners!” they were fit only for the ministerial intrigues of a corrupt court.