Her suspicions extended to all his friends. “All these fine fellows,” she said to a friend one day _à propos_ of Dumouriez’s followers, “seem poor patriots to me. They care too much for themselves to prefer the public good to their own interests. I can never resist the temptation to wound their self-sufficiency by pretending not to see the merit of which they are vainest.” As for the good faith of the King, she would not listen to the idea. During the first three weeks of the ministry of Roland, he and Clavière were disposed to think well of the King, to have confidence in the turn things were going to take. But she would tell them when they started out confidently to the Council meetings: “When I see you go off in that way, it always seems to me that you are going to commit a _sottise_.” And when they came back with less done than she expected she declared the Council was “nothing but a café.” “It is disgraceful. You are in good humor because you experience no annoyance, even because you are well treated. You have the air of doing about what you wish in your departments. I fear that you are being tricked.” When they reminded her that nevertheless affairs were going well, she replied: “Yes, and time is being lost.” At the moment that Roland was called to office the question of public tranquillity was most serious. It was not alone in the cities that riots, pillage, and bloodshed were of constant occurrence. The provinces were in many places almost uninhabitable. Roland, to cure the disorders, wrote circulars and put up posters.