“10 June, 1792. Year IV. of Liberty.” Roland sent this letter to the King on June 11th, although he had had the idea of reading it to the Council the day before, but there was no opportunity, so says Madame Roland in her Memoirs. According to Dumouriez, the letter was sent earlier; for he relates that Roland read the letter at the Council, and that when he had finished it the King remarked with _sang-froid_: “M. Roland, it was three days ago that you sent me your letter. It was useless to read it to the Council if it was to remain a secret between us two.” This letter was the climax to the irritating policy which the Gironde ministers had been pursuing with Louis, and he decided to dismiss them. Servan received his discharge first. “Congratulate me,” he cried when he saw Madame Roland. “I have been put out.” “I am piqued,” she replied, “that you are the first to have that honor, but I hope it will not be long before it is accorded to my husband.” It was not, for on the 13th Roland followed Servan. He hurried home to tell his wife. “There is only one thing to do,” she cried with vivacity: “it is to be the first to announce it to the Assembly, sending along a copy of the letter to the King.” The idea was put into effect at once. They were convinced that both “usefulness and glory” would result. If this letter to the King began, as Dumouriez says, with a promise of secrecy, then to send it to the Assembly was, considering the position Roland occupied and the oath he had taken, a most disloyal act. But did it begin so? Madame Roland does not speak of such a promise in her Memoirs. The report of the letter given in the _Moniteur_ contains no such opening phrase, though naturally Roland would have cut it out in sending the document to the Assembly. Many of the memoirs and newspapers of the day, however, either quote the promise or assume that the letter was private. Dumont, in writing of Madame Roland, says that the greatest reproach that could be made upon her conduct during the Revolution was persuading her husband to publish this letter, which commenced, according to him: “Sire, this letter will never be known save to you and me.” Mathieu Dumas says in his _Souvenirs_ that it was confidential, and declares that it was read in the Council in the presence of the King, “although the minister had promised to keep it a secret between himself and His Majesty.” Of the presentation to the Assembly he adds: “It was a new violation of the secret that the minister had imposed upon himself. After his retreat propriety made the obligation of secrecy much more rigorous.”