There was one man through whom they might have been reconciled,—Danton, he who, with Robespierre and Marat, formed the triumvirate of the new party of Terror. Danton represented the insurrectionary idea in the ministry and it was through him alone that Roland and the Gironde might have worked with the Commune. But from the first Madame Roland would have nothing to do with Danton. When it was announced to her that he had been chosen to the ministry, she told her friends: “It is a great pity that the Council should be spoiled by this Danton, who has so bad a reputation.” They told her that he had been useful to the Revolution; that the people loved him; that it was no time to make enemies; that he must be used as he was. She could do nothing to keep him out, but she was not convinced of the wisdom of the choice. He sought her at once; for after the suspension of the King, Danton never ceased to repeat that the safety of France lay in union,—in an effort of all parties against the foreign invaders. “The enemy is at our door and we rend one another. Will all our quarrels kill a Prussian?” was his incessant warning. Few days passed that he did not drop into the Hôtel of the Interior; now it was for the Council meeting, to which he came early, hunting her up in her little salon for a chat before the meeting began: again he dropped in on the days she was unaccustomed to receive, begging a cup of tea before he went to the Assembly. Fabre d’Eglantine often accompanied him. It was not a warm welcome they received. They talked to her of patriotism, and she replied in a tone of superiority and with a tinge of suspicion which was evident enough to Danton and his colleague and could not fail to irritate them. She gave them to understand that she saw through them, that she felt herself incorruptible, and that no consideration would induce her to unite with an element she suspected. Danton soon realized her inflexibility and before the end of August he had ceased his visits. Madame Roland had refused the only mediator between Gironde and Mountain, and in so doing had lighted another interior blaze. She was too intelligent a woman for one to suppose that she did not see the danger in further disunion. Why then for the Republic’s sake, for humanity’s sake, did she not unite with him?