Before the end the revolt of the Rolands was complete and terrible. They, with the Gironde, were, indeed, very much in the position of keepers of wild beasts, who, to clear their gardens of troublesome visitors, let loose the animals. The intruders are driven out, but when they would whistle in their beasts they find themselves obliged to flee or to be torn in pieces in turn. “We are under the knife of Robespierre and Marat,” Madame Roland wrote on the 5th of September, and a few days later: “Marat posts every day the most frightful denunciations against the Assembly and the Council. You will see both sacrificed. You will believe that is possible only when you see it done, and then you will groan in vain over it. My _friend_ Danton directs everything, Robespierre is his mannikin, Marat holds his torch and his knife; this fierce tribune reigns and we are only waiting to become its victims. If you knew the frightful details of this affair,—women brutally violated before being torn to pieces by these tigers, intestines cut off and worn as ribbons, bleeding human flesh eaten.... You know my enthusiasm for the Revolution. Well, I am ashamed of it. It is stained by these wretches. It is become hideous. It is debasing to remain in office.” She had begun to experience one of the saddest disillusions of life,—the loss of faith in her own undertaking, to see that the thing she had worked to create was a monster, that it must be throttled, that it was too horrible to live. The massacre was scarcely ended before Marat attacked Roland. He called him a traitor trying to paralyze the means necessary to save the country; his letter to the Assembly he stigmatized as a _chef-d’œuvre_ of cunning and perfidy; he accused him of securing the nomination of as many Brissotins as possible, of scattering gold by the handful to secure what he wanted; again it was “opium” he was scattering to hide his conspiracy with the traitors of the National Assembly. Madame Roland was immediately brought to the front in Marat’s journal, he giving her the credit of her husband’s administration. “Roland,” he says, “is only a _frère coupe-choux_ that his wife leads by the ears. It is she who is the Minister of the Interior under the direction of _L’Illuminé L’Anténas_, secret agent of the Guadet-Brissot faction.” In the same number of his journal there is an article under the heading “Bon mot à la femme Roland,” where she is accused of squandering national funds and of having Marat’s posters pulled down. The quarrels between the various factions of the republicans were so serious before the end of September that the best men of all parties saw the imperative need of sacrificing all differences and antagonisms, in order to combine solidly against the enemies of the new régime.