It was the new community which troubled her. Bancal had shown himself so eager for it, she herself saw such a charm in it, that she became alarmed. To a letter of Bancal’s, which we can suppose to have been fervid, but which was not so much so that Roland was annoyed by it, it being he who had received it and sent it on to her, she replied: “My mind is busy with a thousand ideas, agitated by tumultuous sentiments. Why is it that my eyes are blinded by constant tears? My will is firm, my heart is pure, and yet I am not tranquil. ‘It will be the greatest charm of our life and we shall be useful to our fellows,’ you say of the affection which unites us, and these consoling words have not restored my peace. I am not sure of your happiness and I should never forgive myself for having disturbed it. I have believed that you were feeding it on a hope that I ought to forbid. Who can foresee the effect of violent agitations, too often renewed? Would they not be dangerous if they left only that languor which weakens the moral being and which makes it unequal to the situation? I am wrong. You do not experience this unworthy alternative, you could never be weak. The idea of your strength brings back mine. I shall know how to enjoy the happiness that Heaven has allotted me, believing that it has not allowed me to trouble you.” She was quite conscious of her inconsistency, but with the feminine propensity for finding an excuse for an indiscretion, she charged it on the construction of society,—a construction which, it should be noted, she had years ago convinced herself to be necessary, and which she had repeatedly accepted, so that there was not the excuse for her that there is for those who have never reflected that human laws and codes of morals are simply the best possible arrangement thus far found for men and women getting on together without a return to the savage state, and have never made a tacit compact with themselves to be law-abiding because they saw the reason for being so. “Why is it,” she writes, “that this sheet that I am writing you cannot be sent to you openly? Why can one not show to all that which one would dare offer to Divinity itself? Assuredly I can call upon Heaven, and take it as a witness of my vow and of my intentions; I find pleasure in thinking that it sees me, hears me, and judges me.... When shall we see each other again? Question that I ask myself often, and that I dare not answer.” Bancal went to Le Clos, and evidently, from passages in their subsequent letters, there passed between them some scene of passion. Later, Bancal went to London to propagate the ideas of the patriots, but Lanthenas and Roland became anxious that he return to Paris to help them there. Madame Roland dared not advise him to return, though she could not conceal her pleasure at the idea that he might, and that, too, after she was again at Paris.