That Buzot should have remained until the end with the Gironde, when convinced, as he here says, that their efforts for a Republic were contrary to the will of the country, and when, too, he was revolted against the excesses its establishment was causing, he explained fully, when he wrote: “My error was too beautiful to be repented of;” and again, when he says: “Our dream was too beautiful to be abandoned.” The terrible whirlpool had dragged away hopes, ambitions, dreams, from them. Into it went, too, some of their most valued friends; men whom they had raised to positions of importance, but who now that they saw the party defeated abandoned them through fear and disillusion. At the same time that they were experiencing all the force of their disillusion, the relation between Roland and his wife was becoming terribly tense and painful. They felt that they must bring it to an end in some way, must get away from Buzot, and they resolved to go to the country. In May Roland wrote, for the eighth time, to the Convention, begging that the report on his administration be examined. His letter was not even read to the body. It became more and more probable that threats which had followed them a long time would take effect soon, and Roland be arrested. Madame Roland decided that she ought not to remain in Paris with her daughter any longer, as Roland could escape more easily if they were at Le Clos. Her health, too, sadly altered by the storm of emotions which she had passed through, demanded a change. The passports permitting them to leave Paris had been delayed some days, and just as she received them she fell ill. She was not herself again when the 31st of May came. This day was for the Gironde what the 10th of August had been for the King. During the latter half of May the Convention had been the scene of one of the maddest, awfulest struggles in the history of legislative bodies, and the victory had throughout leaned towards the Terrorists. They were decided, and audacious. The indecision, the platitudes, the disgust, of the Gironde weakened the party constantly. The struggle was ended by the riot of May 31st. Before the contest was over the Convention had voted the expulsion and trial of twenty-two members of the Gironde. Again the stick was out of the wheel, and the Republic was to roll. Roland was not in the number that the Mountain could strike through the Convention. It had a much more direct and simple, a more _legal_, method of reaching him. Its Revolutionary committee had already been in operation some time. Its work was arresting those who stood in the way of the Republic. That Roland did, Marat had proved time and again, and now that the time had come to rid the country of the Gironde _in toto_, it would never do to let him escape.