Madame Roland: A Biographical StudyTarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
History
Madame Roland: A Biographical Study
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Roland, Madame, 1754-1793
Two days later, June 2d, the arrest of Buzot was decreed by the
Convention. He was seized but escaped from his guards, and fled from
Paris to Evreux, where he was well received by the department which
believed that the Convention had been forced into its decree against the
twenty-two. Roland in the meantime had reached Amiens. The three were
never to see one another again. The cause which brought them together
had separated them forever.
XII
IN PRISON
It was the morning of the first day of June, 1792, that Madame Roland
was taken to the Abbaye. The imprisonment then begun lasted until
November 8th, the day of her death. The record we have of her life
during these five months is full and intimate.
Separated from her child, her husband in flight, her friends persecuted
by the Commune, she herself only just off a sick-bed, confined in a
prison which had been from the beginning of the Revolution a centre of
riot and the floors of whose halls and courts were still warm with the
blood of the massacre of September, the cries of _à la Guillotine_
following her from the street, it would not have been strange if her
courage had failed, if she had paled before the fate which she knew in
all probability awaited her. But from the beginning to the end of her
long durance she showed a proud indifference to the result, an almost
reckless audacity in braving her enemies, a splendid courage in
suffering. She was serene, haughty, triumphant, a man, not a woman.
She declared that she would not exchange the moments which followed her
entrance into the Abbaye for those which others would call the sweetest
of her life. Indifferent to her surroundings, she sank into a revery,
reviewing her past: there was nothing to make her blush, she felt, even
if her heart was the scene of a powerful passion. She calculated the
future and with pride and joy felt that she had the courage to accept
her lot, to defy its rigors. “What can compare to a good conscience, a
strong purpose,” she cries. There is nothing in her situation which is
worth an instant of unrest. Her enemies shall not prevent her loving to
the last, and if they destroy her she will go from life as one enters
upon repose. And this high serenity endured even when, twenty-four days
later, she suffered one of the most cruel and unnecessary outrages of
the Revolution. On June 24th, she was freed. Hurrying home to the Rue de
la Harpe, she flew into the house “like a bird,” calling a gay good-day
to her concierge. She had not mounted four steps of her staircase before
two men who had entered at her heels called:
“Citoyenne Roland.”
“What do you want?”
“In the name of the law we arrest you.”
That night she slept in the prison of Sainte Pélagie, only a stone’s
throw from the convent where as a girl she had prepared for her first
communion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account