The bitter disappointment of reimprisonment did not bend her spirit. “I am proud,” she wrote, some hours after her rearrest, “to be persecuted at a moment when talent and honor are being proscribed. I am assuredly more tranquil in my chains than my oppressors are in the exercise of their unjust power. I confess that the refinement of cruelty with which they ordered me to be set at liberty in order to rearrest me a moment afterwards, has fired me with indignation. I can no longer see where this tyranny will go.” This indignation was so bitter that the first night in her new prison she could not sleep. It was only the first night, however. To allow herself to be irritated by the injustice of her enemies was to be their dupe. She would not give them that satisfaction, and this intrepidity endured to the end. There are several reasons for her really phenomenal fortitude. At the bottom of it was no doubt the fact that material considerations had no influence on her when they came into conflict with sentiments and enthusiasms. An ordinary woman would have paled with fear at the sound of women shouting into her carriage _à la guillotine_; the crowded halls of the Abbaye, the tocsin sounding all night, the brutality of the officers and guards, would have sickened her soul; the narrow and dirty staircases, the bare and foul-smelling rooms, would have revolted her delicacy; the dreadful associations filled her with shame and disgust. But Madame Roland found inspiration in the thought of enduring all this. She would not allow her soul to be moved by filth and noise, and she moved serenely among the lowest outcasts. These things were externals, mere incidents in life. They had no real importance in themselves. She would use them to school her soul to more steadfast endurance,—certainly she would never allow them to interfere with her soul’s life. A stolid and unimaginative mind might have endured her position with equal calm; a dull and sluggish nature might have been equally indifferent to the revolting sights; but never was an imagination more responsive, a nature more vibrant and sensitive than hers. It was no lack of life and vigor. She was brave and indifferent because the fact of being so stirred her imagination. This sort of endurance seemed to her worthy of a hero of antiquity. Her whole nature was kindled by the thought of being superior to circumstances, of thwarting her enemies by her courage. The training of her whole life helped her to carry out this idea. Rousseau never drilled and trained Émile more rigidly in the doctrine of submitting to necessity than she had herself. The more severe her trial, the higher her courage rose. This she felt was a supreme test, a martyrdom worthy of a Greek. Her classic conception of patriotism was satisfied by the thought that she, like the ancients, was in prison for the country and would undoubtedly die for it.