But could she not have been saved? She had friends who would have gladly dared death for her. All Paris knew of her imprisonment—was there no lover of justice to intercede? Her friends had tried to save her. Buzot and Roland both contrived many plans; she repulsed them all. They were too foolhardy to succeed; they might implicate those who would interest themselves in carrying them out, or perhaps ruin guardians who had been kind to her—of these she would hear nothing. Her old friend, Henriette Cannet, then a widow, came from Amiens, succeeded in reaching her in prison, insisted on changing garments with her and on remaining in her place. She would not consent; she would rather “suffer a thousand deaths” than run the risk of causing that of a friend. And then what did release mean? Merely the taking on of her old chains. “Nothing would stop me if I braved dangers only to rejoin you,” she wrote Buzot; “but to expose my friends and to leave the irons with which the wicked honor me, in order to take on others that no one sees—there is no hurry for that.” Madame Roland, throughout her imprisonment, had hoped for a popular uprising, a revolt against tyranny, coming from Paris or the departments, which would release her and her friends. She never got thoroughly over her illusion that the people, as a mass, were the ones that were to reconstruct France; never realized fully how the people are simply a passive unit, asking only to be let alone, to be allowed to live as they can without interference; that they have no initiative, that when they act it is because they have been aroused by leaders working on them systematically, appealing to their wants, their desires, their reason sometimes, but more often inflaming their passions. She never appreciated, save dimly, the fact that throughout the Revolution, so far, the revolt of the people had been prepared by agitators,—prepared as she and her friends wished to make the 20th of July, did make the 10th of August. The people know she is imprisoned; if they reflect at all, they know that probably it is unjust, but they are cautious. They have seen, ever since the Revolution commenced, that he who tries to prevent outrage is sure to be the first to be punished. They have concluded wisely that the only safe plan is to let the belligerents fight it out, to follow as well as they can their usual occupations, and to say nothing. The mass of the Parisians go on as usual. The Terror has become a part of daily discussion, a part of the city’s spectacles,—that is all. People buy and sell as usual, the theatres do not close, not even the Sunday promenade is omitted. They even take advantage of events to give a livelier interest to their amusements. The theatres, the fairs, the _cafés chantants_, the maker of songs and engravings, draw their subjects from the quarrels of the Assembly, the persecutions of the Commune, the events of the prisons and of the guillotine. They even use it to advertise their wares: The