There is now and then a sign about the house of what it suffered in the Revolution; for Le Clos was pillaged then and stripped of its contents at the same time that the château above had its towers razed. On several of the heavy doors is still clinging the red wax of the official seal placed by the revolutionary officers. The _chanoine’s_ crucifix is there, a graceful silver affair darkly oxidized from long burying, he having hid it in the garden. In the raids on the property nearly all the furniture was taken, and for many years the peasants were said to account for new pieces of furniture in their neighbors’ houses by saying, “Oh, it came from Le Clos.” Some time after the Revolution, M. Champagneux, who married Eudora, the daughter of Madame Roland, received a notice from the curé at Theizé that a sum of “conscience money” had been given him for the family. Life must have been then at Le Clos—a hundred years ago—much what it is now,—a busy, peaceful round of usefulness and kindliness, of generous hospitality, of unaffected intelligence. Madame Roland entered it with sentiments kindled by Rousseau. Her imagination had never been more actively at work than it had over the prospect of this country retirement. She had shed tears over the prospect of their future Clarens, its bucolic pleasures, the delicious meditations, the sweet effusions of friendship, the healthy duties. And Le Clos realized many of her dreams; largely because she took hold of the practical life of the house and farm with good-will and intelligence. She was no woman to allow work to master her,—she managed it. Nor was she weak enough to fret under it or to regard it as “beneath her.” She respected this most dignified and useful of woman’s employments and gave it intelligence and good-will. This acceptance of and cheerfulness over common duties is one of the really strong things about Madame Roland. Some of the prettiest passages in her letters of this period are of her homely duties. She kept the accounts, directed the servants, interested herself in every detail of farm and house. She used her scientific acquirements practically for the benefit of Le Clos and its neighbors. Bosc she continually applied to for information. Now it was a remedy, “sure and easy,” against the bites of the viper, of which there were many in the country—and they still exist; now for the caterpillars which were troubling the apples; again it was against an enemy of her artichokes that she demanded, as a service to the province, a remedy. She took a lively interest in agricultural discussions, and many were the flowers, from the rich flora of Le Clos, which she sent her friend to analyze, or for a confirmation of her own analysis.