“I had told —— to go after it [Roland’s letter]. I awaited it in vain all the evening. He had forgotten to go. I sent him again when I sat down to supper. While I ate I waited, my heart was troubled. The servant seemed to me to be gone a long time. My heart jumped at every noise I heard at the door. Overcome, I said: News from him was never dearer, never awaited with more tender impatience. I scarcely heard what brother said and I answered yes at random. It was worse still when the package came. My heart went out to it beforehand. I examined the writing with strange haste, I opened it, I read. The mutual sentiment which inspires us leaves me incapable of feeling anything else. I scarcely spoke the rest of the evening.” Unquestionably she believed in the endurance of this affection for Roland, so far as there is any indication in her letters. Perhaps something of the secret of the peculiar tenderness between Madame Roland and her husband at this time was that Roland was but little at home. Where the imagination has the habit of idealizing situations and persons, it is difficult to quiet it—it must have its craving satisfied. But no idealized object will resist long the friction of every-day life and the disillusion which is inevitable from constant association. Madame Roland never ceased her habit of idealization, but, fortunately, her life with Roland was so broken by his repeated absences that her imagination did still find pleasure in busying itself with him. For several years after they went to Beaujolais there was but one break in this busy life for Madame Roland,—a trip to Switzerland taken in 1787 with her husband and her brother-in-law, the Curé of Longpoint. She wrote full notes of her trip for Eudora, as she had done of her trip to England. They were printed by Champagneux in the year 1800. They are less spontaneous than those on England, following almost entirely Roland’s letters of ten years before. This trip into Switzerland was to have been followed by one to Italy, which never was taken. And so their life went on from 1784 to 1789. On the whole, it was happy, as it certainly was useful and honorable. To be sure, they were not quite satisfied. They still felt keenly that the title and privileges they had asked had been refused, and they still cherished hopes of being retired. Madame Roland, especially, kept the matter in view and worked to bring it about; thus, in September of 1787 we find her directing Roland: “Write to the _bear_ and pay him the compliment of your encyclopedic work. I have imagined a little letter of which I send you the idea. To flatter a person’s pretensions is a means of capturing his good-will. If it is true that he has a mistress, Lanthenas must unearth her, as well as the sides on which she is accessible. They will be convenient notes to have in the portfolio, and can be used as one does certain drugs in desperate cases.”