night and day almost, to push the claim of his town. “I sleep less and walk much more. Truly I have scarcely time to live.” He besieged the committee rooms, waiting for hours before the doors to collar his man as he entered or retired. He ate his morsel of bread alone in order to run to the Assembly, where one was obliged to arrive early in order to find a seat. The spirit in which he went into the work was one of declared war to the aristocratic party at Lyons and to the old régime. He was determined to show up the situation, and exhorted his friends at Lyons to uncover all the rascality and pillage of the old administration. The deputies from the Lyonnais were not too sympathetic. They found the persistency, the _vertu_, the incessant indignation, the insistency of Roland, tiresome. After sitting so many long months, under such exciting circumstances, they were weary. They saw the difficulties of getting a hearing, too, from the Assembly. Roland poured out all his impatience to Champagneux, who was his confidant and sympathizer. Long letters, written in his fine, nervous, execrable hand, went almost daily to Lyons. They were full of indignation at everything and everybody; especially was the delay irritating to him. “If affairs do not go backwards like the crab,” he says, “at least they go no faster than the tortoise.” The delay disgusted Madame Roland as much as it did her husband. Both committee and Assembly were blamed by her. She even wished that she were a man that she might do something herself. Of much more importance to their political lives at this moment than Assembly, clubs, or committee meetings, were the frequent gatherings of patriots held at the Rolands’ apartments, in the Rue Guénégaud. They were “grandly lodged,” the quarter was agreeable, and many of their friends lived but a short distance away. As Roland found it necessary to see the deputies frequently, he gathered them about him in his home. Brissot was the nucleus of the little circle. The relation with Brissot had been, up to this time, purely by correspondence. When they came to Paris naturally they were anxious to see him. They liked him at once. His simple manners, his frankness, his natural negligence, seemed in harmony with the austerity of his principles. A more entire disinterestedness and a greater zeal for public affairs were impossible, it seemed to them. He was admirable, too, as a man, a good husband, a tender father, a faithful friend, a virtuous citizen. His society was charming; for he was gay, naïve, imprudently confident, the nature of a sweet-tempered boy of fifteen. Such Brissot seemed to Madame Roland, who esteemed him more and more the longer she knew him.