And this she decided to do very soon, for the beginning of September she left Paris for Villefranche. Everything on the trip discouraged her. She wrote Robespierre: “I find the people on the route, as in Paris, deceived by their enemies or ignorant of the true state of things; everywhere the mass is well disposed; it is just because its interest is the general interest, but it is misled or stupid. Nowhere have I met people with whom I could talk openly and advantageously of our political situation; I contented myself by distributing copies of your address in all the places through which I passed; they will be found after my departure and furnish an excellent text for meditation.” It was even worse at Villefranche, where, on arriving, she made a tour of observation. She was convinced that the most of the inhabitants were utterly despicable, and made so by the existing social institutions; that they loved the Revolution only because it destroyed what was above them, but that they knew nothing of the theory of free government, and did not sympathize with that “sublime and delicious theory which makes us brothers”; that they hated the name of Republic, and that a king appeared to them essential to their existence. She was as disgusted with Lyons for its devotion to the aristocracy. Its elections she declared detestable and the deputies nothing but enemies of liberty. The officers in the department were as badly chosen as the representatives; “if one was to judge of representative government by the little experience we have had of it so far, we cannot esteem ourselves very happy”; the elections were bought, so were the administrators, so the representatives, who in their turn sold the people. Even at Le Clos, where she went immediately for the fall vintage, there was a cloud; for the calumnies spread at Lyons about Roland when it was a question of nominating him for the Assembly, had reached the hills, and the people attributed their absence in Paris to the supposed arrest of Roland for _counter-revolution_. When she went out to walk she heard behind her the cry _Les aristocrates à la lanterne_. Although Madame Roland sighed to escape from the “dolts and knaves” of Paris and longed for the peace of the country, the sentiment was only a passing one. The charm of the little circle she criticised so freely, the friendships she had formed, her devotion to the public cause, all these things made the absence from Paris hard to bear. On leaving she had hoped it would be only temporary. Roland was much talked of as a candidate for the new Assembly, and if he succeeded, it would take them back to Paris. She knew before her arrival at Le Clos that he had failed to secure the nomination. The news deepened her irritation at the condition of public affairs, strengthened the sense of oppression which the province produced, made her dissatisfied with Le Clos, her husband’s future, Eudora.