M. Roland was sent to Amiens, where his wife presented him with a daughter, whom she nursed, and afterwards brought up with the utmost tenderness and devotion. In 1784, he was summoned to Lyons, where he found himself once more in his native region. Thenceforward he spent two of the winter months in Lyons, and the remainder of the year on his paternal domain, the Close of Platière, two leagues from Villefranche, surrounded by woods and vineyards, and opposite the mountains of Beaujolais. While her husband went to take possession of his new post, Madame Roland, not yet a republican, remained a few weeks in Paris in order to obtain, if possible, the patent of nobility so ardently desired by the family. Her solicitations proved unsuccessful, and the married pair, despairing of becoming nobles, consoled themselves by a frank avowal of democracy. Up to the time of the Revolution, Madame Roland's life glided peacefully away without any remarkable incidents. In the Close of Platière, which she calls her dovecot, she appears as a good housekeeper who looks after everything, from the cellar to the garret; {57} who plays the doctor among the poor villagers; who is delighted to find in nature a savor of frank and free rusticity. The life she leads is not merely honest, but edifying. She is very careful at this period to hide her philosophy. She writes to Bosc, one of her friends, February 9, 1785: "My brother-in-law, whose disposition is extremely gentle and sensitive, is also very religious; I leave him the satisfaction of thinking that the dogmas are as evident to me as they appear to him, and my exterior actions are such as become the mother of a family out in the country, who is bound to edify everybody. As I was very devout in my early youth, I know my prayers as well as my philosophy, and I prefer to make use of my first erudition." She wrote again to Bosc, October 12, 1785: "I have hardly touched a pen for a month, and I think I am acquiring some of the inclinations of the beast whose milk refreshes me; I am extremely _asinine_, and I busy myself with all the petty cares of the _hoggish_ country life. I make preserved pears that are delicious; we dry grapes and plums; we wash and make up linen; we have white wine for breakfast, and we lie down on the grass to rest; we follow the vintagers; we repose in the woods and fields."