When, in 1791, Mme. Roland arrived at Paris—­for she accompanied her husband—­she had already become an ardent Republican.  She immediately threw herself into the whirlwind of popular enthusiasm.  Her house became the centre of an advanced political group, which met there four times a week to discuss state questions.  There Danton, Robespierre, Petion, Condorcet, Buzot, and others were seen.  She ably aided her husband in all his work as commissioner to the National Assembly.  She was indefatigable in penning stirring letters and petitions to the Jacobin societies in the different departments.  A staunch friend of Robespierre, she did much to protect him in his first efforts in public.  On returning home, after her husband had completed his mission, she was no longer the same quiet, contented, submissive woman; she longed for activity in the midst of excitement.

With the meeting of the Legislative Assembly, in 1791, the group of men sent up from the Gironde immediately became the leaders, and when Mme. Roland returned to Paris she became the centre of this circle, exhorting and stimulating, advising and ordering.  Through her friend Brissot, who was all-powerful in the Assembly, about February, 1792, as leader of the Girondists, who were looking for men not yet practically involved in politics, but qualified by experience for political life, her husband was made minister of the interior, and in March, 1792, he and his wife entered upon their duties.  She was a keen reader of human nature, at first glance giving her husband a penetrating and generally truthful judgment of men.  Being able to comprehend the temperaments of the ministers, she managed them with inimitable tact.  Although all the Girondist ministers were supposed friends, she readily saw how difficult it would be for a small group of men with the same principles to act in concert.  Seeing the political machine in motion at close range, she lost some of her enthusiasm for revolutionary leaders; above all, she recognized the need of a great leader.  As wife of the minister, installed in the ministerial residence with no other woman present, she gave two dinners weekly to her husband’s colleagues, to the members of the Assembly, and to political friends.

Her husband, the French Quaker of the Revolution, in all his simplicity of dress and honesty, was being constantly duped by the apparent good nature and sincerity of the king, against whom his wife was constantly warning him.  It was she who, convinced of the king’s duplicity and the need of a safeguard for the country, originated the plan of a federate camp of twenty thousand men to protect Paris when war had been declared against Austria.  It was she who wrote a letter to the king in the name of the council, but sent in Roland’s own name, imploring him not to arouse the mistrust of the nation by constantly betraying his suspicion of it, but to show his love by adopting measures for the welfare and safety of the country.  The effect of this