From this day, Madame Roland felt a fire kindled within her which was never to be quenched but in her blood.  All the love which lay slumbering in her soul was converted into enthusiasm and devotion for the human race.  Her sensibility deceived—­too ardent, unquestionably, for one man—­spread over a nation.  She adored the Revolution like a lover.  She communicated this flame to her husband and to all her friends.  All her repressed feelings were poured forth in her opinions; she avenged herself on her destiny, which refused her individual happiness, by sacrificing herself for the happiness of others.  Happy and beloved, she would have been but a woman; unhappy and isolated, she became the leader of a party.

XIV.

The opinions of M. and Madame Roland excited against them all the commercial aristocracy of Lyons, an honest right-minded city, but one of money, where all becomes a calculation, and where ideas have the weight and immobility of interests.  Ideas have an irresistible current, which attract even the most stagnant populations; Lyons was led on and overwhelmed by the opinions of the epoch.  M. Roland was raised to the municipality at the first election, and spoke out with all the earnestness of his principles, and the energy inspired by his wife.  Feared by the timid, adored by the eager, his name, at first a byeword, became a rallying point;—­public favour recompensed him for the insults of the rich.  He was deputed to Paris by the municipal council, there to defend the commercial interests of Lyons, in the committees of the Constituent Assembly.

The connection of Roland with philosophers and economists who formed the practical party of philosophy, his necessary intercourse with influential members of the Assembly, his literary tastes, and, above all, the attraction and natural temptation which drew and retained eminent men around a young, eloquent, and impassioned woman, soon made the salon of Madame Roland an ardent, though not as yet noted, focus of the Revolution.  The names which were found there reveal, from the first days, extreme opinions.  For these opinions, the constitution of 1791 was only a halt.

It was on the 20th February, 1791, that Madame Roland returned to that Paris which she had quitted five years before, a young girl, unknown and nameless, and whither she came as a flame to animate an entire party, found a republic, reign for a moment, and—­die!  She had in her mind a confused presentiment of this destiny.  Genius and Will know their strength,—­they feel before others and prophesy their mission.  Madame Roland had beforehand seemed carried on by hers to the heart of action.  She hastened on the day after her arrival to the sittings of the Assembly.  She saw the powerful Mirabeau, the dazzling Cazales, the daring Maury, the crafty Lameth, the impassive Barnave.  She remarked with annoyance and intense hate, in the attitude and language of the right side,