第84章 CHAPTER XVII. (2)

He aimed at enlightening and regenerating the world, not at overturning it; but, like many others, strong souls and true, he was led from practical truth in the pursuit of an ideal one. His wife, who shared his political opinions, united with them a fiery and independent spirit that was not content with theories. Her philosophic tastes led her to translate Adam Smith, and to write a fine analysis of the "Moral Sentiments." But the sympathy of which she spoke so beautifully, and which gave so living a force to the philosophy it illuminated, if not directed by broad intelligence and impartial judgment, is often like the ignis fatuus that plays over the poisonous marsh and lures the unwary to destruction. For a brief day the magical influence of Mme. de Condorcet was felt more or less by all who came within her circle. She inspired the equable temper of her husband with her own enthusiasm, and urged him on to extreme measures from which his gentler soul would have recoiled. When at last he turned from those scenes of horror, choosing to be victim rather than oppressor, it was too late. Perhaps she recalled the days of her power with a pang of regret when her friends had fallen one by one at the scaffold, and her husband, hunted and deserted by those he tried to serve, had died by his own hand, in a lonely cell, to escape a sadder fate; while she was left, after her timely release from prison, to struggle alone in poverty and obscurity, for some years painting water-color portraits for bread. She was not yet thirty when the Revolution ended, and lived far into the present century; but though the illusions of her youth had been rudely shattered, she remained always devoted to her liberal principles and a broad humanity.

The woman, however, who most fitly represents the spirit of the Revolution, who was at once its inspiration, its heroine, and its victim, is Mme. Roland. It is not as the leader of a salon that she takes her place in the history of her time, but as one of the foremost and ablest leaders of a powerful political party. Born in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, she had neither the prestige of a name nor the distinction of an aristocratic lineage. Reared in seclusion, she was familiar with the great world by report only.

Though brilliant, even eloquent in conversation when her interest was roused, her early training had added to her natural distaste for the spirit, as well as the accessories, of a social life that was inevitably more or less artificial. She would have felt cramped and caged in the conventional atmosphere of a drawing room in which the gravest problems were apt to be forgotten in the flash of an epigram or the turn of a bon mot. The strong and heroic outlines of her character were more clearly defined on the theater of the world. But at a time when the empire of the salon was waning, when vital interests and burning convictions had for the moment thrown into the shade all minor questions of form and convenance, she took up the scepter in a simpler fashion, and, disdaining the arts of a society of which she saw only the fatal and hopeless corruption, held her sway over the daring and ardent men who gathered about her by the unassisted force of her clear and vigorous intellect.

It would be interesting to trace the career of the thoughtful and precocious child known as Manon or Marie Phlipon, who sat in her father's studio with the burin of an engraver in one hand and a book in the other, eagerly absorbing the revolutionary theories which were to prove so fatal to her, but it is not the purpose here to dwell upon the details of her life. In the solitude of a prison cell and under the shadow of the scaffold she told her own story. She has introduced us to the simple scenes of her childhood, the modest home on the Quai de l'Horloge, the wise and tender mother, the weak and unstable father. We are made familiar with the tiny recess in which she studies, reads, and makes extracts from the books which are such strange companions for her years. We seem to see the grave little face as it lights with emotion over the inspiring pages of Fenelon or the chivalrous heroes of Tasso, and sympathize with the fascination that leads the child of nine years to carry her Plutarch to mass instead of her prayer book. She portrays for us her convent life with its dreams, its exaltations, its romantic friendships, and its ardent enthusiasms. We have vivid pictures of the calm and sympathetic Sophie Cannet, to whom she unburdens all her hopes and aspirations and sorrows; of the lively sister Henriette, who years afterward, in the generous hope of saving her early friend, proposed to exchange clothes and take her place in the cells of Sainte-Pelagie. In the long and commonplace procession of suitors that files before us, one only touches her heart. La Blancherie has a literary and philosophic turn, and the young girl's imagination drapes him in its own glowing colors. The opposition of her father separates them, but absence only lends fuel to this virgin flame. One day she learns that his views are mercenary, that he is neither true nor disinterested, and the charm is broken. She met him afterward in the Luxembourg gardens with a feather in his hat, and the last illusion vanished.

There is an idyllic charm in these pictures so simply and gracefully sketched. She sees with the vision of one lying down to sleep after a life of pain, and dreaming of the green fields, the blue skies, the running brooks, the trees, the flowers, that make so beautiful a background for youthful loves and hopes.