第85章 CHAPTER XVII. (3)

Perhaps we could wish sometimes that she were a little less frank. We miss a touch of delicacy in this nature that was so strong and self-poised. We are sorry that she dismissed La Blancherie quite so theatrically. There is a trace too much of consciousness in her fine self-analysis, perhaps a little vanity, and we half suspect that her unchildlike penetration and precocity of motive was sometimes the reflection of an afterthought. But it is to be remembered that, even in childhood, she had lived in such close companionship with the heroes and moralists of the past that their sentiments had become her own. She doubtless posed a little to herself, as well as to the world, but her frankness was a part of that uncompromising truthfulness which scorned disguises of any sort, and led her to paint faults and virtues alike.

Family sorrows--the death of the mother whom she adored, and the unworthiness of her father--combined to change the current of her free and happy life, and to deepen a natural vein of melancholy. In her loneliness of soul the convent seemed to offer itself as the sole haven of peace and rest. The child, who loved Fenelon, and dreamed over the lives of the saints, had in her much of the stuff out of which mystics and fanatics are made.

Her ardent soul was raised to ecstasy by the stately ceremonial of the Church; her imagination was captivated by its majestic music, its mystery, its solemnity, and she was wont to spend hours in rapt meditation. But her strong fund of good sense, her firm reason fortified by wide and solid reading, together with her habits of close observation and analysis, saved her from falling a victim to her own emotional needs, or to chimeras of any sort. She had drawn her mental nourishment too long from Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, the English philosophers, and classic historians, to become permanently a prey to exaggerated sensibilities, though it was the same temperament fired by a sense of human inequality and wrong, that swept her at last along the road that led to the scaffold. At twenty-six the vocation of the religieuse had lost its fascination; the pious fervor of her childhood had vanished before the skepticism of her intellect, its ardent friendships had grown dim, its fleeting loves had proved illusive, and her romantic dreams ended in a cold marriage of reason.

It may be noted here that though Mme. Roland had lost her belief in ecclesiastical systems, and, as she said, continued to go to mass only for the "edification of her neighbors and the good order of society," there was always in her nature a strong undercurrent of religious feeling. Her faith had not survived the full illumination of her reason, but her trust in immortality never seriously wavered. The Invocation that was among her last written words is the prayer of a soul that is conscious of its divine origin and destiny. She retained, too, the firm moral basis that was laid in her early teachings, and which saved her from the worst errors of her time. She might be shaken by the storms of passion, but one feels that she could never be swept from her moorings.

Tall and finely developed, with dark brown hair; a large mouth whose beauty lay in a smile of singular sweetness; dark, serious eyes with a changeful expression which no artist could catch; a fresh complexion that responded to every emotion of a passionate soul; a deep, well-modulated voice; manners gentle, modest, reserved, sometimes timid with the consciousness that she was not readily taken at her true value--such was the PERSONNELLE of the woman who calmly weighed the possibilities of a life which had no longer a pleasant outlook in any direction, and, after much hesitation, became the wife of a grave, studious, austere man of good family and moderate fortune, but many years her senior.

It was this marriage, into which she entered with all seriousness, and a devotion that was none the less sincere because it was of the intellect rather than the heart, that gave the final tinge to a character that was already laid on solid foundations. Strong, clear-sighted, earnest, and gifted, her later experience had accented a slightly ascetic quality which had been deepened also by her study of antique models. Her tastes were grave and severe. But they had a lighter side. As a child she had excelled in music, dancing, drawing, and other feminine accomplishments, though one feels always that her distinctive talent does not lie in these things. She is more at home with her thoughts. There was a touch of poetry, too, in her nature, that under different circumstances might have lent it a softer and more graceful coloring. She had a natural love for the woods and the flowers. The single relief to her somber life at La Platiere, after her marriage, was in the long and lonely rambles in the country, whose endless variations of hill and vale and sky and color she has so tenderly and so vividly noted. In her last days a piano and a few flowers lighted the darkness of her prison walls, and out of these her imagination reared a world of its own, peopled with dreams and fancies that contrasted strangely with the gloom of her surroundings. This poetic vein was closely allied to the keen sensibility that tempered the seriousness of her character. With the mental equipment of a man, she combined the rich sympathy of a woman. Her devotion to her mother was passionate in its intensity; her letters to Sophie throb with warmth and sentiment. She is tender and loving, as well as philosophic and thoughtful. Her emotional ardor was doubtless partly the glow of youth and not altogether in the texture of a mind so eminently rational; but there were rich possibilities behind it. A shade of difference in the mental and moral atmosphere, a trace more or less of sunshine and happiness are important factors in the peculiar combination of qualities that make up a human being. The marriage of Mme. Roland led her into a world that had little color save what she brought into it.