History of the Girondists Part 19

The young girl grew up in this atmosphere of luxuriant imagination and actual wretchedness. Endowed with a premature judgment, she early detected these domestic miseries, and took refuge in the good sense of her mother from the illusions of her father and her own presentiments of the future.

Marguerite Bimont (her mother's name) had brought her husband a calm beauty, and a mind very superior to her destiny, but angelic piety and resignation armed her equally against ambition and despair. The mother of seven children, who had all died in the birth, she concentrated in her only child all the love of her soul. Yet this very love guarded her from any weakness in the education of her daughter. She preserved the nice balance of her heart and her mind; of her imagination and her reason. The mould in which she formed this youthful mind was graceful; but it was of bra.s.s. It might have been said that she foresaw the destinies of her child, and infused into the mind of the young girl that masculine spirit which forms heroes and inspires martyrs.

Nature lent herself admirably to the task, and had endowed her pupil with an understanding even superior to her dazzling beauty. This beauty of her earlier years, of which she has herself traced the princ.i.p.al features with infinite ingenuousness in the more sprightly pages of her memoirs, was far from having gained the energy, the melancholy, and the majesty which she subsequently acquired from repressed love, high thought, and misfortune.

A tall and supple figure, flat shoulders, a prominent bust, raised by a free and strong respiration, a modest and most becoming demeanour, that carriage of the neck which bespeaks intrepidity, black and soft hair, blue eyes, which appeared brown in the depth of their reflection, a look which like her soul pa.s.sed rapidly from tenderness to energy, the nose of a Grecian statue, a rather large mouth, opened by a smile as well as speech, splendid teeth, a turned and well rounded chin gave to the oval of her features that voluptuous and feminine grace without which even beauty does not elicit love, a skin marbled with the animation of life, and veined by blood which the least impression sent mounting to her cheeks, a tone of voice which borrowed its vibrations from the deepest fibres of her heart, and which was deeply modulated to its finest movements (a precious gift, for the tone of the voice, which is the channel of emotion in a woman, is the medium of persuasion in the orator, and by both these t.i.tles nature owed her the charm of voice, and had bestowed it on her freely). Such at eighteen years of age was the portrait of this young girl, whom obscurity long kept in the shade, as if to prepare for life or death a soul more strong, and a victim more perfect.

III.

Her understanding lightened this beauteous frame-work with a precocious and flas.h.i.+ng intelligence, which was already inspiration. She acquired, as it were, the most difficult accomplishments even from looking into their very elements. What is taught to her age and s.e.x was not sufficient for her. The masculine education of men was a want and sport to her. Her powerful mind had need of all the means of thought for its due exercise. Theology, history, philosophy, music, painting, dancing, the exact sciences, chemistry, foreign tongues and learned languages, she learned all and desired more. She herself formed her ideas from all the rays which the obscurity of her condition allowed to penetrate into the laboratory of her father. She even secreted the books which the young apprentices brought and forgot for her in the workshop. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the English philosophers, fell into her hands; but her real food was Plutarch.

"I shall never forget," she said, "the Lent of 1763, during which I every day carried that book to church, instead of the book of prayers: it was from this moment that I date the impressions and ideas which made me republican, when I had never formed a thought on the subject." After Plutarch, Fenelon made the deepest impression upon her. Ta.s.so and the poets followed. Heroism, virtue, and love were destined to pour from their three vases at once into the soul of a woman destined to this triple palpitation of grand impressions.

In the midst of this fire in her soul her reason remained calm, and her purity spotless. She scarcely owns to the slightest and fugitive emotions of the heart and senses. "When as I read behind the screen which closed up my chamber from my father's apartment," she writes, "my breathing was at all loud, I felt a burning blush overspread my cheek, and my altered voice would have betrayed my agitation. I was Eucharis to Telemachus, and Herminia to Tancred. Yet, transformed as I was into them, I never thought myself of becoming anything to any body. I made no reflection that individually affected me; I sought nothing around me: it was a dream without awaking. Yet I remember having beheld with much agitation a young painter named Taboral, who called on my father occasionally. He was about twenty years of age, with a sweet voice, intelligent countenance, and blushed like a girl. When I heard him in the _atelier_, I had always a pencil or something to look after; but as his presence embarra.s.sed as much as it pleased me, I went away quicker than I entered, with a palpitating heart, a tremor that made me run and hide myself in my little room."

Although her mother was very pious, she did not forbid her daughter from reading. She wished to inspire her with religion, and not enforce it upon her. Full of good sense and toleration, she left her with confidence to her reason, and sought neither to repress nor dry up the sap which would hereafter produce its fruit in her heart. A servile, not voluntary religion, appeared to her degradation and slavery which G.o.d could not accept as a tribute worthy of him. The pensive mind of her daughter naturally tended towards the great objects of eternal happiness or misery, and she was sure, at an earlier age than any other, to plunge deeply into their mysteries. The reign of sentiment began in her through the love of G.o.d. The sublime delirium of her pious contemplations embellished and preserved the first years of her youth, composed the rest by her philosophy, and seemed as if it must preserve her for ever from the tempests of pa.s.sion. Her devotion was ardent; it took the tints of her soul, and she aspired to the cloister, and dreamed of martyrdom.

Entering a convent, she found there propitious moments, surrendering her thoughts to mysticism and her heart to first friends.h.i.+ps. The monotonous regularity of this life gently soothed the activity of her meditations.

In the hours of relaxation she did not play with her companions, but retired beneath some tree to read and muse. As sensitive as Rousseau to the beauty of foliage, the rustling of the gra.s.s, the odour of the herbs, she admired the hand of G.o.d, and kissed it in his works.

Overflowing with grat.i.tude and inward delight, she went to adore him at church. There the sonorous organ's lengthened peal, uniting with the voices of the youthful nuns, completed the excess of her ecstacy. The Catholic religion has every mysterious fascination for the senses, and pleasure for the imagination. A novice took the veil during her residence in the convent. Her presentation at the entrance, her white veil, her crown of roses, the sweet and soothing hymns which directed her from earth to heaven, the mortuary cloth cast over her youthful and buried beauty, and over her palpitating heart, made the young artist shudder, and overwhelmed her with tears. Her destiny opened to her the image of great sacrifices, and she felt within herself by antic.i.p.ation all the courage and the suffering.

IV.

The charm and custom of these religious feelings were never effaced from her mind. Philosophy, which soon became her wors.h.i.+p, dissipated her faith, but left the impression it had created. She could not a.s.sist at the ceremonies of a wors.h.i.+p whose mysteries her reason had repudiated, without feeling their attraction and respect. The sight of weak men united to adore and pray to the Father of the human race affected her sensibly. The music raised her to the skies. She quitted these Christian temples happier and better; so much are the recollections of infancy reflected and prolonged even in the most troubled existence.

This impa.s.sioned taste for infinity and pious sentiment continued their influences over her after her return to her father's house. "My father's house had not," she writes, "the solitary tranquillity of the convent, still plenty of air, and a wide s.p.a.ce on the roof of our house near the _Pont Neuf_, were before my dreamy and romantic imagination. How many times from my window, which looked northward, have I contemplated with emotions the vast deserts of heaven, its glorious azure vault, so splendidly framed from the blue dawn of morning, behind the _Pont-du-Change_, until the golden sunset, when the glorious purple faded away behind the trees of the Champs Elysees and the houses of Chaillot. I did not fail thus to employ some moments at the close of a fine day; and quiet tears frequently stole deliciously from my eyes, whilst my heart, throbbing with an inexpressible sentiment, happy thus to beat, and grateful to exist, offered to the Being of beings a homage pure and worthy of him."

Alas! when she wrote these lines, she no longer saw but in her mind that narrow strip of the heaven of Paris, and the remembrance of those glorious evenings only illumined with a fugitive gleam the walls of her dungeon.

V.

But she was then happy, between her aunt Angelique and her mother, in what she calls the beautiful quarter of the Isle Saint Louis. On these straight quays, on this tranquil bank, she took the air on summer evenings, watching the graceful course of the river, and the distant landscape. In the morning she traversed these quays with holy zeal, in order to go to church, and that she might not meet in this lone road any thing to distract her attention. Her father, who liked her lofty studies, and was intoxicated at his daughter's success, was still desirous of initiating her in his own craft, and made her begin to engrave. She learned to handle the _burin_, and succeeded in this as in every thing else. As yet she did not derive any salary from it; but at the fete of her grandfather and grandmother, she presented to them as her offering, sometimes a head, which she had applied herself to execute for this express purpose, sometimes a small bra.s.s plate, highly polished, on which she had engraved emblems or flowers; and they in return gave her ornaments or something for her toilette, for which she confesses always to have been anxious.

This taste, natural to her age and s.e.x, did not, however, distract her from the more humble domestic duties. She was not ashamed, after appearing on Sundays at church, or walking out elegantly dressed, to put on during the week a cotton gown, and go to market with her mother. She used even to go out to shops in their neighbourhood to buy parsley or salad, which had been forgotten. Although she felt herself somewhat humiliated by these domestic cares, which brought her down from the eminence of her Plutarch, and her visionary wanderings, she combined so much grace, and so much natural dignity, that the fruit-woman used to take pleasure in serving her before her other customers; and the first comers took no offence at this preference. This young girl, this future Helose of the eighteenth century, who read serious books, who expounded the circles of the celestial globe, handled the pencil and _burin_, and in whose soul-aspiring thoughts and impa.s.sioned feelings already found s.p.a.ce, was often called into the kitchen to prepare the vegetables for dinner. This mixture of serious shades, elegant research, and domestic occupations, ordered and sensibly mingled by her mother's sagacity, seemed to prepare her already for the vicissitudes of fortune, and in after days helped her to support them. It was Rousseau at Charmettes piling up the woodstack of Madame de Warens with the hand which was to write the _Contrat Social_, or Philopoemen chopping his wood.

VI.

From the retirement of such secluded life, she sometimes perceived the higher world which shone above her. The lights which displayed to her this great world offended, more than they dazzled, her sight. The pride of this aristocratic society, which saw without valuing her, weighed on her sensitive mind--a society in which her position was not a.s.signed to her, seemed badly framed. It was less envy than justice that revolted in her. Superior beings have their places marked out by nature, and every thing that keeps them from occupying them, seems to them an usurpation.

They find society frequently the reverse of nature, and take their revenge by despising it: from this arises the hatred of genius against power. Genius dreams of an order of things, in which the ranks should be marked out by nature and virtue; whilst in reality they are almost always derived from birth--that blind allotment of fate. There are few great minds which do not feel in their earliest progress the persecution of fortune, and who do not begin by an internal revolt against society.

They are only quieted by their own discouragement. Some are resigned from a more lofty feeling to the place which G.o.d a.s.signs to them. To put up with the world humbly is still more beautiful than to control it.

This is the very acme of virtue. Religion leads to it in a day; philosophy only conducts to it by a lengthened life, misery, or death.

These are days when the most elevated place in the world is a scaffold.

VII.

The young maiden once conducted by her grandmother to an aristocratic house, of which her humble parents were _free_, was deeply hurt at the tone of condescending superiority with which her grandmother and herself were treated. "My pride took alarm," she writes, "my blood boiled more than usual, and I blushed violently. I no longer inquired of myself why this lady was seated on a sofa, and my grandmother on a low stool; but my feelings led to such reflection, and I saw the end of the visit with satisfaction as if a weight was taken off my mind."

Another time she was taken to pa.s.s eight days at Versailles, in the palace of that king and queen whose throne she was one day to sap.

Lodged in the attics with one of the female domestics of the Chateau, she was a close observer of this royal luxury, which she believed was paid for by the misery of the people, and that grandeur of things founded on the servility of courtiers. The lavishly spread tables, the walks, the play, presentations--all pa.s.sed before her eyes in the pomp and vanity of the world. These ceremonious details of power were repugnant to her mind, which fed on philosophy, truth, liberty, and the virtue of the olden time. The obscure names, the humble attire, of the relatives who took her to see all this, only procured for her mere pa.s.sing looks and a few words, which meant more protection than favour.

The feeling that her youth, beauty, and merit, were unperceived by this crowd, who only adored favour or etiquette, oppressed her mind. The philosophy, natural pride, imagination, and fixedness of her soul were all wounded during this sojourn. "I preferred," she says, "the statues in the gardens to the personages of the palace." And her mother inquiring if she were pleased with her visit--"Yes," was her reply, "if it be soon ended; for else, in a few more days I shall so much detest all the persons I see, that I should not know what to do with my hatred." "What harm have they done you?" inquired her mother. "To make me feel injustice, and look upon absurdity." As she contemplated these splendours of the despotism of Louis XIV., which were drooping into corruption, she thought of Athens, but forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of Aristides, the condemnation of Phocion. "I did not then foresee," she writes, in melancholy mood, as she pens these lines--"that destiny reserved me to be the witness of crimes such as those of which they were the victims, and to partic.i.p.ate in the glory of their martyrs, after having professed their principles."

Thus, the imagination, character, and studies of this girl prepared her, unknown to herself, for the republic. Her religion alone, then so powerful over her, restrained her within the bounds of that resignation which submits the thoughts to the will of G.o.d. But philosophy became her creed, and this creed formed a portion of her politics. The emanc.i.p.ation of the people united itself in her mind with the emanc.i.p.ation of ideas.

She believed, by overturning thrones, that she was working for man; and, by overthrowing altars, that she was labouring for G.o.d. Such is the confession which she herself made of her change.

VIII.

However, the young girl had already attracted many suitors for her hand.

Her father wished to marry her in the cla.s.s to which he himself belonged. He loved, esteemed commerce, because he considered it the source of wealth. His daughter despised it because it was, in her eyes, the source of avarice and the food of cupidity. Men in this condition of life were repugnant to her. She desired in a husband ideas and feelings sympathising with her own. Her ideal was a soul and not a fortune.

"Brought up from my infancy in connexion with the great men of all ages, familiar with lofty ideas and ill.u.s.trious examples--had I lived with Plato, with all the philosophers, all the poets, all the politicians of antiquity, merely to unite myself with a shopkeeper, who would neither appreciate nor feel any thing as I did?"

She who wrote these lines was at that moment demanded in marriage of her parents by a rich butcher of the neighbourhood. She refused every offer.

"I will not descend from the world of my n.o.ble chimeras," she replied to the incessant remonstrances of her father; "what I want is not a position but a mind. I will die single rather than prost.i.tute my own mind in an union with a being with whom I have no sympathies."

Deprived of her mother by an early death, alone in the house of a father where disorder was the consequence of a second _amour_, melancholy gained possession of her mind, though it did not overcome it. She became more collected and reserved, in order to strengthen her feelings against isolation and misfortune. The perusal of the _Helose_ of Rousseau, which was lent to her about that time, made on her heart the same impression that Plutarch had made on her mind. Plutarch had shown her liberty; Rousseau made her dream of happiness: the one fortified, the other weakened her. She found the earnest desire of pouring forth her feelings. Melancholy was her rigid muse. She began to write, in order to console herself in the nurture of her own thoughts. Without any intention of becoming an auth.o.r.ess, she acquired by these solitary trials that eloquence with which she subsequently animated her friends.

IX.

Thus gradually ripened this patient and resolute mind, working on towards its destiny, when she believed she had found the man of the olden time of whom she had so long dreamed. This man was Roland de la Platiere.

He was introduced to her by one of her early friends, married at Amiens, where Roland then carried on the functions of inspector of manufactures.

"You will receive this letter," wrote her friend, "by the hand of the philosopher of whom I have spoken to you already, M. Roland, an enlightened man, of antique manners; without reproach, except for his pa.s.sion for the ancients, his contempt of his age, and his too high estimation of his own virtue. This portrait," she adds, "was just and well depicted. I saw a man nearly fifty years of age, tall, careless in his att.i.tude, with that kind of awkwardness which a solitary life always produces; but his manners were easy and winning, and without possessing the elegance of the world, they united the politeness of the well-bred man to the seriousness of the philosopher. He was very thin, with a complexion much tanned; his brow, already covered by very little hair, and very broad, did not detract from his regular but unattractive features. He had, however, a pleasing smile, and his features an animated play, which gave them a totally different appearance when he was excited in speaking or listening. His voice was manly, his mode of speech brief, like a man with shortened breath; his conversation, full of matter, because his head was full of ideas, occupied the mind more than it flattered the ear. His language was sometimes striking, but harsh and inharmonious. This charm of the voice is a gift very rare, and most powerful over the senses," she adds, "and does not merely depend on the quality of the sound, but equally upon that delicate sensibility which varies the expression by modifying the accent." This is enough to a.s.sure us that Roland had not this charming gift.

X.

Roland, born of an honest tradesman's family, which had held magisterial offices and a.s.serted claims to n.o.bility, was the youngest of five brothers, and intended for the church. To avoid this destiny, which disgusted him, he fled from his father's roof at nineteen, and went to Nantes. Procuring a situation with a s.h.i.+p-builder, he was about to embark for India in trade, when an illness at the moment he was to embark prevented him. One of his relations, a superintendent of a factory, received him at Rouen, and gave him a situation in his office.

This house, animated by the spirit of Turgot, made experiments in the details of its business with all the sciences, and by political economy with the loftiest problems of governments. It was peopled by philosophers, amongst whom Roland distinguished himself, and the government sent him to Italy to watch the progress of commerce there.

He left his young friend with reluctance, and forwarded to her regularly scientific letters, intended as notes to the work which he proposed to write on Italy--letters in which the sentiment that displayed itself beneath science, more resembled the studies of a philosopher than the conversations of a lover.

On his return she saw in him a friend. His age, gravity, manners, laborious habits, made her consider him as a sage who existed solely on his reason. In the union they contemplated, and which less resembled love, than the ancient a.s.sociations of the days of Socrates and Plato--the one sought a disciple rather than a wife, and the other married a master rather than a husband. M. Roland returned to Amiens, and thence wrote to the father to demand his daughter's hand, which was bluntly denied to him. He feared in Roland, whose austerity displeased him, a censor for himself, and a tyrant for his child. Informed of her father's refusal, she grew indignant, and went to a convent dest.i.tute of every thing. There she lived on the coa.r.s.est food, prepared by her own hands. She plunged into deep study, and strengthened her heart against adversity. _She revenged herself by deserving the happiness of a lot which was not accorded to her_. In the evening she visited her friends; in the day an hour's walk in a garden surrounded with high walls. That feeling of strength which steels against fate--that melancholy which softens the soul, and feeds it on its own sensibility,--helped her to pa.s.s long winter months in her voluntary captivity.

A feeling of internal bitterness, however, poisoned even this sacrifice.

She said to herself that this sensibility was not recompensed. She had flattered herself that M. Roland, on learning of her resolution and retreat, would hasten to take her from this convent and unite their destinies. Time pa.s.sed on. Roland came not, and scarcely wrote. At the end of six months he arrived, and was again deeply enamoured on seeing his beloved behind a grating. He resolved on offering her his hand, which she accepted. However, so much calculation, hesitation, and coldness had dissipated the little illusion which the young captive had left, and reduced her feelings to deep esteem. She devoted rather than gave herself. It appeared to her sublime to immolate herself for the happiness of a worthy man; and she consummated this sacrifice with all the seriousness of reason and without a grain of heartfelt enthusiasm.

Her marriage was to her an act of virtue, which she performed, not because it was agreeable to her, but because she deemed it sublime.

The pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau is seen again at this decisive moment of her existence. The marriage of Madame Roland is a palpable imitation of that of Helose with M. de Volmar. But the bitterness of reality was not slow in developing itself beneath the heroism of her devotion. "By dint," she herself says, "of occupying myself with the happiness of the man with whom I was a.s.sociated, I felt that something was wanting to my own. I have not for a moment ceased to see in my husband one of the most estimable persons that exists, and to whom it was an honour to me to belong; but I often felt that similarity was wanting between us,--that the ascendency of a dominating temper, united to that of twenty years more of age, made one of these superiorities too much. If we lived in solitude, I had sometimes very painful hours to pa.s.s: if we went into the world, I was liked by persons, some one of whom I was fearful might affect me too closely. I plunged into my husband's occupations, became his copying clerk, corrected his proofs, and fulfilled the task with an unrepining humility, which contrasted strongly with a spirit as free and tried as mine. But this humility proceeded from my heart: I respected my husband so much, that I always liked to suppose that he was superior to myself. I had such a dread of seeing a shade over his countenance, he was so tenacious of his own opinions, that it was a long time before I ventured to contradict him.

To this labour I joined that of my house; and observing that his delicate health could not endure every kind of diet, I always prepared his meals with my own hands. I remained with him four years at Amiens, and became there a mother and nurse. We worked together at the _Encyclopedie Nouvelle_, in which the articles relative to commerce had been confided to him. We only quitted this occupation for our walks in the vicinity of the town."

Roland, dictatorial and exacting, had insisted from the beginning of their marriage, that his wife should refrain from seeing her young and attached friends whom she had loved in the convent, and who lived at Amiens. He dreaded the least partic.i.p.ation of affection. His prudence outstepped the bounds of reason. To an union as solemn as marriage, the pleasure of friends.h.i.+p was necessary. This tyranny of an exclusive feeling was not compensated by love. Roland demanded every thing from his wife's compliance. If there was no faltering in her conduct, still she felt these sacrifices, and joyed over the accomplishment of her duties as the stoic enjoys his sufferings.

XI.