few days in Lyons, in order to found a popular society
affiliated to the Jacobins of the capital, they went to spend the
remainder of the autumn at their country place, the Close of Platiere.
But calm and silence no longer suited Madame Roland. Repose
exasperated her. She missed the struggle and the emotions of
revolutionary Paris, of which she had said: "One lives ten years here
in twenty-four hours; events and affections blend with and succeed each
other with singular rapidity; no such great events ever occupied minds."

The pleasure of seeing her daughter again was not {68} enough to
compensate her for the chagrin of having parted from Buzot. Just as
she was despairing at the thought of sinking back into all the nullity
of the province, as she expresses it, the news came that the inspectors
of agriculture had been suppressed. Roland, no longer an official,
deliberated with his wife as to their next step. His own inclination
was to settle permanently in the country and devote himself to
agricultural labors which would surely and safely augment his fortune.
But his wife was by no means of the same mind. She must see her dear
Buzot again at any cost. She flattered the self-love of her
unsuspecting spouse, and persuaded him that Paris was the sole theatre
worthy of the virtuous Roland. Roland allowed himself to be convinced.
His wife, no longer mistress of herself, was drawn into the Parisian
abyss as by an irresistible force. And yet was it not she who had
proposed to herself this ideal, so easily to have been realized? "I
have never imagined anything more desirable than a life divided between
domestic cares and those of agriculture, spent on a healthy and fertile
farm, with a little family where the example of its heads and common
labor maintain attachment, peace, and freedom." Was it not she who had
uttered this profoundly true thought: "I see neither pleasure nor
happiness except in the reunion of that which charms the heart as well
as the senses, and costs no regrets"? In the most beautiful days of
her youth had she not written: "There was a time when I was never
content {69} except when I had a book or a pen in my hand; at present I
am as well satisfied when I have made a shirt for my father or added up
an account of expenses as if I had read something profound. I do not
care at all to be learned; I want to be good and happy; that is my
chief business. What is necessary but good, honest common sense?"