our knowledge and our opinions into community."

On this head, M. Dauban makes the very just remark: "A community in
which there is no equilibrium of forces, becomes a sort of omnipotence
for the strongest." The omnipotence in this case was not on the side
of the beard, but of Madame Roland. The wife wrote, thought, and acted
for her husband. It was she who drew up his circulars and reports to
the National Assembly. "My husband," she tells us, "had nothing to
lose in passing through my hands. Roland, without me, would have been
none the less a good administrator; with me, he has made more
sensation, because I imparted to my writings {89} that mixture of force
and sweetness, that authority of reason and charm of sentiment, which
perhaps belongs only to a sensitive woman, endowed with sound
understanding." And the "virtuous" Roland took pride in the
magnificent phrases which he naively believed to be the expression of
his own genius, when his wife had saved him not merely the trouble of
writing, but even of thinking. "He often ended," she says, "by
persuading himself that he had really been in a good vein when he had
written such or such a passage which proceeded from my pen."

Madame Roland had at her orders a man of letters, salaried by the
Ministry of the Interior, who was the official defender of the minister
and his policy. "It had been felt," she tells us, "that it was needful
to counteract the influence of the court, the aristocracy, the civil
list and their journals, by popular instructions to which great
publicity should be given. A journal posted up in public places seemed
to be the proper thing, and a wise and enlightened man had to be found
for its editor." This wise and enlightened man was Louvet, the author
of the _Amours de Faublas_. He was the writer whom Madame Roland
esteemed most capable of instructing and of moralizing the masses.
"Men of letters and persons of taste," she says, "know his charming
romances, in which the graces of imagination are allied to lightness of
style, a philosophical tone, and the salt of criticism. He has proved
that his skilful hand could alternately shake the bells of folly, hold
the burin of history, and {90} launch the thunderbolts of eloquence.
Courageous as a lion, simple as a child, a sensible man, a good
citizen, a vigorous writer, he could make Catiline tremble from the
tribune, dine with the Graces, and sup with Bachaumont."

Madame Roland admired the au