he careful dress
of her too dear Buzot.

Madame Roland, who had just completed her thirty-eighth year, was still
very charming. Lemontey thus paints her portrait as she appeared at
this epoch: "Her eyes and hair were remarkably {92} beautiful; her
delicate complexion had a freshness and color which made her look
singularly young. At the beginning of her husband's ministry she had
lost nothing of her air of youth and simplicity; her husband resembled
a Quaker whose daughter she might have been, and her child hovered
round her with hair floating to her waist; one might have thought them
natives of Pennsylvania transported to the drawing-room of M. de
Calonne."

Count Beugnot, who was the companion of her captivity in the
Conciergerie, is severe on the female politician, but he admires the
pretty woman. "Her figure was graceful," he says, "and her hands
perfectly modelled. Her glance was expressive, and even in repose her
face had something noble and subtly attractive in it. One surmised her
wit without needing to hear her speak, but no woman whom I have ever
listened to, spoke with more purity and elegance. She must have owed
her faculty of giving to French a rhythm and cadence veritably new, to
her familiar knowledge of Italian. The harmony of her voice was still
further heightened by graceful and appropriate gestures and the
expression of her eyes, which grew animated in conversation. I daily
experienced new charm in listening to her, less on account of what she
said than because of the magic of her delivery."

If Madame Roland, a prisoner, crushed by misfortune, on the very
threshold of the scaffold, after so many sleepless nights and so many
tears, had {93} preserved such attractions, what a charm must she not
have exercised at the Ministry of the Interior, when hope and pride
illumined her beautiful face, and when, after appearing to her
electrified adorers as the Muse of the new regime, the magician, the
Circe of the Revolution, she touched so profoundly their minds and
hearts! She who knew so well how to love and how to hate, who felt so
keenly, who had so much energy, so much vigor, what fascination must
she not have exerted with her glance of fire, her long black tresses,
her more than ornate eloquence, her inspired, lyric, enthusiastic
bearing, and that consummate art which, according to the remark of
Fontanes, made one believe that in her everything was the work of
nature!

{94}

IX.

D