acquaintance that we
might excite each other to great measures." One knows what the {66}
Revolution meant by that expression: great measures. Madame Roland
became furious. She wanted a freedom of the press without check or
limit. She was angry because Marat's newspapers were destroyed by the
satellites of Lafayette. "It is a cruel thing to think of," she
exclaims, "but it becomes every day more evident that peace means
retrogression, and that we can only be regenerated by blood."

Her hatred includes both Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. June 25,
1791, she writes: "It appears to me that the King ought to be
sequestered and his wife impeached." And on July 1: "The King has sunk
to the lowest depths of degradation; his trick has exposed him
completely, and he inspires nothing but contempt. His name, his
portrait, and his arms have been effaced everywhere. Notaries have
been obliged to take down the escutcheons marked with a flower-de-luce
which served to designate their houses. He is called nothing but Louis
the False, or the great hog. Caricatures of every sort represent him
under emblems which, though not the most odious, are the most suitable
to nourish and augment popular disdain. The people tend of their own
accord to all that can express this sentiment, and it is impossible
that they should ever again be willing to see seated on the throne a
being they despise so completely."

Things did not go fast enough to suit Madame Roland's furious hatred.
The popular gathering in the Champ-de-Mars, whose aim was to bring
about {67} the deposition of the King, was forcibly dispersed on July
17. With six exceptions, all the deputies who had belonged either to
the Jacobin Club or that of the Cordeliers, left them on account of
their demand that Louis XVI. should be brought to trial. The time for
great measures, to use Madame Roland's expression, had not yet arrived.
The ardent democrat laments it. "I cannot describe our situation to
you," she writes at this moment of the revolutionary recoil; "I feel
environed by a silent horror; my heart grows steadfast in a mournful
and solemn silence, ready to sacrifice all rather than cease to defend
principles, but not knowing the moment when they can triumph, and
forming no resolution but that of giving a great example."

The mission which had kept Roland in Paris for seven months being
ended, the discouraged pair returned to their province in September.
After stopping a