embly,
without a friend, he attacked all parties alike, and was by all
disregarded. But he possessed an indomitable energy, and unwavering
fixedness of purpose, a profound contempt for luxury and wealth, and a
stoical indifference to reputation and to personal indulgence, which
secured to him more and more of an ascendency, until, at the name of
Robespierre, all France trembled. This young man, silent and moody,
appeared with others in the saloon of Madame Roland. She was struck
with his singularity, and impressed with an instinctive consciousness
of his peculiar genius. He was captivated by those charms of
conversation in which Madame Roland was unrivaled. Silently--for he
had no conversational powers--he lingered around her chair, treasured
up her spontaneous tropes and metaphors, and absorbed her sentiments.
He had a clear perception of the state of the times, was perhaps a
sincere patriot, and had no ties of friendship, no scruples of
conscience, no instincts of mercy, to turn him aside from any measures
of blood or woe which might accomplish his plans.

[Illustration: ROBESPIERRE.]

Though the Girondists and the Jacobins were the two great parties now
contending in the tumultuous arena of French revolution, there still
remained the enfeebled and broken remains of the court party, with
their insulted and humiliated king at their head, and also numerous
cliques and minor divisions of those struggling for power. At the
political evening reunions in the saloon of Madame Roland, she was
invariably present, not as a prominent actor in the scenes, taking a
conspicuous part in the social debates, but as a quiet and modest
lady, of well-known intellectual supremacy, whose active mind took the
liveliest interest in the agitations of the hour. The influence she
exerted was the polished, refined, attractive influence of an
accomplished woman, who moved in her own appropriate sphere. She made
no Amazonian speeches. She mingled not with men in the clamor of
debate. With an invisible hand she gently and winningly touched the
springs of action in other hearts. With feminine conversational
eloquence, she threw out sagacious suggestions, which others eagerly
adopted, and advocated, and carried into vigorous execution. She did
no violence to that delicacy of perception which is woman's tower and
strength. She moved not from that sphere where woman reigns so
resistlessly, and dreamed not of laying aside the graceful and
polished we