he had to
contend against, but the new party headed by these dissenting
Girondists, who were savage with a thirst for human blood.

The Rolands were accused of trying to establish an aristocracy of
talent on the ruins of a monarchical aristocracy; their semi-weekly
dinners were represented as sumptuous feasts where, like a new
Circe, Madame Roland strove to corrupt the unfortunates who partook
of her banquets.

She was called before the Convention December 7th, to listen to the
charges against her; her eloquence won the admiration of even her
enemies. But her safety was in danger, and she was obliged to sleep
with a pistol under her pillow for fear of the outrages of
desperadoes who lurked about her house.

The strife between the two parties grew more bitter, and the
downfall of Roland had been determined upon by his savage opponents,
once his fawning friends and colleagues. An attempt was made to
arrest Roland by six armed men, deputies of the Insurrectionists. He
replied that he did not recognize their authority, and refused to
follow them. Madame Roland at once set off for the Tuileries, where
the Insurrectionists, more cruel and blood-thirsty than the deposed
Monarchists, were in session. At the door the sentinels forbade her
to enter. Obliged to return home without having been enabled to
address the Convention, as she hoped to do, she found that her
husband had taken refuge in the house of a friend.

She sought him out, embraced him, and returned once more to the
Tuileries in another vain hope of arousing their former friends to
resolute action. But she was obliged to return to her apartment in
the evening, without having accomplished anything. Late that night
she was torn from her child and her home, and cast into the Prison
of the Abbaye, from which she was set at liberty a month later, and
wild with happiness, allowed to reach her own door; but as she
attempted to enter she was again seized and conveyed to the Prison
of Sainte Pelagie. The respite had only been given in malice to
render her second incarceration more bitter.

Under the same roof were murderers and women of the town; and in the
morning, when the cell-doors were opened, the scum of the earth, as
one authority tells us, collected in the corridor. On each side of
this corridor (the only place where the prisoners could take
exercise) were small cells, and one of these, separated only by thin
walls from the most depraved beings, whose vile langu