er to the National Assembly. She
was indefatigable in penning stirring letters and petitions to the
Jacobin societies in the different departments. A staunch friend
of Robespierre, she did much to protect him in his first efforts
in public. On returning home, after her husband had completed his
mission, she was no longer the same quiet, contented, submissive
woman; she longed for activity in the midst of excitement.

With the meeting of the Legislative Assembly, in 1791, the group of
men sent up from the Gironde immediately became the leaders, and when
Mme. Roland returned to Paris she became the centre of this circle,
exhorting and stimulating, advising and ordering. Through her friend
Brissot, who was all-powerful in the Assembly, about February,
1792, as leader of the Girondists, who were looking for men not yet
practically involved in politics, but qualified by experience for
political life, her husband was made minister of the interior, and in
March, 1792, he and his wife entered upon their duties. She was a
keen reader of human nature, at first glance giving her husband a
penetrating and generally truthful judgment of men. Being able to
comprehend the temperaments of the ministers, she managed them with
inimitable tact. Although all the Girondist ministers were supposed
friends, she readily saw how difficult it would be for a small
group of men with the same principles to act in concert. Seeing the
political machine in motion at close range, she lost some of her
enthusiasm for revolutionary leaders; above all, she recognized the
need of a great leader. As wife of the minister, installed in the
ministerial residence with no other woman present, she gave two
dinners weekly to her husband's colleagues, to the members of the
Assembly, and to political friends.

Her husband, the French Quaker of the Revolution, in all his
simplicity of dress and honesty, was being constantly duped by the
apparent good nature and sincerity of the king, against whom his wife
was constantly warning him. It was she who, convinced of the king's
duplicity and the need of a safeguard for the country, originated the
plan of a federate camp of twenty thousand men to protect Paris when
war had been declared against Austria. It was she who wrote a letter
to the king in the name of the council, but sent in Roland's own name,
imploring him not to arouse the mistrust of the nation by constantly
betraying his suspicion of it, but to show his love b