statistical and scientific articles for the
Encyclopedic. She made a _hortus siccus_ of the plants of Picardy.

In 1784 they removed to the family estate of Roland at Villefranche,
near Lyons. She had, in the course of her studies, acquired considerable
knowledge of medicine. There was no physician in that little community,
and she became the village doctor. Some of her experiences were quite
whimsical. A country-woman came several leagues, and offered her a horse
if she would save the life of her husband, whom a physician had given up
to die. She visited the sick man, and he recovered, but she had great
difficulty in resisting the importunities of his wife that she should
take the horse.

In 1784 they went to England, and in 1787 they made the tour of
Switzerland. Roland was elected member of the constitutional assembly
from Lyons, and they went to Paris.

I am compelled now to pass from the uneventful first ten years of her
married life with the single remark that, through them all, she was the
devoted wife and mother, the kind neighbor, and the most assiduous
student. But her mind bore, as on a mirror, prophetic, shadowy, and
pictured glimpses of those awful events which were marching out of
futurity toward France. Her letters written during this period show that
she gazed upon them with a prescient eye, and heard with keenest ear the
alarum of the legions which were gathering for attack. The young men of
Lyons, where she and her husband spent the Winters, gathered in her
parlors, and heard from the lips of this impassioned seeress of liberty
words which, in such formative periods of a nation's life, hasten events
with a power that seems like absolute physical force.

Her husband was chosen a member of the national assembly, and she went
with him again to Paris in 1791.

Here ends the peaceful period of her life. Here close upon her forever
the doors of home; and here open to her the doors of history, which too
often admits its guests only to immolate them in splendid chambers, as
it immolated her. From this time we miss the pure womanliness of her
character, in which she is so lovely, and see her imperial beauty and
her regal intellect in all their autocratic power, until that time when
her husband, home, child, power, and hope were all forever gone, and her
womanhood again shone out, like a mellow and beauteous sunset, when
life's day drew near its close.

Nothing had become more certain than that the monarc