Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MADAME ROLAND AT THE CONCIERGERIE.
From a painting by Jules Goupil, now in the museum of Amboise.
MADAME ROLAND
A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY
PREFACE
Some eight years ago I undertook a study of thewomen of the French Revolution, my objectbeing merely to satisfy myself as to the value oftheir public services in that period. In the courseof my studies I became particularly interested inMadame Roland, and when five years ago I foundmyself in Paris for an extended period, I decidedto use my leisure in making a more careful investigationof her life and times than I had been able todo in America. The result of that study is condensedin this volume.
Much of the material used in preparing the bookis new to the public. The chapter on MademoisellePhlipon’s relations with M. Roland and of theirmarriage has been written from unpublished letters,and presents a very different view of that affairfrom that which her biographers have hitherto given,and from that which she herself gives in her Memoirs.The story of her seeking a title with its privileges inParis in 1784 has never before been told, the lettersin which the details of her search are given neverhaving been published. Those of her biographerswho have had access to these letters have been tooviiiardent republicans, or too passionate admirers of theirheroine, to dwell on an episode of her career whichseemed to them inconsistent with her later life.
The manuscripts of the letters from which thesechapters have been written are now in the BibliothèqueNationale of Paris. They were given to thelibrary in 1888, by Madame Faugère, the widowof M. P. Faugère, to whom they had been given byMadame Champagneux, only daughter of MadameRoland, that he might prepare a satisfactory editionof her mother’s works, and write a life of her father.M. Faugère finished his edition of Madame Roland’swritings, but he died before completing his life ofM. Roland.
Much of