ROHILKHAND 94 ROLAND tween the cardinal and a fair adventuress personating the queen. On the discovery of the fraud, Rohan was summoned be- fore the king, answered vaguely and un- satisfactorily, and was arrested and im- prisoned in the Bastile, Aug. 15, 1785. After a year's proceedings he was ac- quitted and released, but at the same time exiled from the court, and deprived of his grand-almonership. He was deputy to the States-General in 1789; was after- ward accused of various disloyal intrigues and maladministration; gave up his see in 1801, and died in 1803. ROHILKHAND, or ROHILCTJND, a division of the provinces of Agra and Oude in British India; area, 10,885 square miles; pop. about 5,345,000. The surface is a plain, with a gradual slope S., in which direction its principal streams, Ramganga, Deoha, and others, flow to the Ganges. It takes its name from the Ro- hillas, an Afghan tribe, who gained pos- session of it early in the 18th century. ROHLFS, MRS. See Green, Anna Katherine. ROLAND (Italian, Orlando; Spanish, Roldan), the name of the most prominent hero in the Charlemagne legend. Unlike most legendary heroes, Roland is a figure in history as well as in poetry and fable. All that we know of him is contained in one line of Eginhard's "Vita Karoli," chap, ix., and that simply records his name, Hruodlandus, his rank of prefect or warden of the march of Brittany, and his death at the hands of the Gascons in a valley of the Pyrenees. The oldest form in which we have the '/Chanson de Roland" is that of the MS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, written presumably toward the end of the 12th century; but this is evidently by no means its oldest form as a consecutive poem. Besides the Oxford MS. there are half a dozen others ranging from the 13th to the 16th century. The differences be- tween the earlier and later are significant. In the Oxford MS., which is one of the little pocket copies carried by the jon- gleurs, the assonant rhyme (that which disregards the consonants and depends on the accented vowel) is maintained throughout, the same assonance being kept up to the end of each break or para- graph. In the later MSS. the assonant is turned into the full consonant rhyme, and the poem expanded to twice or thrice its former length. The first shape is the poem as sung; the second as adapted for readers when the minstrel was no longer the sole vehicle, for poetry and reading was becoming a common accomplishment. A very close German version, thf "Ruo- landes Liet," shows that early in the 12th century the chanson had passed out of its native country and language; and it is almost as closely followed in the Ice- landic "Karlamagnus Saga" of the 13th. The "Chanson de Roland" is the founda- tion of the Charlemagne legend. Charles's wars and quarrels with his vassals would no doubt of themselves have furnished themes for the jongleurs, but the legend, culminating in the Morgante of Pulci and the Orlandos of Boiardo and Ariosto, is the outcome of the story of Roland and Roncesvalles. ■ ROLAND, MANON JEANNE PHILI- PON, MADAME, wife of Jean Marie and herself the spirit of the Girondin party; the daughter of a Paris engraver; born in that city, March 17, 1754. She was the only child of nine, left to the MADAME ROLAND care of her father, who provided her with masters regardless of expense and gave her a brilliant education; the best grounds for which existed in her native talents, her firm spirit, her personal beauty, and her undoubted virtues. " Antiquities, her- aldry, philosophy, and, among other books, the Bible, made up her earliest studies; her favorite authors, however, were Plu- tarch, Tacitus, Montaigne, and Rousseau. She became the wife of Roland in 1781. She became the sharer in all his studies,
