Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/37

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MADAME ROLAND.
29

day. Looking into the lovely changeful eyes, they saw therein only the fire of high resolve; they gazed upon the perfect form, and remembered only that it was animated by the spirit of liberty; they clasped firmly the white shapely hands with no thought of their dainty beauty, but knowing only that they worked right earnestly in defense of their mutual rights. A common danger threatened, a common sympathy joined them, and the baser parts of their natures were hushed into silence before the nobler qualities of humanity evoked by the needs of the hour.

In September, the Rolands returned again to Lyons, but only for a few months, for M. Roland's office as Inspector of Manufactures having been annulled by a law of the Assembly, they decided to return at once to Paris, for the double purpose of obtaining greater facilities for the prosecution of his labor on the Encyclopaedia and of watching more closely the progress of events.