of one short year to become mortal enemies. Amongst those signalised by Madame Roland was left out one who, destined to be borne higher than any on the revolutionary tide, sat as yet inconspicuously on the back benches of the Assembly. Robespierre belonged to that small section of the extreme Left at whom the Jupiter Tonans of the Constituent Assembly once hurled his admonition of "Silence, you thirty votes." But Mirabeau had scanned that impassive figure—cadaverous in its pallor, sternly pressing forward in one straight line, deviating neither to the right nor left—and had uttered the memorable words: "That man will go far, for he believes every word he says."
Now began the potent influence which Madame Roland exercised on the Revolution. She was no sooner settled on the third floor of the Rue Guénégaud, than her house became the centre of a most advanced political group. Dominant female figure of her time though she was, 1791 was the year in which women played the most marked part in the Revolution. The philosophical disquisitions of the salons had not yet been overborne by the martial enthusiasm of 1792 and the gathering Terror of 1793. The social life of Paris was still in its fullest bloom, though the salons of 1791 differed entirely from those famous gatherings presided over by such female wits as Madame du Deffand and Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse; sparkling literary anecdote and philosophical speculations had been superseded by political and social questions. Each shade of opinion had its appropriate meeting-place. Royalism was represented in the splendid mansion of the Princesse de Lamballe. The focus of the Constitutionalists was at the salon of the youthful Madame de Staël, already in her twenty-fifth rear a leading political power.
