are not able to ensure its success in our day." In the same spirit she wrote in August, "Fate, by giving us life at the period of new-born liberty, has assigned us the place of the forlorn hope of an army, bound to fight, and prepare its victory. It behoves us to do our task well, and, so prepare the happiness of future generations. For the rest, we find our own in such a glorious task. If one must struggle, is it not better to do so for the felicity of a whole nation than on one's own account? What, indeed, is the life of the sage under present conditions but a perpetual struggle with passions and prejudices?"
Numbers of the Republican addresses sent to the Assembly from the country were in reality composed under Madame Roland's inspiration at Paris. She was equally indefatigable in penning stirring missives to the Jacobin societies in the departments—offshoots of the Société Mère. How necessary it was to keep the Provinces informed of the current events and opinions in Paris we learn from Arthur Young, who, passing through some of the chief provincial towns at such a crisis, says he might almost as soon have asked for a white elephant as for a newspaper, even at the most frequented cafés.
A coup d'état of the Constitutionalists seemed imminent, and the days of the Jacobin Club to be numbered, as a detachment of soldiers, marching through the Rue St. Honoré, threatened to demolish the building, throwing the patriots therein assembled into fear and confusion. So great was the panic that one excitable member of the stronger sex jumped into the ladies' gallery, and was put to shame by Madame Roland, who "obliged him to make his exit after the fashion of his entrance." Soldiers placed to guard the entrance stopped patriots
