new Ministry, and, to all intents and purposes, his wife entered it with him. On the same evening she for the first time saw one of his colleagues, Dumouriez, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the future hero of the victory at Jemmapes. "This is a man," said she to her husband after their visitor's departure, "who has a vivacious intelligence, a false eye, and of whom, perhaps, we should be more distrustful than of anyone in the world. He has expressed much satisfaction at the patriotic choice with which he was charged, but I should not be astonished if some day he obtained your dismissal from office." Thus, at the first glance, Madame Roland perceived the incongruity between the worldly pliability of Dumouriez and her husband's unbending rigidity of principle. But she was also forced to acknowledge that, if Dumouriez had no character, he had more native capacity and resource than all the other Ministers taken together. Clavière, long esteemed by Brissot for his extensive and intimate acquaintance with the complicated system of Finance, became Minister of that department, and in his case also Madame Roland foresaw possible troubles of another sort. He was upright, no doubt; but then, again, he was too like her husband, whose temper she knew and managed with inimitable tact: she foresaw that, irritable, dogmatic, and tenacious of their views as both were, they would soon disagree. "These two men," she says, "were made to esteem but not love each other, and they have not failed in their vocation." In Degrave she depicts the most ludicrously inadequate Minister of War! How or why placed in that office is not evident. "He was a little man in all respects," she remarks. "Nature had created him gentle and timid, his prejudices made pride obligatory, and his
