Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/237

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IN OUTLAWRY.
227

French Revolution; we can never hear half enough of the greatness it engendered. The lofty deeds of antiquity fade beside these modern ones; the devotion of martyrs is more than matched by those of republicans; nor does the history of man keep a higher record than that of Condorcet serenely composing his work, On the Progress of the Human Mind, while the pursuers were on his track.

So Manon remained at Sainte Pélagie, and the two friends parted never to meet again. But as long as history reserves a niche in her Pantheon for the great French woman, let Henriette keep a place beside her. Passing rich, indeed, Madame Roland was in the love of friends. Champagneux's constant visits had also rendered him a suspect, and he was by this time himself a prisoner. Alarmed for Bosc's safety, Madame Roland entreated him not to come so often, and to take greater precautions when he did so. To his care were entrusted the leaves that held the imperishable part of Madame Roland's life, and he took them at the peril of his own, keeping them hidden for a time in the hollow trunk of a tree in the forest of Montmorency. Proscribed himself, later on, a fugitive in the depth of winter, he carried the precious charge with him, and thus rescued both her children: the offspring of her body and that of her brain.

What, by this time, had become of Buzot and his comrades, whom we left enrolled in the company of Breton volunteers, well provided with fire-locks and oartridge-boxes? Madame Roland followed them in thought; lived in hope that they had taken ship to America. "Oh, my friends!" she wrote, "Heaven grant that you may reach the United States—that