Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/238

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MADAME ROLAND.

last refuge of liberty—in safety! My hopes follow you thither, and I entertain some hopes that you are now sailing towards its shores. But, alas! I am doomed. I shall never see you more!" Describing the impression made on her in youth by a novice who, on taking the veil, had sung the customary verse, "Here have I chosen my abode, and will establish it for ever," she now writes: "I have not forgotten the notes of this little passage, but can repeat them as accurately as if I had heard them only yesterday. Good God! with what emphasis I should utter them now in America!"

Alas! the little band of outlaws was not on the broad Atlantic, sailing westward. Far from it. Would it, indeed, have been possible for Buzot to leave the country where the woman he loved was immured with no prospect but the guillotine before her? He would much have preferred death. But they all of them loved France so dearly, it seemed as though they could not tear themselves from their natal soil. They had left the brave Breton volunteers to strike across country to Quimper, under the escort of six tried guides, thence to take ship to Bordeaux. Nineteen men in all they were, mostly tall and vigorous, armed to the teeth; and, to be the better disguised, clad in those white smocks bordered with red worn by common soldiers on the march. Already the departments had been filled with Jacobin proclamations against the "traitors," "conspirators," "federalists"; descriptions of their persons having been sent to all the Municipalities; popular feelings with the desperate instinct of national self-preservation, had turned dead against them.

Buzot, Barbaroux, Pétion, Salles, Louvet, Cussy,