ty-five million times
greater, art left unpunished! But tremble, tyrant; there is a Scaevola
amongst us.'"

{157}

The Assembly listened, but took no measures. No further restraint was
placed either on moral or material disorder. Anarchy showed a nameless
epileptic ferocity. Never had the press been more furious or
licentious. It was a torrent of mud and gall and blood. The limits of
invective and insult were driven further back. "You see that I am
annoyed," said the Queen to Dumouriez in Louis XVI.'s presence; "I dare
not go to the window looking into the garden. Last evening, needing a
breath of air, I showed myself at the window facing the courtyard. A
gunner belonging to the guard apostrophized me in an insulting way, and
added: 'What pleasure it would give me to have your head on the end of
my bayonet!' In that frightful garden a man standing on a chair reads
out horrors against us on one side, and on the other may be seen a
soldier or a priest whom they are dragging through a pond, and crushing
with blows and insults. Meantime, others are flying balloons or
quietly strolling about. Ah! what a place! what a people!"

{158}

XV.

ROLAND'S DISMISSAL FROM OFFICE.

In the ministry, as elsewhere, discord reigned. At first, the
ministers had seemed to be of one mind. They dined at each other's
houses four times a week, on the days when there was a meeting of the
Council. Friday was Roland's day for receiving his colleagues at his
table, where his wife presided and perorated. "These dinners," says
Etienne Dumont, "were often remarkable for their gaiety, of which no
situation can deprive Frenchmen when they meet in society, and which
was natural to men contented with themselves and flattered by their
elevation. The future was hidden from them by the present. The cares
of the ministry were forgotten. They seated themselves in their
dwellings as if they were to abide there forever." This sort of
political honeymoon could not last very long. Things presently began
to change for the worse. Dumouriez tired very soon of Madame Roland's
pretensions; she wanted to know, see, and direct everything, and he
persisted in refusing to transform himself into a puppet whose strings
were to be pulled by this woman and the Girondins. Madame Roland, who
{159} posed as a puritan, caused remonstrances to be addressed to
Dumouriez on the subject of some more or less suspicious affairs, said
to have been neg