apons of her own sex, to grasp the heavier and coarser
armor of man, which no woman can wield. By such an endeavor, one does
but excite the repugnance of all except the unfortunate few, who can
see no peculiar sacredness in woman's person, mind, or heart.

As the gentlemen assembled in the retired parlor, or rather library
and study, appropriated to these confidential interviews, Madame
Roland took her seat at a little work-table, aside from the circle
where her husband and his friends were discussing their political
measures. Busy with her needle or with her pen, she listened to every
word that was uttered, and often bit her lips to check the almost
irrepressible desire to speak out in condemnation of some feeble
proposal or to urge some bolder action. At the close of the evening,
when frank and social converse ensued, her voice was heard in low,
but sweet and winning tones, as one after another of the members were
attracted to her side. Robespierre, at such times silent and
thoughtful, was ever bending over her chair. He studied Madame Roland
with even more of stoical apathy than another man would study a book
which he admires. The next day his companions would smile at the
effrontery with which Robespierre would give utterance, in the
Assembly, not only to the sentiments, but even to the very words and
phrases which he had so carefully garnered from the exuberant diction
of his eloquent instructress. Occasionally, every eye would be riveted
upon him, and every ear attentive, as he gave utterance to some lofty
sentiment, in impassioned language, which had been heard before, in
sweeter tones, from more persuasive lips.

But the Revolution, like a spirit of destruction, was now careering
onward with resistless power. Liberty was becoming lawlessness. Mobs
rioted through the streets, burned chateaux, demolished convents,
hunted, even to death, priests and nobles, sacked the palaces of the
king, and defiled the altars of religion. The Girondists, illustrious,
eloquent, patriotic men, sincerely desirous of breaking the arm of
despotism and of introducing a well-regulated liberty, now began to
tremble. They saw that a spirit was evoked which might trample every
thing sacred in the dust. Their opponents, the Jacobins, rallying the
populace around them with the cry, "Kill, burn, destroy," were for
rushing onward in this career of demolition, till every vestige of
gradations of rank and every restraint of religion should be s