nstrate and demand their
release. Madame Roland sat down to write the letter, severe and
authoritative, to his holiness, threatening him with the severest
vengeance if he refused to comply with the request. As in her little
library she prepared this communication to the head of the Papal
States and of the Catholic Church, she paused, with her pen in her
hand, and reflected upon her situation but a few years before as the
humble daughter of an engraver. She recalled to mind the emotions of
superstitious awe and adoration with which, in the nunnery, she had
regarded his holiness as next to the Deity, and almost his equal. She
read over some of the imperious passages which she had now addressed
to the pope in the unaffected dignity of conscious power, and the
contrast was so striking, and struck her as so ludicrous, that she
burst into an uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter.

When Jane was a diffident maiden of seventeen, she went once with her
aunt to the residence of a nobleman of exalted rank and vast wealth,
and had there been invited to dine _with the servants_. The proud
spirit of Jane was touched to the quick. With a burning brow she sat
down in the servants' hall, with stewards, and butlers, and cooks, and
footmen, and _valet de chambres_, and ladies' maids of every degree,
all dressed in tawdry finery, and assuming the most disgusting airs of
self-importance. She went home despising in her heart both lords and
menials, and dreaming, with new aspirations, of her Roman republic.
One day, when Madame Roland was in power, she had just passed from her
splendid dining-room, where she had been entertaining the most
distinguished men of the empire, into her drawing-room, when a
gray-headed gentleman entered, and bowing profoundly and most
obsequiously before her, entreated the honor of an introduction to the
Minister of the Interior. This gentleman was M. Haudry, with whose
servants she had been invited to dine. This once proud aristocrat,
who, in the wreck of the Revolution, had lost both wealth and rank,
now saw Madame Roland elevated as far above him as he had formerly
been exalted above her. She remembered the many scenes in which her
spirit had been humiliated by haughty assumptions. She could not but
feel the triumph to which circumstances had borne her, though
magnanimity restrained its manifestation.

Anarchy now reigned throughout France. The king and the royal family
were imprisoned in the Temple. The Girondis