hat her mind instinctively assumed the same model. She
found elevated enjoyment in triumphing over every earthly ill.

An English lady, then residing in France, who had often visited her in
the days of her power, when her home presented all that earth could
give of splendor, and when wealth and rank were bowing obsequiously
around her, thus describes a visit which she paid to her cell in these
dark days of adversity.

"I visited her in the prison of Sainte Pelagie, where her soul,
superior to circumstances, retained its accustomed serenity, and she
conversed with the same animated cheerfulness in her cheerless dudgeon
as she used to do in the hotel of the minister. She had provided
herself with a few books, and I found her reading Plutarch. She told
me that she expected to die, and the look of placid resignation with
which she said it convinced me that she was prepared to meet death
with a firmness worthy of her exalted character. When I inquired after
her daughter, an only child of thirteen years of age, she burst into
tears; and, at the overwhelming recollection of her husband and child,
the courage of the victim of liberty was lost in the feelings of the
wife and the mother."

The merciless commissioners had ordered her to be incarcerated in a
cell which no beam of light could penetrate. But her compassionate
keepers ventured to misunderstand the orders, and to place her in a
room where a few rays of the morning sun could struggle through the
grated windows, and where the light of day, though seen but dimly,
might still, in some degree, cheer those eyes so soon to be closed
forever. The soul, instinctively appreciative of beauty, will under
the most adverse circumstances, evoke congenial visions. Her friends
brought her flowers, of which from childhood she had been most
passionately fond. These cherished plants seemed to comprehend and
requite unaffected love. At the iron window of her prison they
appeared to grow with the joy and luxuriance of gratitude. With
intertwining leaf and blossom, they concealed the rusty bars, till
they changed the aspect of the grated cell into a garden bower, where
birds might nestle and sing, and poets might love to linger.

[Illustration: MADAME ROLAND IN PRISON.]

When in the convent, she had formed a strong attachment for one of her
companions, which the lapse of time had not diminished. Through all
the vicissitudes of their lives they had kept up a constant
correspondence. Thi