l, it was
infamous. She was placed in the prison of St. Pelaige--a filthy and
miserable place. The wife of the jailor pitied her and gave her a neat,
upper apartment, and brought her books and flowers, and she was
comparatively happy again. It was in this prison that she wrote her own
memoirs. She usually kept a stout heart, but at times when thoughts of
her husband and child came over her, she was overwhelmed with grief.

The chief Girondists now began to fall under the stroke of the
guillotine, and her turn was quickly coming. The day that her friend
Brissot perished, she was transferred to the _Conciergerie_ the prison
which suggested this sketch of her to my mind. I went over this prison,
and the very apartment was pointed out to me in which Madame Roland was
confined. Here she spent her last days, and wretched days they were,
indeed. But she conducted herself nobly and courageously through all.
The mockery of a trial was held, and she wrote her own defense, a most
eloquent production. She was sentenced to death in twenty-four hours.
Twenty-two victims had just poured out their blood, and she was to
follow their example. A French writer speaks of her at that time as
"full of attractions, tall, of an elegant figure, her physiognomy
animated, but sorrow and long imprisonment had left traces of melancholy
on her face that tempered her natural vivacity. Something more than is
usually found in the eyes of woman, beamed in her large, dark eyes, full
of sweetness and expression. She often spoke to me at the grate, with
the freedom and courage of a great man. This republican language falling
from the lips of a pretty French woman, for whom the scaffold was
prepared, was a miracle of the revolution. We gathered attentively
around her in a species of admiration and stupor. Her conversation was
serious, without being cold. She spoke with a purity, a melody, and a
measure which rendered her language a soul of music of which the ear
never tired. She spoke of the deputies who had just perished with
respect, but without effeminate pity; reproaching them even for not
having taken sufficiently strong measures. Sometimes her sex had
mastery, and we perceived that she had wept over the recollection of her
daughter and husband."

She was led out to execution on the 10th of November, on that place of
blood--_La Concorde_. She was dressed in white, and inspired the
multitudes who saw her with admiration. Another victim accompanied her.