being all too ready, she takes it on her pen, in honest haste, as though
it were honest speech, and stands committed to such a phrase as this:
"The dregs of the nation placed such a one at the helm of affairs."

But her manner was not generally to write anything but a clear and
efficient French language. She never wrote for the love of art, but
without some measure of art she did not write; and her simplicity is
somewhat altered by that importunate love of the Antique. In "Bleak
House" there is an old lady who insisted that the name "Mr. Turveydrop,"
as it appeared polished on the door-plate of the dancing master, was the
name of the pretentious father and not of the industrious son--albeit,
needless to say, one name was common to them. With equal severity I aver
that when Madame Roland wrote to her husband in the second person
singular she was using the _tu_ of Rome and not the _tu_ of Paris. French
was indeed the language; but had it been French in spirit she would (in
spite of the growing Republican fashion) have said _vous_ to this "homme
eclaire, de moeurs pures, a qui l'on ne peut reprocher que sa grande
admiration pour les anciens aux depens des modernes qu'il meprise, et le
faible de trop aimer a parler de lui." There was no French _tu_ in her
relations with this husband, gravely esteemed and appraised, discreetly
rebuked, the best passages of whose Ministerial reports she wrote, and
whom she observed as he slowly began to think he himself had composed
them. She loved him with a loyal, obedient, and discriminating
affection, and when she had been put to death, he, still at liberty, fell
upon his sword.

This last letter was written at a moment when, in order to prevent the
exposure of a public death, Madame Roland had intended to take opium in
the end of her cruel imprisonment. A little later she chose that those
who oppressed her country should have their way with her to the last.