ROLAND, MADAME (nee MARIE JEANNE PIILIPON), wife of the preceding, was the daughter of Pierre Gratien Phlipon, an engraver, and was born at Paris, March 17, 1754. The precocity of her intelligence was remarkable. At the age of four, she had quite a passion for reading; at seven, she learned by heart a treatise on heraldry; at eight, she used to carry Plutarch With her to church, while the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, and the Telemague of Fenelon fired her childish imagination. At the same time an ardent piety began to develop itself, and when only 11 she entered the Maison des Dames de in Congregation, in the Faubourg Saint Marcel. Here she formed a close friendship with two young girls from Amiens, Henriette and Sophie Cannot, particularly with the latter, Which was fruitful in consequences. On her return toiler father's house after the lapse of two years, " a change came o'er the spirit of her dream." She no longer cared for the so-called "religions" writers—the defenders of the Bible and the church. Her faith was slowly changing from the dogmatic creed of Bossuet to the "naturalism" of the encyclopedists and " philosophes." In ethics, now as ever, her preference for the stoical system was marked. Shortly after the death of her mother in 1773 she read for the first time La Nouvelle Heldise, which seemed to her (as it has to many another young impassioned soul) a veritable revelation. Greatly distressed by the imprudent conduct of her father, she again withdrew, at the age of 25, to the Maison les Dames de in Congregation, and once more attempted an "austere" life; but M. Roland (q.v.), who had already known her for five years, now came forward, and res cued her from a Career which must ultimately have proved equally unsatisfactory to her reason and conscience, by offering her his hand. She was 25, and he 45. There was
certainly something unpoetical in the disparity of their years, but then, Mlle. Phil-. pon knew' that "ideal "- matches were made only in heaven, and so she accepted calmly the inspector of manufactures. Their marriage was celebrated Feb. 4, 1780. It is unnecessary to follow the remainder of her career, which was of course identical with her husband's until his flight from Paris May 31, 1793. The same night she was her self arrested, and imprisonedin the Abhaye. A more dauntless and intrepid spirit never entered its walls I Released on the 24th of June, she was instantly rearrested by very commissaries who had set her at liberty, without the shadow of a tangible accusa tion, and confined in Saint Pelagic. Madame Roland spent the period of her imprison ment in study, in the composition of her political Memoires. Summoned before the rev olutionary tnbunal in the beginning of Nov., she was condemned, and on the 9th was guillotined, amid the shootings of an insensate mob. It is said that while standing on the scaffold, she asked for a pen and paper that she might " write down the strange thoughts that were passing through her head." -Only a genuine child of the French republic could have been so ostentatiously speculative at such a moment. Still more celebrated is her apostrophe to the statue of liberty, at the foot of which the scaffold was erected: " 0 Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!' OT, according to another version, " Liberty, how they have played with thy name !'--See La Correspon dance de Madame Roland avee les Demoiselles Gannet (2 vols. Paris, 1841); Lettres Auto sraplies de Madame Roland, adressees u Baneal des Issarts (Paris, 1835).