MADAME BOLAND.

291

speaking the truth courageously to her assassins. Oneafter the other, her friends underwent the mockeryof a trial, while her turn was delayed from day today. The tenderness, the greatness of her mind dis-played itself in the most touching manner during thissuspense. She wrote to her friends, but her thoughtschiefly lingered round her child; and again she wroteto’ the person who had the charge of her in few, andsimple, but strong words, conceived in all the energyof maternal love.

On the 31st of October, the day of the execution ofher revered friend Brissot , she was transferred to theconciergerie, and placed in a squalid cell amidst all thefilth of a crowded prison. Her examination took placeon the following day, and continued for several daysafter. Her crime was her intercourse with her friends,the deputies of the gironde, now proscribed. She wasscarcely permitted to answer, but her courage enforcedattention. She was bid choose an advocate for her trial:she named Marceau, and retired with serene and evencheerful dignity, saying to her accusers, “ I wish, inreturn for all the ill you bring on me, peace equal tothat which I preserve, whatever may be the value at-tached to it.”

The following night she occupied herself by writingher defence. It is eloquent and full of feeling, and con-cludes by a wish that she may be the last victim immo-lated to party frenzy, and a declaration that she shalljoyfully quit an unhappy land drowned in the blood ofthe just.

This defence was not spoken. After her examinationsome witnesses were examined; the act of accusation wasdrawn up, and judgment delivered, which pronouncedthat “ There existed a horrible conspiracy against theunity and indivisibility of the republic, the liberty andsafety of the French people ; that madame Roland wasproved to have been an accomplice in this conspiracy,and was therefore condemned to death; and that theu 2