XV. ROLAND'S DISMISSAL FROM OFFICE.

In the ministry, as elsewhere, discord reigned. At first, the ministers had seemed to be of one mind. They dined at each other's houses four times a week, on the days when there was a meeting of the Council. Friday was Roland's day for receiving his colleagues at his table, where his wife presided and perorated. "These dinners," says Etienne Dumont, "were often remarkable for their gaiety, of which no situation can deprive Frenchmen when they meet in society, and which was natural to men contented with themselves and flattered by their elevation. The future was hidden from them by the present. The cares of the ministry were forgotten. They seated themselves in their dwellings as if they were to abide there forever." This sort of political honeymoon could not last very long. Things presently began to change for the worse. Dumouriez tired very soon of Madame Roland's pretensions; she wanted to know, see, and direct everything, and he persisted in refusing to transform himself into a puppet whose strings were to be pulled by this woman and the Girondins. Madame Roland, who posed as a puritan, caused remonstrances to be addressed to Dumouriez on the subject of some more or less suspicious affairs, said to have been negotiated by Bonne-Carrère, the director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by which Madame de Beauvert was supposed to have gained large sums. The wife of the Minister of the Interior had a grudge against the favorite of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "She is Dumouriez's mistress," said she; "she lives in his house and does the honors at his table, to the great scandal of sensible men, who are friendly to good morals and liberty. For this license on the part of a public man charged with State affairs marks too plainly his contempt for decorum; and Madame de Beauvert, Rivarol's sister, very well and very unfavorably known, is surrounded by the tools of aristocracy, unworthy in all respects." One evening, after dinner, Roland, "with the gravity belonging to his age and character," as his wife says, gave a lecture on morality to the Minister of Foreign Affairs apropos of this matter. At first Dumouriez made jesting replies, but afterwards showed temper and appeared displeased with his entertainers. Thereafter he seldom visited the Ministry of the Interior. Reflecting on this, Madame Roland said to her husband: "Though not a good judge of intrigue, I think worldly wisdom would dictate that the hour has come for getting rid of Dumouriez, if we wish to avoid being ruined by him. I know very well that you would be unwilling to lower yourself to such an action; and yet it is plain that Dumouriez must be seeking to disembarrass himself of those whose censure has offended him. When one undertakes to preach, and does so in vain, he must either punish or expect to be molested."

Thenceforward, Madame Roland formed a distinct group within the ministry, composed of her husband, Clavière, and Servan, who had just replaced De Grave as Minister of War. While Dumouriez, Lacoste, and Duranton (whom Louis XVI. called "the good Duranton") allowed themselves to be affected by the King's goodness, and sincerely wished to save him, their three colleagues, inspired by the spiteful Madame Roland, had but one idea: to destroy him. "Roland, Clavière, and Servan," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "no longer observed any moderation, not merely with their colleagues, but with the King himself. At every meeting of the Council they abused the mildness of this prince, in order to mortify and kill him with pin-pricks."

It was Servan who proposed forming a camp of twenty thousand federates around Paris. He thought it would be a sort of central revolutionary army, analogous to that English parliamentary army under command of Cromwell, which had brought Charles I. to the scaffold. "Servan, a very wicked man and most inimical to the King," says Dumouriez again, "took the notion to write to the President of the Assembly, without consulting his colleagues, and propose a decree for assembling an army of twenty thousand men around Paris. This was at the time when the Girondin faction was at the height of its power, having the Jacobins at their command, and governing Paris through Pétion. They wanted to destroy the Feuillants, perhaps at the sword's point, to put down the court, and probably to begin putting their republican projects into execution. Thus it was this faction which brought to Paris the federates who ended by causing every one of them to perish on the scaffold after making Louis XVI. ascend it." Dumouriez was indignant that the Minister of War should have taken it on himself to propose such a decree without even mentioning it to the sovereign. The dispute on this matter was so violent that, but for the presence of the King, the meeting of the Council might have come to a bloody close. Louis XVI., deeply grieved by such scandals, resolved to dismiss the three ministers, who, instead of supporting him, were merely conspirators who had sworn his ruin.

The anguish of the unhappy monarch had reached its height. Four councils were held without his returning the decrees submitted to him for consideration. The National Assembly grew impatient. The Jacobins were in a rage. At last the King concluded to take up in the Council the decree relative to the camp of twenty thousand federates. "I think," said Dumouriez, "that the decree is dangerous to the nation, the King, the National Assembly, and above all to its authors, whose chastisement it will turn out to be; and yet, Sire, it is my opinion that you cannot refuse it. It was proposed by profound malice, debated with fury, and decreed with enthusiasm; everybody is blinded. If you veto it, it will none the less be passed." The hesitation of Louis XVI. redoubled. As to the decree concerning the clergy, he declared that he would never sanction it. This was the only time that Dumouriez ever saw "the character of this gentle soul somewhat changed for the worse."

Meanwhile, Madame Roland, more impatient and vindictive than ever, wrote the famous letter supposed to issue from her husband, which was to echo in the ears of royalty like a funeral knell. She says of it:—

"The letter was written at one stroke, like nearly all matters of the sort which I have done; for, to feel the necessity, the fitness of a thing, to apprehend its good effect, to desire to produce it, and to give form to the object from which this effect should result, was to me but a single operation."

This letter, a veritable arraignment of the King, was much more like a club speech or a newspaper article than a letter from a minister of state to his sovereign. Such sentences as these occur in it: "Sire, the existing state of things in France cannot long continue; it is a crisis whose violence is attaining its highest point; it must end by an outbreak which should interest Your Majesty as seriously as it affects the entire kingdom.... It is no longer possible to draw back. The Revolution is accomplished in men's minds; it will end in blood and be cemented by blood if wisdom does not avert the evils which it is still possible to prevent.... Yet a little more delay, and the afflicted people will behold in their King the friend and accomplice of conspirators. Just Heaven! hast Thou stricken with blindness the powerful of this earth, and will they never heed other counsels than those which drag them to destruction! I know that the austere language of truth is rarely welcomed near the throne; I know, also, that it is because it so rarely obtains a hearing there that revolutions become necessary; I know, above all, that I am bound to employ it to Your Majesty, not merely as a citizen submissive to the law, but as a minister honored with your confidence, or vested with functions which imply this."

The letter also contained a defence of the two decrees, and plainly threatened Louis XVI., should he veto them, with the horrors of a civil war which would develop "that sombre energy, mother of virtues and of crimes, which is always fatal to those who have evoked it!" Was not Madame Roland here announcing the September massacres, and the heinous crimes of which she herself was speedily to become one of the most celebrated victims?

At first Roland sent this letter to the King, with a promise that it should always remain a secret between them. But, incited by the vanity of his wife, who was incessantly urging him on to notoriety and display, Roland did not keep this promise. He read the letter at the next meeting of the Council, June 11. "The King," says Dumouriez, "listened to this impudent diatribe with admirable patience, and said with the greatest coolness: 'M. Roland, you had already sent me your letter; it was unnecessary to read it to the Council, as it was to remain a secret between ourselves.'" Dumouriez was summoned to the palace the following morning, June 12. He found the King in his own room, accompanied by the Queen. "Do you think, Monsieur," said Marie Antoinette, "that the King ought to submit any longer to the threats and insolence of Roland and the knavery of Servan and Clavière?"—"No, Madame," he replied; "I am indignant at them; I admire the King's patience, and I venture to ask him to make an entire change in his ministry. Let him dismiss us on the spot, and appoint men belonging to neither party."—"That is not my intention," said Louis XVI. "I wish you to remain, as well as Lacoste and that good man, Duranton. Do me the service of ridding me of these three factious and insolent persons, for my patience is exhausted."—"It is a dangerous matter, Sire, but I will do it." As a condition of remaining in the ministry, Dumouriez exacted the sanction of the two decrees. There was another ministerial council the same evening. Roland, Servan, and Clavière were more insolent and acrimonious than usual. Louis XVI. closed the session with mingled dissatisfaction and dignity.

At eight o'clock that evening (June 12), Servan, the Minister of War, went to Madame Roland and said: "Congratulate me! I have been turned out."—"I am much piqued," replied she, "that you should be the first to receive that honor, but I hope it will not be long before it will be decreed to my husband also." Madame Roland's prayer was granted. The virtuous Minister of the Interior received his letters of dismissal the next morning. As Duranton, who delivered it at the Ministry of Justice, was slowly drawing it from his pocket,—

"You make us wait for our liberty," said Roland; and, taking the letter, he added, "In reality that is what it is." Then he went home to his wife to announce to her that he was no longer minister.

Madame Roland, with the instinct of hatred, saw at once how to obtain revenge. "One thing remains to be done," she cried; "we must be the first to communicate the news to the Assembly, sending them at the same time a copy of the letter to the King which must have caused it." This idea pleased the ex-minister highly, and he put it instantly into execution. "I was conscious," says the irascible Egeria of the Girondins in her Memoirs, "of all the effects this might produce, and I was not deceived; my double object was attained, and both utility and glory attended the retirement of my husband. I had not been proud of his entering the ministry, but I was of his leaving it." Thenceforward Madame Roland was to be the most indefatigable cause of the Revolution, and Louis XVI. was to learn by experience what the vengeance of a woman can accomplish.