Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/19



IVINITY! Supreme Being! Spirit of the Universe! Great Principle of all I feel great or good or immortal within myself—whose existence I believe in because I must have emanated from something superior to that by which I am surrounded—I am about to reunite myself to thy essence.”

Such was the invocation which Madame Roland addressed to the Deity she worshiped, at a time when, death by violence seeming unavoidable, she contemplated defeating the cruel guillotine by suicide. There is in it, as in all the acts of her life, the undaunted tone of the truly brave in spirit. Conscious of her own nobility of soul, there is in it no mock humility, no