Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/30

22 debauchery and improvidence. He had also made sad inroads upon the fortune left her by her mother; her expostulations were met with anger and injustice on his part, and after his rudeness to M. Roland—a rudeness which had deeply wounded the feelings of that gentleman—she decided that it was useless to attempt to live with him in peace, and she retired from home, hiring rooms in a convent, where she lived for six months alone. At the end of that time M. Roland sought her out, and renewed his proposals of marriage. They were married in the winter of 1779, she being then twenty-five years of age, while he was forty-seven.

Previous to her marriage she had already dabbled in literature, and had written and published occasional criticisms and essays, among others one on a subject proposed by the Academy of Besancon, ‘‘How Can the Education of Women Conduce to the Education of Men?” But for some years after her marriage her writing was confined mainly to copying, translating, and correcting ar-