Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/141

Rh Four times a week a small knot of men used to meet there to discuss and concert measures in connection with the political questions of the day. The fair hostess herself sat at a little table apart, engaged in needle-work or else busy with her voluminous correspondence. If we are to take her word for it, she never joined in these discussions, but neither, in spite of her other avocations, ever lost a syllable of what passed. If she had not the faculty of being in two places at once, she must certainly have had some of Cæsar's genius for doing more than one thing at a time. And as she listened to this interminable talk, leading apparently to no practical results, her impatience often became such that she was forced to bite her lips to avoid bursting into speech, and sometimes only refrained with difficulty from boxing the philosophers' ears.

Among the men who most assiduously attended these gatherings was Brissot, whom Madame Roland now first saw face to face. His appearance and manners harmonised perfectly with the idea she had formed of him from his writings, although it struck her "that a certain volatility of mind and character did not entirely become the gravity of philosophy." Thither also came placid, ruddy-faced Pétion, honesty personified, erelong to be made the idolised mayor of Paris, and not long after to become the fugitive outlaw hiding his prematurely white head from pursuit. He was usually accompanied by his fellow-townsman Robespierre, ever scrupulously neat, with his powdered hair, the striped olive-green coat enhancing his bilious pallor, saying little, but drinking in everything that was said, and breaking now and then into his wintry smile. Madame Roland noticed that, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre would often make use as his own of the arguments and