Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/39

Rh nature is not at all estimable considered en masse. I cannot conceive what can thus excite the curiosity of thousands to see two of their fellow-creatures die. The popularity of the gladiatorial fights in Rome no longer surprises me. A kind of ferocity, a certain taste for blood, must be latent in the human heart. But no; that I cannot believe. I imagine that we all of us love strong impressions, because they give us a lively sense of existence, and the same taste which takes the educated people to the theatres carries the populace to the Place de la Grève. Yes, the pitiless mob applauded the tortures of the criminal as if at a play. Of course his crime was horrible; but at such instants one forgets the criminal and his crime, only to feel the agony of a fellow-being, and suffering nature makes herself one with pain. I confess that I feel contempt for men, as well as love; they are so bad or so mad that it is impossible not to despise them. On the other hand, they are so wretched that it is just as impossible to help pitying and loving them. Ah!" she sighs, "I was not prepared for these strange and violent impressions which have come to trouble my ideas, and to modify my whole being in quite a new manner."

Here, then, we have the first heart-throb of pity and yearning over the suffering multitudes, which was never to cease till her own heart ceased to beat. Descending from the serene heights of placid philosophical meditations, she looked at the world she lived in, and what she saw filled her soul with a shuddering awe. Louis Blanc is surely mistaken when he avers, in one passage of his History of the French Revolution, that Madame Roland, unlike Rousseau, had no feeling for the common people. On the