Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/95

Rh in her diary: "I never conceived anything more desirable than a life divided between domestic cares and those of agriculture, spent in a healthy and plentiful farm, with a small family, where the example of the master and mistress, and the habit of work in common, produce peace, good-will, and general content.

Now she could at times realise this simple ideal, and her spirits rose visibly whenever she was at the Clos de la Platière—whether in spring, autumn, or even in severe winter weather, when the wide rolling country and valley of the SoaneSaône [sic] were clogged with snow, and the howling of wolves came from the large forests surrounding them.

Some of the most playful letters ever written by Madame Roland are dated from the Clos, and her life there was not altogether so sad and joyless as the warm-hearted Michelet would have us believe. It was more the life of a farmer's wife, perhaps, than of a lady—not so much a pleasant country holiday passed in leisurely rambles and pleasure excursions, as real unmistakable out-door work, which left barely any time for more studious occupations; but such as it was, it suited Madame Roland's hardy temperament, and through some of her epistles to Bosc there pierces a vein of "sunburnt mirth" quite foreign to her tone in town. Adapting Lafontaine's well-known "Eh, bonjour, Monsieur le Corbeau," she begins one of her letters:—

And good morning to you, our friend! It is long, indeed, since I wrote you last; but, then, I have not put pen to paper within the month, and I fancy that I must be imbibing some of the tastes of the good animal whose milk is restoring me to health. I am growing asinine by dint of attending to the little cares of a piggish country life. I am preserving pears, which will be delicious; we are drying raisins and prunes; are in the midst of a great wash, and getting up