Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/99

Rh country place, superintending her household, attending to the vintage, compiling articles for her husband, she was what may be called the highest type of the Frenchwoman—that is, of the Frenchwoman of the middle classes, who, so far from being the frail, fair, and frivolous coquette of the French novelist, is, on the contrary, the most active, practical, and sagacious specimen of her sex. Every traveller in France is doubtless struck by seeing women taking so very large a share in trade and commerce; the actual management of affairs is continually shifted from the husband on to the wife, although it may not be so to outward appearance. They are the exact opposite of the constitutional sovereign, of whom it is said that he reigns but does not govern; Frenchwomen govern but do not reign.

Up to this point of Manon Roland's life we cannot avoid the conviction of a great moral force frittered away on lilliputian tasks: the preparing of dainty dishes for her husband's delicate digestion, the mending of house-linen, the setting a child its lessons—excellent tasks all, but which affect one with something of the ludicrous disproportion of making use of the fires of Etna to fry one's eggs by! It seems, indeed, a curious irony of destiny, that this great woman should have spent many of her best years on things for which so much less ability was required, while so many small people in high places were bungling over the welfare of millions. But such are at present the satisfactory arrangements of society! And in the remote Clos de la Platière, her real strength unsuspected by the world and only half guessed at by herself, Madame Roland would have led her resigned and laborious existence, and died unknown, but for the echoes which,