Roland

(Marie Jeanne), née Phlipon, French patriot, b. Paris, 17 March, 1754. Fond of reading, Plutarch’s Lives influenced her greatly. At a convent she noted the names of sceptics attached and read their writings, being, she says, in turn Jansenist, stoic, sceptic, atheist, and deist. The last she remained, though Mi Blind cla es her with Agnostics. After her marriage in 1779 with Jean Marie Roland de la Platiêre (b. Lyons, 1732), Madame Roland shared the tasks and studies of her husband, and the Revolution found her an ardent consort. On the appointment of her husband to the ministry, she became the centre of a Giron dist circle. Carlyle calls her “the creature of Simplicity and Nature, in an age of Artificiality, Pollution, and Cant,” and “the noblest of all living French women.” On the fall of her party she was imprisoned, and finally executed, 8 Nov. 1793. Her husband, then in hiding, hearing of her death, deliberately stabbed himself, 15 Nov. 1793.