But this is an alarmist’s letter, a repetition of rumors, not a serious effort to picture what actually occurred. Compare simply its statement of the number of killed at the Champ-de-Mars—“hundreds”—with the most trustworthy accounts, and Roland’s and his wife’s state of mind is clear. Gouverneur Morris, who was in Paris at the moment, went to the “elevation opposite”—the present Trocadéro—to see the trouble. He says there were a “dozen or two” killed; Prudhomme says fifty; the official report gives twelve killed and the same number wounded. The same exaggerated statements characterize all their letters.
Before the summer of 1791 was over Madame Roland was certain that public opinion could not be aroused to another revolution; that the “stick” was going to stay in the “wheel”; that the Republic could not be established. As this conviction grew on her, she lost heart. “I have had enough of Paris, at least for this time.” She wrote: “I feel the need of going to see my trees, after having seen so many dolts and knaves. One rejoices in this little circle of honest souls when his cause triumphs, but when the _cabale_ is on top, when the wicked succeed and error is ahead, there is nothing to do but go home and plant cabbages.”
And this she decided to do very soon, for the beginning of September she left Paris for Villefranche. Everything on the trip discouraged her. She wrote Robespierre: “I find the people on the route, as in Paris, deceived by their enemies or ignorant of the true state of things; everywhere the mass is well disposed; it is just because its interest is the general interest, but it is misled or stupid. Nowhere have I met people with whom I could talk openly and advantageously of our political situation; I contented myself by distributing copies of your address in all the places through which I passed; they will be found after my departure and furnish an excellent text for meditation.”
It was even worse at Villefranche, where, on arriving, she made a tour of observation. She was convinced that the most of the inhabitants were utterly despicable, and made so by the existing social institutions; that they loved the Revolution only because it destroyed what was above them, but that they knew nothing of the theory of free government, and did not sympathize with that “sublime and delicious theory which makes us brothers”; that they hated the name of Republic, and that a king appeared to them essential to their existence.