It was by order of the Convention that Sainte-Pélagie was transformed from a convent-refuge into a prison, and during the revolutionary period a crowd of unknown or little-known suspects passed within its keeping before being summoned to the bar. Not a few quitted it only for the scaffold.
Madame Roland was cast there on the 25th of June, 1793. Three years earlier, Carlyle notes her at Lyons, "that queen-like burgher woman; beautiful, Amazonian-graceful to the eye" with "that strong Minerva-face." We shall return to Madame Roland, wife of the "King's Inspector of Manufactures."
In the same month, if not on the same day, were sent to Sainte-Pélagie the Comte de Laval-Montmorency, and the Marquis de Pons. In August of the same year went to join them (not now with popular acclamation, as when, in 1765, Mademoiselle Clairon and her fellow players were haled to the Châtelet) nine ladies of the Théâtre-Français. After the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), which saw the sudden downfall and death of Robespierre, Sainte-Pélagie received most of the victims of the reaction,—the _Tail_ of Robespierre,—including the Duplaix family.
Madame Roland had known the indignities of a revolutionary prison before her sojourn at Sainte-Pélagie. Imprisoned first in the Abbaye, it was from there that she wrote:
"I find a certain pleasure in enforcing privations on myself, in seeing how far the human will can be employed in reducing the 'necessaries' of existence. I substituted bread and water for chocolate, at breakfast; a plate of meat with vegetables was my dinner; and I supped on vegetables, without desert."
But having "as much aversion from as contempt for a merely useless economy" (_autant d'aversion que de mépris pour une économie inutile_), Madame Roland goes on to say that what she saved by the retrenchments of her own cuisine she spent in procuring extra rations for the pauper prisoners of the Abbaye; and adds: "If I stay here six months I mean to go out plump and hearty [_je veux en sortir grasse et fraîche_] wanting nothing more than soup and bread, and with the satisfaction of having earned certain _bénédictions incognito_."
Transferred to Sainte-Pélagie, this heroic woman of the people saw herself confounded with women of the town (the descendants of the widow Miramion's Magdalens), thieves, forgers, and assassins. She made the best of the situation, cultivated flowers in a box in the window of her cell, and wrote incessantly. When told that her name had been included in the process against the Girondins, she said: "I am not afraid to go to the scaffold in such good company; I am ashamed only to live among scoundrels." Her friends had contrived a plan for her escape, but could not induce her to profit by it: "Spare me!" she cried. "I love my husband, I love my daughter; you know it; but I will not save myself by flight." When the axe fell on the heads of the twenty-two Girondins, October 31, 1793 (10th Brumaire of the Republican calendar), Madame Roland was removed to the Conciergerie. Knowing well the fate that awaited her, she lost neither her courage nor her beautiful tranquillity; and used to go down to the men's wicket of the prison, exhorting them to be brave and worthy of the cause. In the tumbril, on her way to the guillotine, she was robed in white, her superb black hair floating behind her; and at the place of execution, bending her head to the statue of Liberty, she murmured: "O Liberty! what crimes are done in thy name!"—_O Liberté! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!_