MADAME ROLAND.
CHILDHOOD.
Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, renowned as Madame Roland, was born in Paris, March 17, 1754, in a house on the Quai de l'Horloge, near the Pont Neuf. She was thus just the same age as Louis XVI., and about a year older than Marie Antoinette. It would be difficult to find more common-place surroundings than those amidst which one of the greatest of Frenchwomen was ushered into the world.
That a daughter of shepherds and rustics should have become the saviour of her country is not surprising. For the primitive simplicity of those occupations seems the proper nursery of heroism. But it is surprising that in the Paris of Louis XV., from the unimaginative class of small shopkeepers, there should suddenly spring a child, in soul the heiress of the great men of antiquity.
But the actual parents were far from suspecting the
