decree of the Convention, which declared them Hors la loi, outlawed, had been placarded on the Intendance Mansion at Caen. Buzot's house at Évreux had been razed to the ground and a gallows erected in its place, with the inscription, "Here dwelt the traitor Buzot." The earth seemed to recede from beneath them. Disguised as soldiers in the ranks of the company of the Breton National Guards returning to their homes, they left Caen behind them.
Some three weeks earlier, on the morning of the 24th of June, the Citoyenne Roland was informed, to her surprise, that she was set at liberty, nothing having been found against her to warrant her detention. She lost no time in collecting her few things, getting into a coach, and driving to her apartments in the Rue de la Harpe. Light as a bird she flew down the step, was joyfully welcomed by the woman of the house, and intended, after leaving a few directions, to hurry to the kind family who had adopted her child, when two men, who had followed at her heels, stopped her on the stairs, crying, "Citoyenne Roland!"
"What do you want?" asked she, looking back.
"We arrest you in the name of the law!"
Had ingenious persecutors laid their heads together to concoct a plan for more effectually tormenting their victim, they could not have devised a more successful one. The door of the cage had hardly been opened—the resignation of the prisoner had hardly given place to a thrill of joy at her freedom, and to the delightful anticipation of again clasping her daughter to her heart—when she was recaptured. In her vivid description of this event Madame Roland herself gives up attempting a description of the disappointment she suffered.
