33 - ROLAND (Jeanne-Marie Philipon, Mrs.). Autograph letter to friends. Amiens, February 11, 1783. 1 p. in-4.

ROLAND (Jeanne-Marie Philipon, Mrs.). Autograph letter to friends. Amiens, February 11, 1783. 1 p. in-4. “Well, of course I kissed him! Many others would have done the same in my place. He arrived yesterday at four o’clock, very tired, very thin, having endured dreadful weather; anyway, here he is at the dovecote; I’ll take good care of him, and we’ll try to do better. I’m surprised you went three days without a letter from me—I haven’t stopped writing to you during that time—and there are a few letters still in the pipeline. I wrote to you on Sunday about our unfortunate package, which has not arrived; I asked our friend Lanthenas [the future Convention member François-Xavier Lanthenas, a close friend of the Rolands] to see if it had been sent and to find out what had happened to it, one way or another. I received his reply to my letter from England and that dreadful news about the stagecoach from Bordeaux—it makes one’s blood run cold and sends shivers of horror down one’s spine. We are so pressed for time that we haven’t had a chance to read your letters at our leisure; we will pick them up again today and reply to them; this is merely a greeting; best wishes, joy, and warm regards to both of you. ” ONE OF THE LEADING FIGURES OF THE REVOLUTION, MADAME ROLAND would play a prominent role alongside her husband Jean-Marie Roland de La Platière, who, then Inspector General of Manufactures, would serve as Minister of the Interior (1792–1793): highly educated, passionate about botany, and the author of several articles, she hosted a political salon frequented by the Girondins. She was guillotined in 1793.