It was not in her eyes the popularity of virtue, and she coveted it all for her husband and her party.

Roland and his Girondist colleagues, Servan, Claviere, redoubled their efforts to influence the mind of the king, and used threats in order to acquire it.
To flatter the Assembly, court the people; irritate the Jacobins against the court; beset the king by the imperious demand of sacrifices which they knew were impossible; to injure him silently in opinion as the cause of all evil, or the obstacle to all good; to compel him, in fact, by insolence and outrage, to dismiss them that they might afterwards accuse him of betraying in them the Revolution: such were their tactics, resulting from their weakness rather than from their ambition.
This feeling of backing the king, whose ministers they were, was the basis of a conspiracy of which Madame Roland was the origin.

At Roland's there was nothing but ill humour; amongst his colleagues it was a rivalry of patriotism with Robespierre.

At Madame Roland's it was that passion for a republic which was impatient of any remnant of a throne, and which smiled complacently at the factions ready to overturn the monarchy.

When factions had arms no longer, Madame Roland and her friends hastened to lead them.
II.
We see a fatal example in the step of the minister of war, Servan.