All her repressed feelings were poured forth in her opinions; she avenged herself on her destiny, which refused her individual happiness, by sacrificing herself for the happiness of others.

Happy and beloved, she would have been but a woman; unhappy and isolated, she became the leader of a party.
XIV.
The opinions of M.and Madame Roland excited against them all the commercial aristocracy of Lyons, an honest right-minded city, but one of money, where all becomes a calculation, and where ideas have the weight and immobility of interests.

Ideas have an irresistible current, which attract even the most stagnant populations; Lyons was led on and overwhelmed by the opinions of the epoch.

M.Roland was raised to the municipality at the first election, and spoke out with all the earnestness of his principles, and the energy inspired by his wife.
Feared by the timid, adored by the eager, his name, at first a byeword, became a rallying point;--public favour recompensed him for the insults of the rich.

He was deputed to Paris by the municipal council, there to defend the commercial interests of Lyons, in the committees of the Constituent Assembly.
The connection of Roland with philosophers and economists who formed the practical party of philosophy, his necessary intercourse with influential members of the Assembly, his literary tastes, and, above all, the attraction and natural temptation which drew and retained eminent men around a young, eloquent, and impassioned woman, soon made the _salon_ of Madame Roland an ardent, though not as yet noted, focus of the Revolution.