As in the conspiracy of Harmodius, it was a woman who held the torch to light the conspirators.
Madame Roland thus found herself cast, from the first, in the midst of the movement party.

Her invisible hand touched the first threads of the still entangled plot which was to disclose such great events.

This part, the only one that could be assigned to her sex, equally flattered her woman's pride and passion for politics.

She went through it with that modesty which would have been in her a _chef d'oeuvre_ of skill if it had not been a natural endowment.

Seated out of the circle near a work table, she worked or wrote letters, listening all the time with apparent indifference to the discussions of her friends.