Madame Roland's House

Most Parisians know these two old and pretty Louis XIII style houses located on Place du Pont-Neuf, opposite the equestrian statue of Henri IV.
The one that forms the corner of the Quai de l'Horloge, formerly Quai des Lunettes, and on which a marble plaque has been affixed since 1897 recalling that Madame Roland was raised there, was, some time ago, the subject of restoration work.
This work, carried out on the instructions of the owner, Mr. Joseph Planchon, by a skilled architect, Mr. Sinell, is now completed: it has restored the house to its original architecture.
But was Madame Roland's house really inhabited by Madame Roland? The publisher Claude Perraud, who published the Memoirs and Correspondence of the illustrious woman, doubted it, as did Mr. Aulard, professor at the Sorbonne.
On the other hand, historians Georges Lenôtre, Georges Cain and Michel Salomon have affirmed that the house in question had indeed sheltered the youth of Manon Phlipon, later wife of the minister Roland.
And Mr. Antoine, who, last year, lived in the house and perhaps still lives there, was perfectly convinced that it had been the home of Mme Roland. The eminent critic even liked to invoke the authority of Anatole France and Victorien Sardou; the latter, who was considered to know his old Paris well, left him, in fact, a small sketch indicating the window of the small room in which Mme Roland, as a young girl, had made a sort of cell.