Classic Audiobook Collection - Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stephens Whale ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stephens Whale audiobook. Genre: history (Excerpt) One aspect of this subject of revolutionary women, their connection with the secret societies of the day I have purposely ignored. It is obscure and highly controversial. Unfortunately, though these societies have been much, written about, and especially of late, it has often been in a partisan spirit. This book will constantly deal with parties, but I trust not in the spirit of a partisan. Of the three methods of treating this subject, the strictly chronological method, the biographical, and a classification according to the play of ideas and the modes and fields of action, I have chosen the last. Though it has its drawbacks, one of which is some slight repetition, it seems to me that this method gives the clearest impression of the movement as a whole, and of the part women played in it. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:15:20) Chapter 01 (00:43:23) Chapter 02 (01:10:22) Chapter 03 (01:36:51) Chapter 04 (02:01:12) Chapter 05 (02:25:48) Chapter 06 (02:49:43) Chapter 07 (03:27:30) Chapter 08 (03:56:07) Chapter 09 (04:24:58) Chapter 10 (04:54:10) Chapter 11 (05:10:34) Chapter 12 (05:41:33) Chapter 13 (06:10:09) Chapter 14 (06:38:23) Chapter 15 (07:15:08) Chapter 16 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens Forward The women of the French Revolution is so vast a theme that hitherto even in France it has not yet met with anything like exhaustive treatment. Michelet himself admits that the title of his book, Les Fame de la Revolution, is misleading, and that he has written of a few heroines rather than of the mass of revolutionary women. A much later writer, Monsieur Adrian Lacerre in his work on women's participation,

in the revolution, says that he has found it impossible to cover completely a field so extensive. The attempt which Monsieur Lacerre has renounced cannot be made here. All I hope to do is to give some idea of the rank and file of revolutionary women and of their famous leaders during little more than a brief period of five memorable years. That period extends from May 1789 until July 1794, with some glances now and then before and after. One aspect of this subject of revolutionary women, their connection with the secret societies of the day, I have purposely ignored. It is obscure and highly controversial. Unfortunately, though these societies have been much written about and especially of late, it has often been in a partisan spirit.

This book will constantly deal with parties, but I trust not in the spirit of a partisan. Of the three methods of treating this subject, the strictly chronological method, the biograph, and a classification according to the play of ideas and the modes and fields of action, I have chosen the last. Though it has its drawbacks, one of which is some slight repetition, it seems to me that this method gives the clearest impression of the movement as a whole, and of the part women played in it. I have spent some time in the Bibliotheque Nacional,

consulting pamphlets published during the Revolution, and in the Gallery des Etyte-Tamp, looking through portfolios of contemporary prints. Otherwise, I can lay no claim to having me. made any original research. I have reaped where others have sown. And gladly do I here acknowledge my debt and record my gratitude, first to Professor Olaar for the interest he has taken in this book and the help he has given me in writing it,

and then to the works of Professor Albert Mathier, Monsieur Louis Madelais, Monsieur Leopold Lacourreux, Monsieur Leopold Lacourreux, Monsieur, León-Abein-Sour, Le Baron Mark de Villiers, and other living writers on the Revolution, as well as to their predecessors, who are no longer with us.

Introduction Quote Les FAM Fierte at the avant-garde of our revolution. It ne'n't be so on etoné and suffer david

D'Avante. Michelet, Les FAM de la Revolution. Write down the ten centuries of French history, there have been few political movements in which women have not

played some known part. But never has there been one in which they have been so widely or so intimately associated as with the revolution. mingling in all its most fundamental crises and most vivid scenes we see woman in her infinite variety women of every type class and occupation from the most ignoble to the most noble from the lowest to the highest women of every kind of attainment women of every shade of temperament women of the street women of the market police women blue stockings social butterflies club women platform women housewives mothers of families, actresses, flower girls, servant girls, salon ladies, mystics, prophetesses, goddesses of reason. Not a tone, not a semitone in the whole scale of femininity is unsounded. From the

vulgarity and hysteria of Les Insulteuse and La Tricoteuse to the culture of a Madame de Staal and the calmness of a Madame Roland. Differing widely in status and in secondary political opinions, these women were all ardent en civism, as the phrase went then, the baser no doubt frequently because they were paid for it, but others because they were passionately devoted to the public wheel. Their views as to what constituted the public wheel varied, of course, according to position, intellect and training. For the market women and housewives, who took part in the hunger march to Versailles on the 5th October 1789, the public wheel depended mainly on a plentiful supply at a moderate price of the necessaries of life. For feminists,

like Olymp de Guge, it depended on the establishment of sex equality. For enthusiastic gérondiste like Charlotte Corday, on the overthrow of a political party and the death of its leader. For Democrats, like Madame Robert, M. M. M. Moselle de Kerrallo, on the establishment of a republic. And there were a few who had a wider vision, who, although ardent patriots, dreamed of an international brotherhood and of human solidarity.

Among these rare spirits were Madame Roland and Madame Roland and Madame de Condorcet, who gladly welcomed into their salons and applauded in the Parliament foreigners like Tom Paine and an arch-racist-clus. There was also poor Therwain de Mericour, the victim of an outrage perpetrated by her own sex, who, even in the ravings of madness, was haunted by an overwhelming desire for unity among classes and factions, and even perhaps among nations. During this period of national upheaval, while the foundations of society seemed to rock and real, French women displayed a faculty for cooperation and organization in public matters, which they had never shown before, and which they have seldom displayed since.

Nowadays, as they are the first to admit, they lag far behind their British sisters in this matter. A proof of it came to my knowledge only the other day when an international group of professional women, applying for help to a distinguished French woman, received the reply that she was too much occupied by her own profession and her own family to take any point. part in the movement. Madame Roland was an excellent mistress de Maison, and yet she never permitted her household duties to occupy her more than two hours a day. She was her husband's secretary, but she also found time to be the leader of a political party. She was a woman of letters, but when

her husband was in ill health, she found time to prepare all his meals with her own hand. Anyone engaged in public work knows that it is always the most occupied who can find time to take on more work, for the obvious reason that the more one has to do the better one has to organize. Many a woman of the revolution besides Madame Relan made this discovery. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the woman's movement during the four years which followed the fall of the Bastille attained proportions which in France it has never reached since. These four years present us, as we shall see in the last chapter of this book, with a complete drama of feminism in four acts. It's dawned.

in the writings of that apostle of sex equality, Condorcet, its zenith in the influence exercised by women in the Revolution Clubs and Societies. Its decline when women fell into disfavor with Robespierre and his colleagues. Finally, its collapse when the anti-feminists of the convention closed the women's clubs and began to lay the foundations of the Napoleonic Code, which was to constitute the most serious reverse ever suffered by the women's cause in any country. But the majority of the revolution women were far from being feminists, like Olymp de Guge and Claire Lacomb, or anti-feminists like Madame Roland, Theresa Cabarrus. Most of them were too concerned with the wider human interest to give feminism or anti-feminism a thought. A conspicuous few supported the revolution by

methods which were new as far as women were concerned. They organized women's clubs, harangued Parliament, and spoke on public platforms. A still smaller group shouldered arms, and one even wielded the assassin's knife, but the majority were content to tread the more beaten tracks, to exert their influence through their menfolk, to bring up their children in revolution principles, to knit socks and red Phrygian caps for their heroes, to make lint and bandages for the wounded, to nurse in hospitals, to encourage their men even in the darkest days by organizing fads, banquets, processions, and patriotic plays, to beguile the tediousness of club meetings with songs, music, and dancing, to sacrifice on the altar of La Petrie, their money and

their jewels, and when the need came to exercise that one political privilege which was never denied to them, to offer up their own lives on the scaffold. Clever women of the leisured classes continued as long as they were permitted to exercise their influence in the time-honoured French way of the salon. These Revolution drawing-rooms served as a meeting place for the leaders of the various factions, and in them many an important program was drawn up and decisive incident planned. At the opposite end of the social scale, the hooligan woman of Paris far-gathered in the Palais Royal and Sulry Gardens, and in the various markets of the metropolis. There they were always ready to raise a riot whenever the commune or the sections or one of the clubs required it.

In the early years of the revolution, women's assistance of every kind was constantly solicited by the men's leaders, some of whom in those days were distinctly feminist in their sympathies. The Abé-C-S would have given women parliamentary votes. Condorcet would have gone further and made a small number eligible for Parliament. The Jacobin Club entrusted to women highly imported political missions. The Cordolier Club listened entranced to feminine oratory, and in that art members of the Convention took private lessons from actresses. The communes stooped to employ the lowest of women as insulteuse, paid to hurled chives at the condemned as they passed through the streets on their way to the guillotine.

Even later in 1794, when it was a question of defending Robespierre on the ninth of Thermidor, his faithful friend, Florio Lesko, demanded from the Jacobin Club, de Solide Geyer, robust fellows, femme-comprice, including women. During the first years of the revolution, women were honored for services rendered. Medals were struck to commemorate their achievements. A banner was given them behind which they were to march to public ceremonies, and on the banner was worked in the motto. Thus they drove the vile tyrant like a prey before them. This honorable treatment continued as long as women were content to follow meekly

in the wake of their lords and masters. But as the revolution proceeded, and as the women's political, education progressed, they committed the unpardonable sin. They began to hold opinions of their own. They dared to criticize their masculine fellow workers, not sparing the incorruptible himself, the Robespierre whom they had formerly deified. Henceforth, in the opinion of their masculine fellow workers, they could do nothing right. They were too hot or too cold, too extreme or too moderate, too cruel or too lenient. They must be got rid of, banished from the political scene, thrust down and kept in a subordinate position.

On the 30th of October, 1793, the National Convention suppressed all women's clubs and societies. In the same year, it closed their salons. On the 9th of November, it met to discuss whether women were capable of exercising political rights. The Ancien regime, be it noted, had never denied this capacity.

From King Philippe Le Belle's convocation of the First States General in 1302, down to their meeting on the eve of the revolution, women of property had from time to time not only voted for local and central assemblies, but now and again, as in the case of Madame de Sivigny, had sat and deliberated in provincial parliaments. Now, after five centuries,

women were to lose this right. With women's help, the Jacoby members of the National Convention had triumphed over their political enemies. They could now afford to dispense with feminine assistance. Of the two champions of women's rights, during the early years of the revolution, Condorcet was in hiding,

and CAS, who had been the orator of the constituent assembly in the convention, had forsaken the platform for the silent benches of Le Marais. When the proposal to deprive women of political rights was brought forward, only one comparatively unimportant member spoke against it. With unconscious irony, these tempestuous administrators of the terror

argued that the one essential qualification for all who would take part in politics is the possession of imperturbable equanimity. It was impossible for women ever to attain to the eventual element of calm. For women, therefore, there was no room in politics. Once and forever, the gentleman of the imperturbable sex slammed the doors of citizenship in women's faces.

And with what result, did the revolution purified from women's direct influence at once regain its balance? Let those who would know read the record of the convention during the next six months down to Robespierre's execution. So much for the effect of this measure on the government. As for its effect on women themselves,

we have only to look at the type of woman who prevail during the directory, irresponsible, empty-headed and frivolous. The directory woman, say the de Gaon course, fleeing from the seriousness that had attempted to romanize and Spartacize her, became a courtesan. The women of the directory drew France towards their patron, pleasure. Soon they were the mystery. the queens of a country which was plunging into luxury, diamonds, festivity, and gallantry.

That country fell a prey to pillow government. Napoleon married a typical directory woman, Josephine Boernet, whom he had met in a typical directory salon, that of Therese Cabarrus, then Madame Talien. Faced with Josephine's debts, harassed by her amours, Napoleon became convinced of the utter irresponsibility of woman. He had no doubt that if social order were to be secured, every woman must be as much the property of some man as a gooseberry bush is the property of the gardener. Consequently, Article 312 of the Code Napoleon decrees that a wife shall obey her husband. At Fontainebleau or some other museum there

is or was I here, the leather armchair in which Napoleon used to sit when discussing the draft code with his councillors. The leather cushions are terribly torn and slashed. Each rent represents a ash inflicted by this anti-feminist and his fury at his counsellor's attempts to persuade him to alter the draft of the articles in women's favor. The articles remained as Napoleon had planned them. The code which deprived Frenchmen of many political rights acquired during the revolution compensated them by making them tyrants in their own homes. End of Forward and Introduction Chapter 1 Part 1 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens.

This Librevox recording is in the public domain. 1. Part 1. Women agitators From the Place de la Bastille to the Chateau of Versailles. Quote, The inert were roused in lively natures wrapped away. Wordsworth It is creditable to the women of the revolution that their first gesture was one of pity.

The fact that the pity was misplaced, lavished on an unworthy object, an imposter, none other than the soul. called L'etude, a prisoner in the Bastille, does not lessen its merit. Neither need the date of this gesture some years before the revolution excluded from these pages, for it exercised the determining influence upon the course of the movement. Every reader of history knows that many a new era has been born of a misapprehension, of some Monsonge grantecine, Glorious and Posture. The story of the revolution is full of myths and legends, producing important crises and events.

among these fictions, not the least determining were those that centered in the Bastille. By the time the Revolution broke out, this feudal fortress had almost fallen into disuse. It contained only a few prisoners, some of whom lived there in great comfort, in well-furnished rooms, ordering their own food and their own clothing. On one occasion Paris shops were ransacked for flowered silk of a certain pattern required by a lady prisoner in the Bastie. This was fact. Fiction painted a very simple. different picture. It showed a dungeon, L'Enfaire de la Bastille, crowded with the king's enemies who languished there in conditions of indescribable horror. That this imaginary picture was the one imprinted on the

mind of the French nation was largely due to a woman, to a woman of the lower middle class, when Madame Le Gros, the wife of a Parisian shopkeeper, whether a grocer or a haberdasher seems doubtful. It was a mere accident that aroused Madame Le Gros' interest in the Bastille. Walking one day down the street called La Fosse, the dikes, of Saint-Germain-Logseroix, her eye fell on a piece of paper lying on the ground. She picked it up and saw it was covered with writing. This, she read and found to be the complaint of a prisoner when Henri Masser, Marquis de la Tud, who for thirty-five years so said the paper, had suffered unjust imprisonment in the Bastie and other dungeons. Madame Le Gros seized with pity, took the paper home, showed it to her husband, and together

they resolved not to rest until the prisoner was set free. They got into communication with Latud, and with amazing courage and enterprise, started an agitation for his release. Madame Legreau, we are told, had, like Stearn's lady in the glove shop, been in the habit of talking pleasantly on all manner of subjects to her husband's customers.

To them and to others, she now began to talk about Latud. For the purpose of expatiating on his misery, she made acquaintances wherever she could, especially with servants, in the houses of the Great. Thus, at length, she gained access to influential people.

One of these was the Cardinal de Roan. This prince of the church was induced to take an interest in the prisoner. He spoke of Latud to his friends. In that sentimental, tearful age, the wave of compassion quickly rose and spread. It spread from house to house, as Madame Legreau in her shabby clothes,

told the prisoner's tale and distributed in the most influential quarters the particulars of his sufferings described by himself. She was immensely aided by her protege's eloquence. Latud was an adept at painting his woes in lurid colors. Indeed, he had spent the greater part of his life in doing nothing else. His story, as he told it, was irresistible.

Great ladies, Madame de Luxembourg, madame de Bufelère, desalved in tears as they read it. The wife of the Comptroller General, Madame Necker, and her brilliant daughter, Madame de Stahl, became the prisoner's advocates. The French Academy took up his case. Its perpetual secretary, D'Alembert, the great philosopher, waxed indignant as he meditated on Latud's sufferings. Not Paris alone, but the provinces joined in Madame Legreau's campaign of mercy. Finally, the Queen Marie-Antoinette herself was touched. She pleaded for Latud with the king. But here, Madame Legris experienced her first rebuff.

She and her friends had heard of the Marquis de Latour's marvelous escape, from the Bastille and Vincennes. They knew about the ingenious ladder, 180 feet long, which he and his fellow prisoner had made out of pieces of wood and shreds of their own clothing. But Louis, when he came to read

Latud's dossier, knew much more than this. He knew that the so-called Marquis de Latud was in reality a penniless army barber, D'Henri, by name, a wild imposter, who, as the result of an absurd stratagem, designed to bring him to the notice of Madame de Pompadour, had found himself lodged in the

tea where he had been kept in great comfort at the crown's expense. Louis knew more still, for he read that more than once the pseudo-Latud had lost the chance of release by haggling over the sum to be paid him in compensation for his alleged sufferings. Louis, moreover, was, from his personal knowledge, aware that Latud had actually been set free in 1777, but that he had made such a bad use of his liberty, extorting money from helpless females by threats, and making false charges against Louis' men. that it had been necessary to re-arrest him. In face of these facts, Louis decided that Latud had best remained where he was.

This was a terrible blow. All the agitators were discouraged, except one. That was Madame Le Gros. She placed her hopes in the Queen, and she was not disappointed. Soon afterwards, the Queen's favorite minister, de Breté, came into office. What arguments he used with the King we do not know. but Louis relented. La Tud was set at liberty.

But, as a condition of freedom, he was to go into exile. That was not enough for the irrepressible Madame Le Gros. Again, she agitated. Again, the king allowed himself to be persuaded. The penalty of exile was removed. Madame Le Gros was permitted to receive her protege into her own house. Laud was now a hero, and his liberatoress a heroine. They both became the fashion.

so much so that Madame de Stahl de Luxembourg and de Bufleinor con descended to dine with L'Aude at the Le Gros' Humble Board. The lapse of years only increased their renown. As late as the 26th of January 1792, a member of the Legislative Assembly declared that no foreigner came to Paris without visiting them. The 14th-Juier, the day of the capture of Latud's prison the Bastille, is still regarded as the most glorious in the Republican Annals of France. Throughout the revolution, Les Vainqueur de la Bastille, as all those who had taken part in the 14th of July

insurrection were called, were fated and honored as national heroes. Nothing availed to dissipate the myth. Not even the discovery that the fortress, far from being crowded with victims of tyranny, contained not a single political prisoner, only seven prisoners in all. Four foragers, two madmen,

and one victim of sadism. Until recent years, Madame Le Gros's tale of Latun, sufferings in the Bastille continued to be believed, and to be related as gospel by Republican historians, such as Louis Blanc and Michelet. Even as late as the exhibition of 1889 in the model of the Bastille, there was exhibited personating Latud, a white-haired old man lying in chains on a bed of straw and groaning horribly. Here, the guide would say, You behold, ladies and gentlemen, the unhappy Latud, who remained

in this position with his hands chained behind his back for 35 years. years. Yes, rejoined one of the visitors to the exhibition, and in that position, Latud made the ladder 180 feet long by which he escaped. Women are said to be more gullible than men. They are, at any rate, more easily moved to pity. Multitudes of men believed Latud's story, but it was the women who could not rest until he was set free. The very mention of the Bastille raised an image of dread in every sensitive French woman's mind. At the Citadel's capture and demolition, women were present in large numbers. Madame de Jean Lise, who had brought her pupils, the Duke of Allian's children to watch it,

said she saw women helping to pull down the towers. Fashionable women were there as well as women of the mob. The elegant dames left their carriages some little distance away and walked on to the square. Chancellor Pascay found standing close to him Mademoiselle Comte, a famous actress of the Comédie Francaise. We all stayed till the end, he writes. And I gave her my arm to escort her to her carriage in the Place Royal. In the records of the Museum des Archive National,

among the names of the men honored as Vainteur de la Bastille, stands the name of one woman and one only, Marie Charpentier. Among the many myths circling around the fortress and its capture is the story that Tirwang de Merrickour, Carlisle's brown, eloquent beauty, having seized arms at Les Evadier. came to the Bastille and took possession of a tower. But alas, Terwang's most recent

biographer, Mr. Leopold de la Courte, cuts away the foundations from this romantic tale, although it was told by Lamartine, Michelet, the de Goncourtes, and another of Teruang's late biographers, Monsieur Marcellin-Pelais. Women, whatever part they may have played on the 14th Juilliers, kept up their interest in the Bastille. They bought its stones as relics. A pound of them was sold for as much as a pound of bread, no small sum in those days of food scarcity. Our fellow countrywoman, Henrietta Maria Williams,

when she went to see Madame de Jean Lise at St. Lu, found her wearing as her chief ornament one of these besties stones. Nestling in a rosette of tricolour ribbons, it was set in precious gems and crowned with a wreath of laurels. If it was pity that first brought women into the revolution, another impulse equally potent

to provoke revolutionary action and even more characteristic of French women, indeed of housekeepers all the world over kept them there. This was the economic impulse, the bread and cheese question. Thus, on the eve of the revolution, we find Parisian women protesting to the king against men's usurpation of women's trades. If only men will leave us the needle and the distaff,

ran the woman's petition, we will leave them the plain and the all. It was this bread and cheese question that made it possible to organize that women's men the march to Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, which was the second great insurrection of the Revolution. Hunger. Le Pen Quimanc, wrote de Goncourt, was at the bottom of all the early dramas of the Revolution, and whatever else it may have been, the October procession was

certainly a hunger march. The corn problem was one of the many disastrous legacies left by that evil genius of his country, Louis XIV. Turgo had tried to solve the problem by attempting to establish something like free trade, ne'erre by reverting to protection. Neither the one nor the other had improved matters and bad harvests made them worse. The queues outside baker's shops began in the early hours, lasted through the morning,

and sometimes on into the afternoon. Profiteers were charged with throwing loads of grain into quarries instead of delivering them to the populace of Paris. The clergy were said to be bribing millers not to grind their corn. What is the price of the look? a foreigner inquired of a Parisian working man's wife.

Three francs, twelve sous, the four-pound loaf, was her reply. The sum sounds incredible. This was how she arrived at it. The controlled price is twelve sous to the four-pound loaf, but you can't buy loaves at that price. My husband is compelled to wait all day long at the baker's door. He loses the day's work for which he would receive three francs, so the loaf cost three francs twelve sous.

as distrust in the monarchy grew all sorts of wild suspicions came into being. The government was actually accused of exporting corn and importing poisoned bread to sell at its weight in gold. When mines were capable of believing rumors so extravagant, anything might happen. The October insurrection would seem to have been in part planned and in part spontaneous. For some weeks, politicians had been urging the people to march to Versailles and demand from the king and the assembly an explanation of the food scarcity, and these agitators are said to have induced women in the Palais Royal Gardens

publicly to incite the famished populace to join in the march. Further, they have been accused of paying women to join and men to disguise themselves as women for the purpose. On the other hand, the immediate cause of the procession

would not seem to have been planned, and this immediate cause was no doubt a woman's matter. The fraud of a baker in the St. Eustache quarter who was said to have given short measure, to have sold a loaf of one pound nine ounces, which purported to be one of two pounds. Only by the skin of his teeth did this baker escape being hanged from the nearest lamp post. He was rescued by detachment of the National Guard. They hurried him to the Hotel de Ville, to which he was followed by the infuriated housewives

and market women of St. Eustache. The story of their grievance had spread like wildfire through the working-class quarters, and soon on the Place de Greve an angry mob was surging round. the Hotel de Ville. The malcontents forced their way into the building. Some say they made it the stronghold of femininity, refusing to admit any who were not of their own sex. But masculine force burst open a side door. There was a scene of terrible confusion. Two of the women with lighted torches were about to set fire to the municipal archives when Stanislas Mayer, an usher at the Chatelle Law Court, had an inspiration.

It saved the town hall and it led to much elf. "'Alon at Versailles,' he cried. Seizing a drum, beating sharp, with loud rolls the tall-gant figure in an ill-fitting suit of black, rushed down the town hall staircase shouting loudly, "'Aversailles!' The idea took at once. The town hall and the cheating trembling baker were forgotten. After all, was not the king himself at the bottom of this trouble.

Was it not from him that bread should be demanded? surely he was the head baker. What was he doing out there at Versailles, sheltering behind his Flanders regiment? Ought he not to be in Paris among his starving people? To Paris he should come, and the housewives would bring him there. So along the keys, past the Louvre,

past the Tuileries gardens, towards Versailles, they swarmed in the rain and mist of that October morning, those menager. At the start there were only about 500 of them, not eight to ten thousand as many have alleged. As in all such processions, there were the serious processionists who desired a definite object, and there were the mere ruffs who wanted a riot and hoped somehow to benefit by it. There were also among these hunger marches women of various occupations,

housewives, women of the markets, of Le Al, of St. Catherine's Market, and St. Paul's. There were lace makers, flower-sellers, and no doubt women of the street. Mayal, with his drum, led the way. Before him went a banner from which hung Baker scales. Behind him came the women armed with spits, broomsticks, and any other implement of peace or of war which happened to be handy. Crowds of ruffs joined them on the way. Peasable citizens were compelled to join, and by the time they reached Savre, the procession of five hundred had swollen to such proportions that messengers galloped to the National Assembly with the news that Paris was marching on Versailles.

These tidings, born to the king, who, as usual, was pursuing his ancestral pastime of the chase in Mudon Woods, rapidly brought the monarch home to his palace. And there he was when about three o'clock in the afternoon, the bedraggled horde reached Versailles, and came to the Hotel de Menoplaiseu where the National Assembly was in session. Mayer succeeded in obtaining permission for himself and 15 of the petitioners to present their grievances to the Parliament. Mayer entered with a woman on each side, one brandishing a sword, the other bearing a pike, at the end of which was something round, whether it were a drum or a picture representing some indistinguishable object, perhaps the baker's scales again. No one could make out. Mayer had, with great difficulty, persuaded the remainder of the crowd to stay out of doors. But soon they grew impatient of waiting in the rain. What had happened to their spokesman,

they asked, had they been poisoned? Some of the most curious contrived to affect an entrance, others followed. Soon the galleries were crowded, and in the body of the hall dishevelled market women in dripping garments occupied benches reserved for deputies. There they listened to Mayard, demanding the withdrawal from Versailles of the unpopular Flanders regiment, as being one thousand unnecessary mouths in that time of scarcity. But when he went on to protest against the high price of the loaf and the impossibility of obtaining it without standing for hours in a queue outside the baker's shop. The housewives in the hall thought they could tell that tale better than he.

Refusing to remain mere listeners any longer, they burst in all speaking at once, and crying out that the assembly must fix the price of bread at two sous the pound, and that of meat at eight-sue the pound. The cry known as the three-eight's, then went round, eight-sue for the four-pound loaf, eight-sue a pound of meat, eight-sue a liter of wine, a certain amount of satisfaction ensued when another eight occurred at eight o'clock in the evening a deputy dr guillotin announced that loads of corn would immediately be despatched to paris thereupon mayeer and sixty of the most orderly manifestants went home those who remained were not so rational they soon abandoned their reasonable demands for the lowering of the price of food and began to insult the clergy a large number of the members withdrew when the president muny entered the hall at ten o'clock he found only ten deputies surrounded by five hundred women one of whom a gigantic menad of the market occupied the president's chair where she was ringing his bell loudly muny had withdrawn earlier in the day in order to conduct a company of women to the royal presence the king received them in his famous clock-room as to the number to whom this privilege was accorded there is considerable divergence of opinion it varies from

five to twelve. But all authorities agree in making a pretty young girl of seventeen, Luis Chabry, flower cellar or worker in sculpture, or possibly both, the heroine of the occasion. Someone has even gone so far as to reproduce or perhaps to imagine her discourse. Whatever she said or did not say she did not touch on politics. Perhaps she had none then, but they soon became very pronounced, for she apparently looked so charming and spoke so prettily that, when she was about to kiss the king's hand. He kissed her on both cheeks, saying she was well worth it. K'lain valet bien la pen.

Of course, that made her at once a staunch royalist. There seems to be better authority for this story than for another version of the incident, viz, that embarrassed by the monarch's August presence, the oratress of the deputation after murmuring the one word, Paine, fell into a swoon, from which she awoke to find herself in a hardly less embarrassing situation,

still surrounded by her fellow delegates, but in her sovereign's arms. Whatever happened to the pretty flower girl, the deputation seems to have been successful. Highly pleased with their reception and with the promises the king had given them, they left the palace crying, Long live the king!

But their comrades, waiting anxiously in the rain on the plazdalm, were somewhat critical, not to say jealous. Have you anything in writing? they clamored. And when the deputation had to confess to having received nothing but some excellent wine, the royal salute and the royal word, certain of their fellow processioners grew furious. Taking off their garters,

they would have suspended the deputation from the nearest lamp-posts had it not been for the intervention of their less violent sisters and of the Marichard de Léges who led the petitioners back to the chateau. There they were delivered from such dangers in the future

by receiving a paper signed by the royal hand. It recorded the king's promise that loads of corn destined for Paris and said to be held up at Lany and St. Lise, should be immediately transported into the capital, and that every possible measure should be taken for the provisioning of the metropolis. Provided with this royal charter, the deputation was now permitted to leave the palace in peace. Its leader, Louison Chabry and 60 other women, no doubt the more respectable of the manifestants, were then glad to return to Paris and carriages, which the

court provided for them. They did well, for two or three of them had already been badly hurt in scrimmages outside the palace. Louison was the first to reach Paris. She came into the Hotel de Ville at two in the morning. The others followed at intervals. Mayer arrived at four. He bore the king's promises in writing and handed them to the mayor, Bayee.

The women were utterly exhausted by fatigue and hunger. They asked for food and were given a supper, or rather breakfast, of meat, bread, and rice in a room adjoining the council chamber. The hooligans alone remained at Versailles. Many of these, as we have said, passed the night in the assembly hall. Others slept in the stables. Some even penetrated into the royal kitchens,

and at six the next morning their strident, menacing voices ascended from the terrace of the palace gardens to the Queen's bedchamber. With the well-known tragic events that followed during the next few hours, we are not here concerned, for the women played no very prominent part in them, though they mingled in the hostile crowd. Later in the morning they were in the marble court when the queen, who had narrowly escaped assassination at male hands, came out onto the balcony.

At half-past one they set forth in triumph on the return journey to Paris. They had achieved their object. They brought with them, not only sixty wagons full of corn, but the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's little boy, in other words, the king, the queen, and the doffin. A motley crowd they were still, those Parisian processions. but their aspect was different from that of the day before then they were suppliants now they were conquerors le bon papa as they called the king whom they had captured was not very clever they said but his wife the austrian woman whom they hated had misled him they the good women of paris would look after him henceforth so they were in excellent spirits their spits and broomsticks they had exchanged for tree branches tied with ribbons which once had adorned the elaborate coiffures of court ladies. Many of them wore helmets and armor belonging to the guards. Some rode in more like fashion astride of cannon. Among immense crowds of onlookers,

they conducted the king and queen to the Hotel de Ville, which it took them seven interminable hours to reach. And even then, the Via Dolorosa was not at an end. Not content with the appearance of their sovereigns on the balcony, and the king's assurance of the pleasure it gave him once more to be in the midst of his loyal subjects, though subjects refused to go home to rest until, at ten o'clock, they had seen the royal captives safely lodged in what henceforth became the prison of royalty,

the palace of the Tullery. In following the conduct of the processionists after the 6th of October, we again have to distinguish between the orderly and the disorderly. This is especially necessary in the case of the marketwomen, Les Poissard or fishwives, as they were called, who in large numbers took part in the procession.

they were of two distinct orders there were the respectable holders of long-established and well-known stalls in the market under the old regime these cuissards had been respected even honored by royalty the king received them on fact days accepted the nosegays they offered listened to their billingsgate talk and reserved for them special seats at royal pageants then there were the women ruffs of the market the loafers and hangers-on vestal terrible beckons soull de novo du Liber, drunken baccants of the new God Liberty. They threw themselves with fury into the revolution. They took part in every riot and hesitated at no atrocity. They filled the streets. They overflowed into the Tuileries gardens, roaring like lionesses deprived of their young.

The terrace of the Fayon Monastery and Otto's Café hard by were the favorite resorts of these vixens, these minads, breathing forth a smell of brandy and cynical Philippics. after the versailles procession these two classes of market women behaved very differently the rap scallions allowed the king and queen no peace as early as seven o'clock on the seventh of october they gathered in a howling mob outside the tullery palace clamoring for the queen to appear and when she did so screaming insults at the austrian woman whom they held responsible for all their troubles then these varagos made the round of the parish shops appropriating ribbons and other finery which they claimed as rewards for their so-called patriotism in going to versailles their more orderly sisters later in the day and not without respectfully soliciting an audience also went to the palace and were admitted mary antoinette herself consented to receive them her ladies thinking the fish wives presumed to come too near her majesty intervened between the visitors and their queen and held out their ample panniers to protect her these orderly market women were eager to prove that they had nothing in common with their hooligan sisters whose behavior they loudly denounced and some of whom they handed over to the police the municipal council of paris also was at first careful to distinguish between the two elements of the versailles procession on the former they bestowed the title of bon citoyenne they struck a medal in their honor they gave them the best boxes at the theatre and allowed them to come down on to the stage and dance national dances which were loudly applauded

but as the revolution went on and orderliness ceased to count for much the hooligans as well as la bon citoyenne in fact all women who had gone to versailles were elevated to the rank of national heroines at a meeting held on the sixth of nivots year two i e the twenty third of december seventeen ninety three the commune decreed that preceded by a banner inscribed with the words thus they drove the tyrant like a vile prey before them the heroines of versailles should march to all public assemblies and that there they should knit this last injunction gave birth to the term tricoteuse that famous designation of revolutionary women though received in all seriousness by such notable historians as carlyle it is now assigned to the term tricoteuse that famous designation of revolutionary women though received in all seriousness by such notable historians as carlyle it is now assigned to the irony of the anti-feminist Chomet, who drew up the official report of the session, and who could not refrain from this joke at the expense of the national heroines. End of Chapter 1, Part 1. Chapter 1 Part 2 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Part 2 of Women Agitators

Whether or no the knitting needles were so busy, whether or no they were plied in the Gallery of the Jacobin Club, and even rounded the guillotine, as romantic historians try to make out, the term tricoteuse had come to stay. Henceforth, Les Bonne Citoyen were known as the Nitters. Not many names of individual women who took part in the procession have come down to us. We have already mentioned Louis-on-Chabry who led the deputation to the king. Very little is known about her. Even her Christian name is doubtful. Was it Louise or Louison? Madeline or Marguerite At any rate, at the time of the procession

she seems to have been living in the Rue Richelieu, and later she was lodging with her father in a wine merchant's house in St. Catherine's Market. She was evidently a kind-hearted girl, for on the eve of starting for Versailles, she had given twelve francs all but four sous to the prisoners in the Hotel de Ville for the purchase of shirts and shoes.

She gave evidence at an inquiry into the doings of the 5th and 6th of October made by the Chateau-Lawcourt at the instance of the court party. At the Chateaule, Louison, like other witnesses, as we shall see, appeared by no means proud of the part she had played in the affair, and protested that she had been forced to join the procession against her will. Later, however, she seems to have changed her opinion, and our last sight of her is collecting the offertory at a te deum

in honor of the Versailles insurrection in the Church of Les Petitiers, at which were present, La Prinsesse de L'ambal, the Duke of Chartes, and the Duke of Pontievre. With Chabry on her deputation I said to have been Marie Noméry, Rose Barre, a lacemaker, Anne Foray, a shop-girl, François Robins, and three other women described as Les Dame Babet, Leclair, and Lavio. Robin, not Chabry, had originally been appointed to lead the petitioners. But as on the arm of Muni, President of the Assembly, Robin was being escorted to the palace. A Swiss guard kicked her so brutally that her injuries prevented her joining her.

the deputation until later. The two women who more than any others have been associated with the doings of those October days are Therwan de Merrick Cour and René Odou. The former was one of the most impressive, and in the end, as we shall see, one of the most tragic figures of the revolution. Legends have clustered thick round her life story. La Martine, Michelet, the de Goncourt, and Carlyle relate many of them as sober fact. Even those who liked ten, ignore the myth of, brown-locked, Demoiselle Tyrewang, seated on a cannon leading the procession to Versailles, assert that she distributed money among the troops on the square, hoping thus to bribe them to join the revolution. Poets from Bertilomi to Baudelaire have celebrated Tyroang as the leader

of the procession. Erected on a cannon as on a shield she inflamed the ranks with her gestures and her voice, sang Bertilomi. Lance in her hand, hair dishevelled, she marched a danger like Pentasalia. Bo Deleur in his sonnet, Sassina, asked, Have you've you seen Tyroang, amante du Carnage? Excitant at a saw, a people, sans-soulié, la Jouet, la Jouye-en-E-on-Few, on its own personage,

and mounte sable, up point their royos escaliers. Of all these picturesque myths, Tierwang's latest biographer Mr. Leopold de la Cour, who derives his story from Terwang's own confessions, makes short work. As one reads his closely-reasoned argument,

One begins to wonder whether he will allow Tyrewang to have been at Versailles at all, or even whether he will leave us anything of our martial heroine to believe in. Let us now see how much of her remains in La Cour's narrative. Anne Joseph Du Terwine, commonly known by the name of Tyroen, which was her usual signature, was born in 1769 at Markour, not Mirikour, a village on the Luxembourg and Belgian frontier not very far from Lijij. Her father was a well-to-do peasant farmer. Her mother died when she was five.

After her father's second marriage, Ther Wang and two brothers were left to the care of their stepmother, whose unkindness drove them from home to take refuge with relatives. But here apparently they fared no better. So Terwang, leaving her family, seems to have gone into service at Limburg, where she was employed in keeping cows. Then she suddenly became nursery governess or companion at Lijij.

Hence Revolution Records refer to her as La Belle Liaguerg-a. For this strange promotion we suspect Terwang's good looks to have been partially accountable. Although no authentic portrait of her exists, save one that was made towards the end of her life when she was ill and had lost all her attractiveness, there are numerous detailed descriptions of her appearance which show that though not strictly beautiful she was very pretty, small, mignon, and beacant. The dignity of her carriage made her appear almost tall, at any rate above the average height, said one who saw her.

Her eyes were dark and flashing, her hair chestnut, and she possessed one of those retrucée noses which changed the fate of empires. These governess days of Tierwang are full of mystery. From Lijes, she would appear to have gone to Antwerp and thence to England, how why and with whom is doubtful. But it is thought that in England she became the mistress of a wealthy English youth who promised to marry her. Other stories of her life in England, that she became the mistress of the Prince of Wales, and was introduced by him to the Duke of Orleans seemed to be doubtful. These rumors have been recently used to bolster up the theory that Thir Wang was involved in the so-called Olianist plot

to replace Louis XVI by his Oleanist cousin. Tir Wang, when arrested for taking part in that October procession, which some consider to have been part of this plot, of course, took care to deny any acquaintance with the Duke. Her denial may or may not have been true. Tierwang gave her own version of the English episode in her story. This she told to her people at Marcourt after she had left England and returned home with a considerable fortune. She said she had married in England a rich Englishman, of whom she was then the widow.

Relying on her relatives' ignorance of English, the crafty Tierwang appears to have produced certain documents signed Tierwang's spinster, and to have told her family that spinster was the name of her late husband. French biographers, as ignorant of our language as the Terwangs, have conducted endless researches with the object of identifying this English spinster, whom they supposed to have been the father of the child alleged by Terwang to have been born to her in England and said to have died in infancy. More reliable than Terwang's own story are the numerous records which show that somewhere about 1787 Terwang was in Paris, and that there she was receiving the addresses of an elderly French nobleman, Hermon, Hermon Nicolae du laud.

Marquis de Persons, who settled upon her for life an annual income of 5,000 francs. He was soon to regret his generosity, for Thier Wang, who possessed a fine voice which had been trained, probably in England, declared her intention of devoting her life to music, and went off to Genoa with a famous Italian singer, Tenducci. Her contract with Tenducci is extant. Here again she signs Tair Wang's spinster. It seems likely that Tire Wang had financial resources. other than and in addition to Percent's allowance.

This she continued to receive and to apply for, sometimes in advance, in letters to the Parisian banker Perego, which still in existence form one of the most reliable sources of her biography. As pawn-shop records show, she possessed a great store of valuable jewels and plate, gifts, no doubt, from Mr. Spinster, and from other less hypothetical lovers. Tirwang returned from Genoa in the summer of 1789. She came back a very different woman from the gay cortisans who had set forth with the Italian tenor from the brilliant Contest de Campinados as she had called herself in days when she was to be seen glittering with jewels in her box of the Paris Opera. Now her life as a courtesan was over.

She had paid the price of her calling, for in Italy she had contracted the malady that ultimately was to lead her to the hospital of Salpateriaire. Her beauty was on the wane. Her Italian lover had spent the greater part of her money. Her vivacity, intelligence and charm, however, remained for a while longer, and a Tyre Wang proceeded to make the best of them. Unable to continue her old calling, she turned politician and tried with considerable success. to pose as a femme savant she sought for and made acquaintance with scientists like rome politicians like petion and though she failed to attract the abyssias to her house she induced his brother to visit her

thus as we shall see later she opened a salon and in it as we shall also see she founded a club formerly music had been her only serious concern in life politics had no interest for her but on the morrow of her return for her from Italy, she found herself in the midst of them, for she was lodging in the Hotel Toulouse near that Palais-Equalie, as it came to be called, where throughout the revolution the political cauldron was always at boiling point. It was here, if we may trust Ter Wang's own confession, that she first became interested in the people. Already the revolution seemed to her to have changed men's hearts, to have banished egoism and obliterated class distinctions. As she looked down on the Poissard, haranguing the passers-by, even the most ragged seemed to have a heroic air. Here, in the Palais Royal Gardens, Tyre Weng fell in love

with liberty. The scene that Ter Wang saw on the sultry days of that tropical summer of 1789, in some mild way, must have resembled our Hyde Park near the marble arch on a summer Sunday afternoon. There was the stamp orator on a chair. On the fateful 12th of July, when the news arrived of Nicar's banishment, the orator was the timid, stammering Camille d'emoulin, who had been forced to mount his impromptu platform. In halting, though passionate accents, he was summoning the people to arms in a social war.

The beast is in the trap, he cried. Now we must finish him. Never did richer prey await victors. Forty thousand palaces, mansions, and chateaus. Two-fists of the whole wealth of France will be valor's reward. on the evening of that day tyroin took her first step on the political stage walking in the streets with her servant she met a group of soldiers and asked them whether they were on the side of the state general that question very nearly hurried her into prison on the famous fourteenth when the news of the capture of the bastie was announced in the gardens tyroi saw people weeping with joy three days later the si de van contes de campinados made her first appearance in a political manifestation wearing a white riding habit and a chaperon she took part in the procession which went to welcome louis the sixteenth coming from versailles to give his blessing to the revolution's first triumph the destruction of the royal prison

by this time terwang had thrown herself heart and soul into the revolution movement she was reading all the public announcements and newspapers but she found them difficult to understand so in order to be in the heart of things she went to live at versailles in la rue de noaye there she spent most of her time listening to the debates of the national assembly these also she found somewhat incomprehensible at first but as gradually they grew more intelligible they showed her the people oppressed by the privileged classes the people with justice and right on their side on the fifth of october terwang was at the assembly when the approach of the woman's procession was announced we have already seen the story that she accompanied mayor and his draggled-tailed throng from paris to be nothing but legend No contemporary evidence corroborates Carlyle's picturesque description of Demoiselle Terweng, Brown-locked Terwang seated on a cannon. The two friends of liberty in their famous history of the Revolution do not include Teruang's name among those of the women processioners. It was not until some months after the event

that the scurrilous newspaper, Les Acto des Apotre, mentioned Tyroang as one of the leaders of the procession. However negligent Tyroang may have become later, those October days of 1792, she had far too much regard for her appearance to join her disheveled sisters on their mud march. It was much more like the coquette, Ther Wang still was to keep herself spick and span, to don an appropriate silken riding habit, read this time, and to caracole on a warlike steed on the Place d'Alm. But alas, even this picture of our heroine, historical accuracy relentlessly bids us discard. Her own account of her doings on the

5th and 6th of October was that on the procession's arrival at Versailles, she went out of the assembly hall to see what was happening, and then, having satisfied her curiosity, retired to her home for the night, taking with her a few miserable women to whom she gave bread. On the following day, so she said, having gone to the assembly hall and found the doors closed, she mingled for a while with the crowds on the square, then, when the hall was opened, returned there, and listened to the debates for the rest of the morning. This story may or may not be true. We must remember that when Tyrewein told it she was eager to clear herself from the charge of having led the procession,

or at any rate played one of the principal parts in it, a charge which was being brought against her by the Chattelé-Law court during the inquiry into the events of the 5th and 6th of October to which we have already referred. This inquiry opened on the 11th of December 1789 and continued until the 29th of July 1790. There seems little doubt that it was instituted by the enemies of the Duke of Orleans and Mirabaut, and with the design of proving them to have been the instigators of the insurrection. During the first six months, the evidence of some 400 witnesses was taken. Among them were the king's aunt, Madame Adelaide, his brother, the Comte de Provence, and even the queen herself. Marie Antoinette is said to have refused to incriminate any of her husband's subjects. Her evidence was therefore entirely uncompromising.

I saw everything, I heard everything, I have forgotten everything, she is reported to have declared. Out of the 400 witnesses, only three said they had seen Terwine actively engaging in the insurrection, and even these three were vague. One had been told by a lady whose name he had forgotten that she had seen among the brigands who had come from Paris to Versailles, a lady, a dame, whom she had been told by a lady, whom she had thought to be, Teruwen de Montessur, dressed as a man with a tall nobleman dressed as a woman. The second witness, a priest, said that on the evening of the fifth, when the Flanders regiment was in the Avenue de Versailles, a lady, some say several, wearing a long red coat,

at least as far as could be seen in the darkness, was going up and down the ranks in her hand a basket from which the soldiers were taking little packets. Yet another priest, this one a student in theology of the Sorbonne, declared that on the night of the fifth, being at the window of the Hotel Flamaran, Rue de L'Orangery, he saw arriving several women and men disguised as women. One of the former he noticed particularly. She was in a scarlet riding habit and on horseback. A jockey also in Scarlet followed her. The witness was told she was Mademoiselle Tyroen de Merrickour, whom he had previously seen at the assembly and whom he recognized later. She went up to the sentinel stationed at the orangery gate, which the sentinel, who wore the uniform of the Versailles

militia, immediately closed. Everyone said the witness, believed it to have been closed by order of Mademoiselle Tyroen. It was on such slender evidence that the Chatele Law Court on the 4th of August 1790 issued a warrant for Tyroiang's arrest. But by that time she was outside the court's jurisdiction. Whether it was for that expressed purpose or not that in the preceding May she had gone to her native Marcour seems uncertain. At any rate, she was out of France, and the Chatea made no attempt to obtain her extradition. Whether the Paris law court may not have prompted the misfortune which, as we shall see later, was to overtake La Belle Lijois is another matter. After the first six months, the Chatea inquiry had grown less vigorous. The inquiry had failed

in its main object to inculpate in the October insurrection, D'Lean and Mirabeau, whose names the assembly had refused to allow the commissioners to drag into the affair. Thus, from interminable sittings and an immense mass of evidence, there resulted only one actual arrest, that of a woman and one so obscure that her very name is doubtful. Whether her Christian name was René or Raine or Louise, her family name Le Duc or Odue or Ondew seems impossible to discover. There is no doubt, however, that she was a market woman, and that because of her good look she had, according to the time, time-honored custom, which still prevails in Paris today, been elected queen of the markets,

La Reine de Hall or La Reine de Hungary, as the title went then. This may account for the appellation of Reine or even René. There is evidence that already on the 4th of October, René, in collaboration with the famous Mayer, with a ragged hunchback, Bernou and with another, whom Ten calls a bird of prey, Furnier, nicknamed the American, had been working to create a disturbance. and to turn popular attention towards Versailles. René's part was to make speeches in the Palais Royal Gardens, and to cry out in the streets that she would go to Versailles

and demand from the king and queen the reason why Paris lacked bread. René would appear to have been one of the women at Mayer's side when he first entered the Assembly Hall, and she was apparently a member of the disorderly throng who remained behind after the more respectable processioners had returned to Paris. For, says one of the witnesses, at the Chatelle trial. It was La Prériere Dame de Hall,

reynodou, who, after the Bishop of Langer had been compelled to put his thumbs on the table as a token of submission to their demands, cried, Now we are pleased with you, so you must kiss us. The Chatelle charged René with having announced her intention of going to Versailles, and bringing back the Queen's head on her sword,

with having helped to massacre the king's bodyguards, and with having taken part in other disorderly scenes. Her cross-examination opened on the very anniversary of the day of her alleged crimes, the 5th of October 1790. When called to the witness box, Queen Odou began by denying her presence at Versailles. However, after the overwhelming testimony of no less than 50 witnesses who swore to having seen her there, had refreshed her memory, she changed her tactics, and, like other women whom the tribunal had

interrogated, Louis-on-Chabry, for example, Odu maintained that she had been compelled to join the procession against her will. as she was passing by the hotel de ville she said a band of women some of them very badly dressed at thrust a broomstick into her hand and insisted that she should go with them to demand from the king and the assembly reasons for the scarcity of food ren declared that the procession advanced in perfect order she carefully omitted any reference to her own conduct in the assembly hall or even to her presence there she said that with other processioners she had passed the night in the stables of monseigneur le comte d'artre and that they had slept badly, being constantly roused by the beating of drums. The next morning they went out into the streets and broke their fast on a bag of plums and a bottle of water given them by a soldier of the king's guard. Later, while the mob were invading the chateau, Odu confessed to having drunk something

stronger than water with some gunners of her acquaintance. Her sweetheart was said to be a soldier, perhaps he was one of these. Odu did not deny that she was in the crowd that brought the king and the royal family back to Paris. but she resolutely refused to admit that she had been guilty of any crime whatsoever. Thus, did this usually garrulous and bombastic person, with affected modesty and restraint, attempt to minimize her achievements in an all-important crisis. Her counsel, Cheneau, when he stood up to plead, told a very different story. And here we actually have an advocate giving the lie to his client.

Cheneau, aware doubtless, that the tribunal would desire to save its face by making at least one conviction, and that it had chosen this market woman for a scapegoat, determined if he could not get his client acquitted, at least to make a heroine of her, whether she liked it or not. In this he completely succeeded. His speech, adding one more legend to those already enlivening the annals of the revolution, handed down this well-nigh, nameless woman to posterity as a second Joan of Arc. Shenou represented his client as a noble patriotic woman, inflamed with the warlike order of her family. Were not her five brothers all serving with the colors? Moved with pity for her country's wrongs, this Pentecilia resolved to write them.

She had assembled more than 800 women in the Chansesilise, marshaled them in perfect order, and led them by the way of Severo to Versailles. There, outside the assembly hall, she had left 400 of her band to overaw the parliament. With the rest and three cannon brought from Paris, she had continued her way to the chateau, and accompanied by twelve of her comrades, had succeeded in penetrating into the royal presence. But not, said Chano, until she had passed through many adventures.

She had had to tackle the commander of the Versailles National Guard, Estang himself, to advance beneath the shot and shell of his troops, to be wounded in the breast and right arm, to push aside or to creep under two infuriated war-horses, who in some unaccountable manner had revenged themselves by kicking off René's toenails. so much suffering and so much courage had not been without its effect on king louis when ultimately odou had reached her monarch she had found him all docility and compliance

without a murmur the king had granted the poissard's request that he would subscribe to the declaration of the rights of man and reveal the whereabouts of the government stores of corn and flour in triumph ren and her friends had left the palace but on the square fresh troubles had beset them the market market queen had again been wounded, this time in the left arm. Utterly exhausted, her mutilated body had been placed on a cannon. After a wakeful night on this martial couch she had been up betimes, and at eight o'clock, despite her wounds and orthopedic disability, had dragged herself a second time to the king, to persuade him to grant his people's demands and go with them to Paris instead of fleeing to Metz, which was said to be his intention.

Again, Louis was compliant. He returned to Paris. and with him on her cannon had gone the lacerated queen of the markets. With her arrival at the Hotel de Ville, said Cheneau, her exploits ended. To such a heroine, how could any tribunal refuse the martyr's crown? The Chateleck condemned René to imprisonment, for what period does not transpire. Straightway, her fame went forth throughout the length and breadth of the land. The Chatele was bombarded with petitions for the gallant prisoner's release,

and when, on the 6th of September 1791, after 11 months of a wild agitation on her behalf, Odu was finally liberated, she received an ovation. By that time, any woman who had taken part in the Versailles insurrection was considered a national heroine, and among them, Odu as their leader was, of course, supreme. Parliament declared her to have deserved well of her country. The town council of Paris girded her with a sort of honor. The Jacobin Club collected on her behalf 357 francs five sous

with which the recipient was not satisfied considering it far too trivial a sum for so distinguished a deliverer of La Petrie René clamored but in vain for a pension for life its refusal however did not prevent her from continuing her martial efforts

in the revolution cause in the attack on the Tullery on the 10th of August 1892 she was again wounded soon afterwards the Victoria Jacobin began to find the services of women more embarrassing than helpful. Two years later, on the 27th of July, 1794, we find Odou in the prison of Saint-Pelagie for some unknown crime. Her release on the following 5th of September is the last we hear of her.

Rumor relates that she died mad. A critic, desiring to make light of women's achievements, will say that their debut in the revolution does not enhance their reputation for intelligence, or show them capable of independent action. He will point out that Madame Le Gros was the victim of an imposter. That the Versailles processioners were the agents, probably many of them the paid agents of political agitators, and that even if the women of the 5th and 6th of October sincerely went to Versailles to obtain food for their hungry families, they failed,

because the loads of corn they brought back were but a temporary relief. But another critic, less anti-feminist, might reply, that women were not alone in the same. in believing Latud's story, that as he lectured and exhibited his ladder throughout France and England, he received enthusiastic applause from masculine audiences, that though economically the Versailles' insurrection did little, politically it achieved its object. It struck a fatal blow at the old absolute monarchy. It brought the king out of the age-long monarchical aloofness of Versailles into Paris, where he was among his people, and more or less under their control.

It made him, in short, the king of the French instead of the king of France. It was this thing that the women had done. Men took the Bastille, even there the woman helped. Women took the king, says Michelet. Further, by bringing the king into Paris, women had made Paris the center of the revolution and the capital of the New France in a sense in which, for a hundred years and more, it had never been the capital of the old. End of Chapter 1

Chapter 2 Part 1 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens This Librevox recording is in the public domain 2 Part 1 Salons and Saloniers Quote Woman alone can organize a drawing room Man succeeds sometimes in a library

Benjamin israeli While in street market and on the high road French women of the humbler classes were making history in ways new to their sex. Up in the higher walks of society, cultured dames were exercising a no less potent influence in the time-honored French way of the salon. Socibility is the most characteristic quality of the French nation, and the salon, the incarnation of sociability, is the most typical of French institutions. From the salon through four centuries have radiated wit, grace, and gallantry, in a word,

the indefinable Esprit Francais. The French Renaissance of the 16th century owed a debt to the salon which is not usually recognized. In the following century, as we all know, polite society, in the French sense of the term, was cradled in Madame de Rambouillet's blue room. Fifty years later, Louis XIV, was framing his policy in Madame de Mait-naud's apartments.

Fifty years later, still, the social philosophy which was to transform France during the revolution, was evolving in Madame de Tancet's salon out of the conversation of Montesquieu and the encyclopedists. The revolution which destroyed so much of the Ancien regime

was powerless to destroy the salon. It persisted in spite of the convention's decree in 1793 abolishing it. What did you do all that time? Somebody once asked of a member of the convention during the period known as the terror. I lived, was the reply. While the salon as an institution

succeeded in living, many individual salons died. Only one. That of Madame Elvicious, the philosopher's widow persisted right through without a break from 1772 to 1800. Some were but temporarily suspended, like the salons of Madame de Condorcet and Madame de Staal. Others were closed forever, like the salon of Madame Roland, when their hostesses were taken away, first to prison, then to the guillotine. Never did the French passion for sociability assert itself more powerfully than in those tempestuous ears. Never was social intercourse felt to be more indispensable than when prison gates close on Salonier and her guests. Then within those gates, at the end of some lugubrious corridor in the Abbei or La Conciergerie, dimly lit by a few tallow

candles, men and women, having dressed with all the care than possible, would assemble to discuss topics of the day, or to try and forget them by composing a madrigal or repeating a bon mo. Why should one be awkward and morose, they would say, merely because an accident has placed one in uncomfortable quarters? But, though even in those grimest days gleams of cheerfulness would keep breaking in, it was inevitable that the rough blast of the Revolution Cyclone should fatally nip the fine flower of French wit and gaiety. Well, might Talleyan say that he who had not lived before 1789 could not know the sweetness of life. One of the greatest charms of the pre-revolution salon had been the lightness and grace with which it had treated fundamental subjects.

Whether, like Madame de Condorcet, academically equipped, or like Madame Suar, self-educated, or like Madame Geoffrey not educated at all, the salonier ever carried off gracefully her learning or her lack of it. I would give half my geometry, said the husband of Madame de Condorcet, for the talent which Madame Suar possesses without knowing it, she is eloquent as soon as she is moved, as soon as her heart or

her taste is wounded, and I notice that women whose self-love is tempered by adroitness are careful not to wound her. For some years before the taking of the Bastille, this special charm of the French salon had been threatened by the tide of intense seriousness flowing in on society. Madame Geoffrey nobly did her best estimate. When conversation in her salon in the Rue Saint-Honore was on the point of declining into controversy, she would change the subject with her well-known phrase, ''Volá quie' Those words would be the signal for Diderot,

the worst sinner in this respect, to gather his friends round him and withdraw from Madame Joffre's salon to a certain tree in the Tuilerie Gardens opposite, where the conversation would be continued. Madame Geoffrey died in 1777. Had she lived a few years longer, she would have found her little phrase as powerless as caniard.

to resist the incoming ocean of seriousness. Salons became so deadly in earnest that their old abituaries did not recognize them. All France has turned into legislators, sighed Horace Walpole. And all France meant for him the France of the Salons which he knew so well. The country, moaned grim, and again the country meant the Salons, has been transformed from a jolly tair de petit scandal into a vilain payé de gross event. Seguer, on his return to France from the Empress Catherine's court, went the round of the Paris Salons which had been the joy of his youth, but he groaned as he found.

That political passion had turned them into Abrinas where contrary opinions battled and hurtled incessantly, once disputation had driven out discussion, and where the entire fair sex was political, dealt with nothing but politics, and turned everything into politics. Our fair hostess of the revolution, quivering with a political excitement, which threatened threatened to upset the teacup she was handing to her guest, would feverishly demand of him not the latest madrigal or the newest bon-mau, but a ticket for the gallery of the constituent assembly or of the Jacobin Club. While Grimm and Walpole deplored the new seriousness, to Madame de Stahl, it lent the salon an additional charm. Never, she writes, was society at once so brilliant

and so serious as during the first three or four years of the revolution reckoning from 1788 to The change that had come over, even women of fashion, was heralded by the woman's newspaper, The Veritable Ami de la Raine, or Journal des D'Am. When, ran an article in this paper, Our Ladies were the wives of elegant talon rouge, of gay magistrates. When they had to shine in circles where the talk was all of the rain, of the fine weather, of a stage player, or of a whiskey, a kind of car. They never read anything but ditties and novels. The Journal des d'Am, full of love idols, madrigals and pretty nothings, was as precious as it was indispensable.

But, since their husbands have become men, since in their children they have to breed men, the rouge box and shoulder-knots have been discarded. The tender dora, the genteel Bernard no longer lie upon their toilet tables. The monetaire, or some political essay, have taken their places. And in order to please them, the Journal de Dame, must become serious. Over teacups and round the dinner tables and the breakfast tables of the Revolution important political events were planned, and political parties were founded. In Madame Rolland's salon, in the Hotel Britannic Rue Nego, the Girondiste party was born. On Madame Robert's sofa, says Professor Olar, the Republican Party came into being.

Round Madame Daudun's breakfast table at No. 5, Place Vandome, Vernou and other deputies of the Legislative Assembly, up the program of the first gérondist ministry. In Madame DuPlaze's parlor in La Rue Saint-Honore, her famous pensioner, Robespierre and his friends discussed the king's deposition. Thus, completely were the Bureau d'espri being metamorphosed into Salon d'Etat. Madame de Beau Arnais charming blue and silver salon, once famous as an excellent auberge because of its succulent Tuesday and Thursday dinners, came to be known as, the egg went sprang the National Assembly. Madame de Jean-Lise's drawing-room at Belchance, once the abode of the muse, came to be little

more than the antechamber to the Palais Royal, i.e., to the Orleanist party. So much the fashion had the new seriousness become that the gayest and most frivolous affected it. In days when the tragedy de Butus and Lamar de Cesar were all the vogue at the Theatres-Fonse-Richelieu, when Oratioscocles and Miltiada Marathon were being played at the the opera, little society butterflies, like the actress Louise Fuzzi, would study Greek and Roman history, would read Ploutis and Menander and rave about the century of Pericles. But there were times when, for a brief space, the new seriousness relaxed. Then Madame de Jean-Lise's husband, the Sivant Marquis de Sillery, forgetting his gout, would go down on his knees and polish the

floor ready for the voluptuous Russian dancing of his daughter Henriette, and of the mysterious Pamela. Was she Egalite's daughter? No one ever knew. Then Madame de Jean-Lise herself might be persuaded to attune her harp and sing to its accompaniment her favorite and perhaps appropriate, him to inconstancy. Even Therwang de Merrickour, as we have seen for a while, turned Salonier. We find her soon after the October insurrection, entertaining to supper at her Hotel of Grenoble in La Ruboulouroix, serious politicians, deputies even, who apparently were totally ignorant of her past. For in those days, Tier Wang's only lover was liberty. She now posed as a prude and blushed at an equivocal story.

On the left bank of the river in a little hotel in La Rue de Chantrainne, which was to be Josephine's later, amidst flowers and perfumes and statues to the sound of Mademoiselle Condé's divine touch on the piano, Julie Talma, wife of the great tragedian, received poets and artists David and André Cheney, philosophers and men of science, Condorcet and LaVoisier. But such moments, all too rare and too fleeting,

were liable to rude interruptions. One of these occurred at Madame Talmas on the 16th of October 1792. Julie was giving one of her most brilliant face in honor of General Dumorier, who was spending his four days' leave in Paris. The Talmas had invited artists, musicians and members of the convention,

Brissot, Bernou, Sontair, to meet him. Mademoiselle Cande was playing the piano when suddenly their burst into the salon three uninvited guests for Rocious Jacobin. One of them was Mara, in Carmagnol, with a dirty red scarf round his head from which escaped locks of greasy hair, and around his neck a handkerchief loosely knotted.

He and his comrades came to accuse the general of having unjustly punished two volunteers in his army. The guest of the evening had never seen Mara before. Having been informed of his identity, Dumourier, with all the houture of the Frenchmen of the world, scornfully looked him up and down and then said, Ah, so you are Mara? I have nothing to say to you. And with those frigid words, the general turned his back on the intruder.

Marat was furious. This house is a hotbed of counter-revolutionaries. He howled as he went out, followed by one of the guests bearing a red-hot shovel on which were sprinkled drops of perfume, intended to purify the air infected by the Jacobin's pestilential presence. The noise of the incident, this fate, offered by the daughter of Talia to the son of Mars, was soon brooded abroad. The next morning, newspaper boys were crying in the streets, great conspiracy discovered by Mara,

great assembly of Gironday and counter-revolutionaries at Talmas in honor of the traitor Dumorier, names of the conspirators who intended to assassinate the people's friend. The hero of this incident never forgave his hostess for bringing him into such painful notoriety. In his memoirs he accused all the Revolution women, with the exceptions of Madame Roland and Madame Neckerre, of being intrigante or foresony, madwomen. Had he been just, he would have made other exceptions, and one of them would have been Madame Talma's friend, Madame de Condorcet. Daughter of the Marquis de Gauchy and sister of the Marischal de Gauchy who fought at Waterloo, Marie-Louise Sophie, afterwards Madame de Condorcet, was born in 1764, at her father's chateau

of Villette on the borders of Normandy and Lille de France. Those who labor under the delusion that the whole of the French nobility on the eve of the revolution was merely frivolous, if not corrupt, should read the story of the serious upbringing of Sophie and her brothers and sisters. The education of boys and girls alike included Latin, Greek, modern languages, especially English, as well as for the girls, drawing and painting. In her serious studies, Sophie soon became so proficient that, when necessary, she could take the place of the family tutor. Philosophy was her favorite study and her favorite book, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The grouchy children were encouraged to take an interest in people

who were not of their own class. On their expeditions into the woods, they would cut faggots and bring them home to the cottagers. Madame de Gouche had invented a wonderful potato bread, which her daughters used to bake and distribute to. in the village. When Sophie was twenty, she had to leave her a door at home and set out on the one journey of her life. This was to Neville-Ambres, near Lyon, where there was one of those institutions of old France, known as Chapitre. They were societies of ladies who were called Canaanesses and who belonged to the most aristocratic families. The head of the chapter, La Duoyenne, alone took religious vows. The others passed through an elaborate form of dedication, but lived

comparatively secular lives. The Neville canonesses, of whom there were 46, not all in residence at the same time, were bent on making the best of both worlds. Sophie, the year after her entry, was going to so many balls and reading so many philosophical works by Voltaire and Rousseau, besides translating Tasso and the sublime young, that she lost both her health and her faith. The latter she'd never recovered. The former came back to her when she returned home, as she was soon. obliged to do then in the following year seventeen sixty eight her recovered charms conquered the heart of a hitherto confirmed bachelor of forty-three who came to stay with her father this was none other than the great condorcet the

famous philosopher and mathematician the friend of Voltaire and a member of two academies Sophie did not return his passion but few French girls in these days and fewer still in those expect to be in love with their husbands it was not until four years later when her only child a daughter was born that sophie was to fall in love with hers at the time of her marriage celebrated on the twenty sixth of december seventeen eighty six respect and admiration had to suffice condorcet was not rich mademoiselle de grouchy had no dowry there was no law in those days to prevent monsieur de grouchy from bequeathing the whole of his property to his sons and this he had done condorcet's biographer aragoe can find no authority for the frequently repeated statement that the duke de la roche foucault promised the young couple an income of five thousand francs a year condorcet was one of the least cupidinous of men when his friend turgoe had appointed him inspector of coinage he had refused to accept a salary his income when he married was probably about eighteen thousand francs but his taste and his wife's two were simple neither desired to cut a figure in fashionable society They refused invitations to court, but they willingly entertained a king when, like Christian

the 7th of Denmark, he happened to be a philosopher. Their salon at the Mint, L'Otel de Monnet, on the quay de Conte, soon became the resort of poets and philosophers, of Andri Chenier, the Abbe Morelée, the Constant Brothers, Charles and Benjamin, Monsieur Suar, whom to know was to know everyone who used a pen with distinction, and Madame Suar. Among distinguished foreigners, visiting Paris, few were those whose due feet failed to mount the staircase leading to Madame de Condorcet's drawing-room. England was represented at her assemblies by, My Dear Lord Stanhope, as French revolutionaries called him. By Adam Smith, whose theory of moral sentiments Madame de Condorcet was later to translate. By Tom Paine, who, as representative of the Department of N, was to be Condorcet's

colleague in the convention. By Sir James McIntosh, and by that eccentric David Williams, the founder of the Royal Literary Fund, the friend of Franklin, who probably brought him to the Hotel de Monnet. Thither too came the Prussian, an archercy Scloots, the Swiss Grimm, and the Italian tragic poet Alfieri, who was to marry the unhappy Countess of Albany. Possibly, the Condorcés were more appreciated by these foreigners and by their fellow countrymen, with many of whom, even with those who belonged to the same political party, La Girondin, with Madame Roland, for example, they were not popular.

perhaps the condorcets were a little priggish a little ponderous at this time on the eve of the revolution their ideas were in advance of the average opinion of the day they were regarded as utopians condorses went so far as to maintain that women should have votes and anticipating mcchnikov and bernard shaw that a time would come when human creatures would be able to prolong their existence through several generations in religious opinions the condorseses went further than most of the the revolutionaries. In politics, they were among the first revolutionaries to avow republicanism. When, on the king's flight in 1791, they demanded a republic, the monarchists were furious. Condorcet, replying to the remonstrances of one of them, exclaimed, It is my wife's fault. I allowed her to persuade me. And would you disturb domestic peace for the sake of one king, more or less? though the boldness of Madame de Condorcet's opinions

lost her certain friendships and closed against her certain salons, the influence of her own salon, the foyer de la Republic, as it was called, grew apace. Her husband's advice on all sorts of political questions was constantly sought. He did not sit in the First Revolution Parliament, but he was constantly to be found in the precincts of the Assembly, and his wife, from her seat in the gallery, eagerly followed the debates.

when, in the autumn of 1791, the Second Revolution Parliament, the Legislative Assembly was elected, Condorcet sat as representative for Paris, and for the third, the convention, he was elected by no less than five departments. His outline of a constitution and his project for a state system of education exercised considerable influence on subsequent legislation. Condorcet and his wife were always interested in education, and they were intimately associated with an interesting experiment inaugurated in the year of their marriage. This was a fashionable lecture society known as Le Lise, and not unlike La Societ des Anales of today. It was founded in a house at the corner of the Rue Saint-Honore and the Rue Valois by Monsieur Louis XVI's eldest brother,

the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis the 18th, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles the 10th. Monsieur de Montmorein, Secretary to Foreign Affairs, and Monsieur de Montesquire. Lectures were given and classes conducted by the most distinguished scholars, notably La Hap, Marmontel, and Condorcet. The society was an enormous success, especially among women. The members soon numbered 700, and included the most brilliant society and court ladies. Here, at the Lyce, the beautiful Sophie, surrounded by the abituaries of her salon, and saluted as La Venus Lyceiennes carried all before her. A popular versifier of the day compared the poverty of Greece with her one Aspasia to the wealth of France with her numerous lycenae's. In France, all the beau sex s amuse du carrie of l'ipotenuse and of Newton.

Women of genius are seen to, etudie l'anotomy, en vraves savants, to profundize the astronomy, and to learn all such trifles without even knowing it indeed with such ease that they run the risk of becoming mere parrots. The Lisee closed during the most tempestuous years of the revolution, was revived later and was imitated in another institution, Latine. In 1790, Condorcet's office of Inspector of Coynich was suppressed by royal decree. Consequently, the inspector with his wife exchanged the Hotel de Monnet for a flat, number 50, Rue de Lille at the corner of the Rue de Belshase, where Madame de Condorcet continued

her salon. In the spring of that year, her only child adopted. daughter, Alexandrine Louise Sophie, generally known as Elisa, had been born. Barely more than a year old, the baby in her mother's arms was in the crowd fired on by Lafayette's soldiers on that famous Sunday, the 17th of July 1791, when the people assembled on the Chant de Marse to demand the king's deposition. In the October of that year, Condorcin was, as we have said, elected a member of the Legislative Assembly. In the previous month he had been nominated to a post in the Treasury.

And Horace Walpole had written ironically to Conway, good Monsieur Condorcet has got a place in the Treasury with a salary of £1,000 a year. Later it is. Condorcet and such monsters. Later still, Walpole can believe any villainy of such a fiend.

As these epithets imply, the Condorcets were becoming more and more pronounced in their revolutionary opinions, in their republicanism especially. In the autumn of the autumn of the autumn of, of 1791 they refused to allow their names to be included among those suggested as tutors and governesses of the Dauphin. Between the 20th of June and the 10th of August in that year, Madame de Condorcet had received some 400 delegates from Merseille, who had come to Paris

for the Feast of the Federation in her house in the Rue de Lille, and as we might expect, she had completely bewitched them. A few months later the Condorcés, with Madame and Mademoiselle de Grouchy, took a furnished flat at Oteuille, in the house of of the citizeness Pignon, number two, in La Grande Rue. There, they intended to spend the summer months returning to the Rue de Lille in the winter. Oteu is now a suburb of Paris, not more than half an hour's tram ride

from the Gar-Sin-Lazard. In those days, it was a separate village. For some years before the revolution, Oteau had been a favorite resort of literary Paris. So, of course, it had salons. Three of them were famous. The salon of Madame Elbysius, the philosopher's widow, the salon of the Countess de Buflare, and the salon of the general

and military engineer Le Michaud d'Arson. The first alone can, strictly speaking, be called a revolutionary salon, and this is what had attracted the Condorcise to Oteu. Madame Elveseus was an old friend of Condorcés. He had known her in her husband's lifetime when, in La Rue St. Anne in Paris, she presided over assemblies so brilliant that they were named the States General of Human Intelligence. some of the guests of Madame Elvissius, however, were shocked by the frankness which prevailed, and Fontanelle implored his fellow guests not to speak evil of the devil who might well be God's businessman.

Messieurs, ne dison not de mal du diablo, it's peut be the man d'affaire du bon dieu. Madame Elvicious herself, when the conversation grew too profound or too profane, would draw her special friends apart, leaving her husband to continue with her. the rest what she called his hunt for ideas. Despite her comparative superficiality, however, when Elvicious died in 1772, his widow kept her husband's friends. And Condorcet was not the only one who followed her to Otey. With her having married her two daughters successfully, she retired to a house and park bought from the famous pastilist, Conte de la Tour. Thither,

soon after their marriage Condorcet had brought his young bride. Madame Elvissius loved men, adored children, doted on animals, and, like many other Salonier, disliked women whom she considered proud and heartless. It says much, therefore, for the grace and charm of Sophie de Condorcet, that as soon as her husband brought her to Oteuil, this remarkable and difficult old lady made her anabituet de la Maison. For Madame Elvysius would have agreed with a later salon dame, the Countess de Gu, Daniel Stern, who advised her young friend, Julie. L'Irette Lombert, Madame, about to open a salon, that she must have four times as many men-friends

as women. If your friend be a man, bring him, said another salonier, Madame Moll. Men, animals and children returned to the affection of Madame Elvysius. Turgot and Benjamin Franklin, who lived at Passy to be near her, sighed in vain for her hand in marriage. Children flocked to the terrace of her house to see her tame birds feed out of her hand. They appreciated much more than their elders her colony of cats and her fierce bulldog

brought from England by Franklin's nephew as an offering to Notre Dame d'autouille, which was the American's name for his lady. The dogs and cats that invaded the whole house were the despair of two non-practicing and later non-juring abbeys, Morelée and La Roche, who were Madame's permanent guests.

After the bulldog had bitten La Roche, Morelée wrote to Franklin, who had returned to America, that they were trying to persuade Madembourg. to send Franklin's gift to a bullfight, also that they proposed to present Franklin with a boatload of the 18 cats, which were on the point of becoming 30. End of Chapter 2 Part 1 Chapter 2 Part 2 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Part 2 of Salons and Saloniers The Condorcises at No. 2 La Grande Rue were but a few. few minutes walk from their friend Madame Elvetius at number 24. Her house, like theirs, fronted on the street. The Grande Rue of Oteu, like that of certain other villages near Paris, which have now become parts of the metropolis, then contained a series of noble dwellings. One may see some of them still with streetfronts so unpretentious as never to suggest the charming prospect of sylvan glades, undulating lawns and sparkling fountains that may be viewed from the other side looking on to the park.

At number 24, one found on entering a handsome vestibule on the ground floor, which, with that exception, was given up to kitchens and offices. In Escalier-Donour, with a balustrade of wrought iron, the admiration of all beholders led to the first story, where were the living rooms, the dining-room, and La Chambre de Madame. The salon, which communicated with the garden by a flight of steps, was large as well it might be, considering that Madame's guests frequently numbered fifty. Its prevailing colors were blue and white. The furniture included an inlaid rosewood chiffonier with marble top, a spacious couch in blue damask, pergère armchairs, and cozeuseuseuse upholstered in

damask and plentifully provided with cushions. Over the mantelpiece was a gilt mirror, in front of it a candelabra and a huge porcelain basket of blue porcelain flowers. That blue porcelain posy, forever blossoming for eight and twenty years, six of them the most tempestuous in French history, gazed down serenely on varying scenes, on guests coming and going, some bringing news of momentous events in Paris,

others passing away to prison, to the guillotine or to escape it by dying with their own hand. Many were the heated discussions which raged in that blue and white drawing-room. After one of them, its mistress found herself obliged to part from her old friend Moraire, who could not share her sympathy

nor that of his fellow guests with the new order that was dawning. For Madame Elvicious, Cabanis, La Roche, and the Condorcés were the leaders of the Revolutionary Party at Oteuille. La Roche was the first revolutionary mayor and Cabanis a member of the Municipal Council. At the magnificent ceremony which inaugurated the New Town Hall, the young girls of the district marched in procession, escorted by a detachment of the National Guard to the new building, and crowned with garlands the bust's place there of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Elvissius. when they reached the last the band played the air of a popular song beginning with the line where can one be better than in the bosom of one's family where can one's better than in the bosom of his family

at this signal the philosopher's friends and relatives advanced laid garlands upon the image of edvisius and embraced one another while the crowd deeply moved looked on the count d'erces were probably present on that occasion which was in the summer of seventeen ninety one some months earlier we find madame elvicious heading the list of the o'toy's subscribers to patriotic funds her contribution was four thousand five hundred francs cabanis followed with one thousand two hundred and la roche with nine hundred in seventeen ninety one number twenty four in la grande rue was one of the chief revolutionary centres the revolutionary leaders were accustomed to meet at mirabots in the chaucet in the morning at the assembly in the afternoon and at the house of Madame Elvicious in the evening. The death of his friend and patient Mirabeau was a great grief to Cabanis. He sought consolation for his loss in friendship with Condorcet, whose sister-in-law, Charlotte de Couchy, he was later to marry. As the political horizon darkened, Condorcet began to disagree with the party in power.

This was ominous, and he may have had a presentiment of his fate when in the summer of 1793 he accepted from his future brother-in-law a certain poison, a power of mixture of stramonium and opium which he concealed in his ring. Later, Cabaniss is said to have given some of the same poison to Napoleon Bonaparte. Since the king's attempted flight in 1791, Condorcet, and with Condorcet we always include Madame Condorcet, for their political opinions were identical, had been in the vanguard of revolutionary opinion. Towards the end of the following year, however, as the king's trial approached, Condorcet had tended to drop behind.

He, who had been among the first openly to advocate the suspension of the kingly office, he who later had hailed the king's deposition and the proclamation of a republic, had not been able to bring himself to vote for his former sovereign's death. He had protested against the death penalty in all cases. He demanded that Louis Capet should suffer the severest penalty short of death. From that moment he had been regarded as a moderate, and moderation in those days was dangerous. Power was then passing from the,

the gerald to La Montagne. Condorcet had drafted a constitution which he had presented to the assembly. It had been ignored. Another had been drawn up of which he disapproved. By a public letter, he had appealed to the nation against it and in favor of his own. Thus, he virtually signed his death warrant as he found, for on the 8th of July 1793, the convention decreed his arrest. For twenty-four hours, Madame Hedbysius concealed him.

But if he had been found in it, her house it would have meant search and death for La Roche who lived there and who, as we have said, was mayor of Oteuille. So the following day, Condorcet, went forth. This time, for a brief space, he actually found a hiding place with the minister of the interior, his friend, Garat. By this deed, Garat, often a vicar of Bray, attained to something like heroism. He would have kept Condorcet longer if he would have consented to stay. But meanwhile, Cabanisse was seeking a place of concealment where his friend's presence must. might be less dangerous to his host, and he had found one.

It was in Paris, on the left bank in a narrow dark street, then known as the Gravedigger Street, La Rue des Fosoyer, now La Rue Servandoni. There, at number 21, Dwalta Widow, Madame Verne, one of those noble and beneficent characters that show us how high humanity can reach. Madame Verne had been accustomed to let lodgings to medical students, and it was through two of these, Pinel and Boyer,

both of them later to be famous doctors, that Cabanisse had heard of her. Is he an honest and virtuous man? Was all Madame Bernay inquired when asked to receive Condorcet? In that case, do not stay to tell me his name. Let him come and do not hesitate a moment. While we talk, he may be seized. Condorcet went and lived for nine months at Madame Bernet's in strictest seclusion. His possessions at the Rue de Lille and at Oteu had been placed under the government's seal

and his property confiscated. Madame Condorcet was reduced to sores traits, for she had to provide not only for herself and her child, but for an invalid sister and an aged governess. Neither her resourcefulness nor her talents failed her. Every morning she tramped from Oteu into Paris, contriving to pass through the city gate unquestioned and unobserved among the daily crowd of market women.

Once inside, she swiftly made her way to a little shop in the Rue Saint-Henoré, taken in the name of the brother of one of her husband's secretaries. There she sold that delicate lingerie for which her race is famous. And when customers were scarce, upstairs in a studio on the first floor she painted portraits. In those days when life was so uncertain and photography undreamed of, relatives were eager to possess pictures of loved ones of whom they might soon be bereft. And to fix their semblance on her canvas, Sophie de Condorcet had often to work in the cell of the condemned.

occasionally towards nightfall she would venture to her husband's retreat. There she found him engaged in writing for posterity a justification of his political conduct. This work, tending to concentrate his mind on his personal sorrows, plunged him into the depths of despair. Distressed by his low spirits, Sophie and Madame Bernet put their heads together and urged him to abandon this self-justification and to take up something less personal. Condorcet adopted their excellent husband. advice and wrote his outline of the progress of the human mind. To that we owe his greatest work. The composition of this aspiring treatise, without the aid of a single book, would alone be an amazing achievement. But the character of the work itself, when one considers the position of the

author, is still more astounding. Here was Condorcet, with a bloody death staring him in the face and threatening those who were dearest to him, disappointed in his most cherished hopes for his country's future, yet writing throughout this book with all the confidence of the most untroubled optimism, and leading up to this final paragraph which it is almost impossible to believe was written by the pen of an outlawed man. Everything indicates that we are on the eve of one of the greatest revolutions in the human mind, and that it will be happy is augured by the present state of human intelligence. This book, which has now become a classic, was published a year after Condorc's death by and at the expense of the repentant government.

In the same year it was translated into English. As the terror advanced, concealment became more and more difficult, and nothing could convince Condorcet that it was right to expose Madame Bernet to the danger in which his presence in her house involved her. But she refused to let him go, and watched him narrowly to see that he did not escape. On the 4th of April, he learned that on the morrow government officials were to search his place of refuge. if i am discovered under your roof he said to madame vernet you will share my sad fate i am an outlaw i must not stay

with a frenchwoman's logic and concession and with a heroine's courage madame verney replied the convention sir has the right to place you outside the law it has not the right to place you outside humanity you will stay but condorcet was determined to go and the next morning a little before ten o'clock he contrived to give his hostess the slip and to steal away disguised as a workman in jersey and white-wollen cap he was observed however by the concierge she raised the hue and the hugh and the hue and cry. And soon after the fugitive had emerged from the Rue des Fosoyer into the broad thoroughfare opposite the Luxembourg Palace, he was joined by a cousin of Madame Bernet, one Sarais, to whom she was secretly married. This brave man insisted on remaining with Condorcet, and together they made their way out into the country. At three o'clock they reached a village, Fontenay-Oroes, which, like Ote, was the center of a literary coterie. Thither had retired monsieur and Madame Suar.

In pre-revolution days, they had been among Condorcet's intimate friends, and being poorer than he had received great kindness from him. But the Suars were among those who strongly disapproved of Condorcet's republicanism. They had avoided him on account of it, and they had not met since the king's death. The Suarez, too, were in danger of their lives, and their one thought was to live quietly and unobserved. It was at their house that the hunted Condorcet, worn out with walking after months of an activity, presented himself on that April afternoon.

Arrived at what he believed to be their gate, Serre bade him farewell and returned to Madame Verne, whom he had left in a fever of anxiety. But before Condorcet actually reached the suoirs, he had by accident made a serious blunder, which may have determined his fate. He had knocked at the wrong door, that of one of his political enemies, and had been recognized by the servant. When he arrived at the Suarez, he found the master of the house at home. They had a long conversation together. Whether Condorcet told of his blunder is not related, probably he mentioned it. At any rate, he spoke at length of the danger which threatened him and his family.

Then Suar told his visitor that he could not keep him in his house, but that he was willing to help the fugitive in any way short of harboring him under his roof. He suggested that Condorcet should return at eight the next evening. meanwhile suor would go to paris to try and obtain some false papers of identity which might take the place of the civic certificate which condorc was without and the absence of which placed him in the greatest danger giving his visitor some food a copy of horace and a screw of tobacco for which he asked and which with characteristic absent-mindedness he left behind suar dismissed his illustrious guest then immediately suar set out for paris he went first to garra garan advised him to apply to cabanese who as doctor in the municipal hospital at oteu might be able to give him papers belonging to some deceased patient accordingly suar went to oteuay where cabanis gave him an old license letter de pass made out in the name of a soldier whom it permitted to go from one department into another with this document suar returned to fontenay at eight o'clock on the sixth of april having sent away his wife and servant he awaited his visitor in an empty house He waited in vain.

At half-past nine, Madame Suar and her maid returned. Throughout the next day, the seventh, there was no sign of the fugitive. On the eighth, the Suar spent the evening at the house of friends in a neighboring village. There they heard that at Clamar, a man had been arrested who was thought to be Condorcet. It was true. After leaving Suar on the fifth, Condorcet had spent the night in the Verrier wood. The next morning, worn out with fatigue and having hurt his foot in a quarry, he entered a tavern at Clamard and ordered an omelette.

How many eggs do you want in it? he was asked. Condorcet, always absent-minded and totally unskilled in the making of omelets, replied haphazard. A dozen. Such an answer was quite enough to arouse the suspicion of a revolution spy who happened to be present. Questioned as to his identity, Condorcet with the white, well-kept hands of an aristocrat, replied that he was a carpenter. Such a discrepancy was more than sufficient to warrant a search, and the discovery of a Latin book in the pocket of the so-called carpenter was additional presumption

of guilt. He was taken to the nearest prison at Bourla Réin. There, the next morning on the seventh, he was found dead in his cell. On leaving Siouxard two days earlier, he had said, If I have a night before me, I do not fear them, but I will not be taken to Paris. By them, he meant doubtless the officers of the revolution. And it was probably in order to escape being taken by them to Paris that he had sought and found deliverance in the powder cabanies had given him. The prison doctor attributed to apoplexy the death of Pierre Simont, the name Condorcet had given.

For months his wife and family were ignorant of his fate. Madame de Condorcet believed that her husband had immigrated. The state disposed of a great part of his property as belonging to an emigre. Six weeks after his unknown death, we are surprised to find the municipal council of Otey pronouncing Sophie's divorce from her husband. The divorce saw the Otey record show had been demanded by her in the previous January. On reading this record, one cannot help thinking of the rumors of Madame de Condorcet's infidelity circulated by her enemies. They said she had already an entanglement before her marriage with Condorcet, that she had had lovers since. And we know

that after her husband's death, though she never married again, she had more than one liaison, that in 1798, for example, she was openly the mistress of the naturalist Boriel. The Abbe Morelé, in his account of Condorcet's last conversation with Suar, relates that the fugitive spoke of his little daughter with affection, but of his wife with indifference. But Morelée had, by that time, ceased to be Condorce's friend. He had separated from him, as we have seen for political reasons. And when he disagreed with anyone, Morelle could be unjust and bitter, as Voltaire's nickname for him, Mar-Lay, indicates. The Condorcet's friends, on the other hand, were unanimous in praising Sophie's devotion to her husband and his solicitude for her.

We may therefore dismiss these unkind rumors. They were probably as unfounded as the absurd story that Sophie had been the mistress of Louis X, whom she never saw and who died when she was ten. As for the divorce proceedings, they may have been a mere formality, not unusual in the case of immigre, entered into at Condorc's own suggestion, and intended to save the lives of his wife and daughter whose danger, as we know, caused him constant anxiety. Sophie herself, though she survived her husband for 18 years, never completely recovered from the horror of that terrible time. Her daughter, Madame O'Connor, used to say that her mother could not bear to hear the word Giron d'I mentioned.

Madame O'Connor could not bear to hear the name of Suar. For both she and Madame Verne execrated him as Condorc's murderer. For some months in 1794, deprived of her husband's revenue, Madame de Condorcet continued in great poverty. Then, after the reaction of Thermador, her circumstances improved.

Less than a year after Robespierre's death, Condorcet's memory was rehabilitated, and his widow received from the government's such of his property as had not been sold, with the value of that which had been disposed of. She then took a small flat in Paris in La Rue de Matignon, where she was joined by Madame Talma who had divorced her husband. But most of her time, Madame de Condorcet continued to pass at Oteuil. In that literary village, salon life was once more beginning to flourish. Those who had achieved a miracle of living through the revolution were returning.

La Roche was back again in the salon of Madame Helvissues. Madame de Bufleur, released by Le Neuf Termida from the Conciergerie prison, was reopening her salon, ready to receive the exiled Talleyrand when he returned from America in 1897. Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte were now frequently at Oteuil. Thither, in the last days of the century, they brought their triumphant brother Napoleon recently returned from Egypt. Napoleon visited Madame Elvius, and, fresh from the vastness of the desert, remarked on the tininess of her park.

Ah, General, said the old lady. You don't know how happy one can be on four acres of ground. The future emperor could not tolerate Repartee. So he bented his displeasure on Madame de Condorcet. I dislike women who meddle in politics, he said. But she too was a match for him. And the widow of the first French advocate of woman's suffrage retorted smartly, You are right, General, but in a country where their heads are cut off.

it is natural they should wish to know the reason why. With Napoleon was coming in a new era, which Madame Edvisius was not to live to sea. She died at the age of 81 on the 13th of August, 1800. For Sophie de Condorcet, Oteu had now lost its attractiveness. She took a house in Normandy, not far from the home of her childhood, where she spent the summer months returning for the winter to Paris,

to a flat in La Grande Rue Verte, now La Rue de Pontievre. There she had a salon. during her last years at hauteuille sophie had been editing and publishing her husband's works and with them her translation of adam smith's theory of moral sentiments to which she added a work of her own letter on the appearance of these letters in seventeen ninety eight brought their author an enthusiastic letter from madame de stal in madame de stal's literary flair had been quick to discern in madame de condorcet's writings the kind of talent she herself did not possess the letters display wrote the author of corin an authority which emanates from reason a true but controlled sensibility which makes you a woman apart then showing a self-knowledge of astonishing in one so impetuous, Madame de Stahl added, I believe I possess talent and wit, Esprit, but I govern none of my faculties.

They govern me, and I cannot control my use of them. This effusion surprised, Sophie. The two women, though not unacquainted, though about the same age, though they commence Saloniers in the same year, 1786, had never been friends. Indeed, they had very little in common. Madame de Condorcet, as we have seen, was a freethinker, inclining to atheism and a Republican.

Madame de Stahl was a deist with Christian sympathies, and always at heart a monarchist, though she came to support the Republic when she found it inevitable. Moreover, Madame de Stoll had never liked Condorcet. She had found it difficult to forgive Turgot's friend for his failure to appreciate Turgot's successor Nekker. Madame de Stahl, one of the most brilliant talkers that ever lived, If I were queen, said one who knew her, I would command Madame de Stahl to talk to me all day,

was not an ideal salonierre. She was too restless, too impulsive, too loquacious. The business of a salon lady is not so much to talk herself as to make her guest talk, to draw them out and set them at their ease. This, Sophie de Condorcet, achieved to perfection. Madame de Stahl never succeeded in mastering her friend Madame Ricamier's art of listening with seduction. Neither did she possess that other quality,

so indispensable in every good hostess, the quality of tact. Herein her Helvician ancestry revealed itself. Her tactlessness was sometimes mistaken for malice as one at a large dinner party addressing Garra, who years before had had a scandalous love affair, she asked loudly, "'By the way, Garra, did you ever marry that girl?'

Nevertheless, there is no denying the influence exercised by Madame de Staal's salon during the early years of the revolution. We see her standing in front of the chimney-piece, her hands clasped behind her back, her large black eyes flashing fire, her dark hair falling in massive curls about her neck as her lips pour forth eloquence. Her social dominance had begun early

when she was a little girl at home. When seated in her mother's salon on a little wooden stool at Madame Necker's feet, Germain had held entranced by her childish prattle a group of great personalities. Marmontel, Gibbon, Grimm. She ought to have been well trained in the Saloniers' art. For a while, indeed, after her marriage to the Swedish ambassador,

she imagined herself to be governing France from her salon in the Rue de Bac. For a while, she succeeded in that most difficult of social experiments, especially in France, of making men of opposite political opinions dined together. But Madame de Stahl soon found a neutrality impossible. Gradually she became identified with a party, that of such constitutional royalists as Talleyrand, Narbonne, La Littolandal, and because this party was not in the assented, her salon ceased to count. Most of her friends emigrated. She herself stayed on until the autumn of 1792, trying to save the queen, succeeding in saving Narbonne, constantly risking her own life for the sake of her friends,

until, finding she could no longer be of service to them, she herself took flight. during the September massacres, and, after narrowly escaping arrest, safely crossed the frontier and reached her father's house at Coppe. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Part 1 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. 3. Part 1 Clubs and club women during the revolution.

Quote, The insurrection no surrogue can be able, that if the femme sa m'el, Mirabou. Today, if you ask an intelligent public-spirited French woman of the middle class to what club she belongs, she will look at you in amazement and exclaim,

What should I do with the club when I have my home? If she is well to do, she may add, when I have my salon. Neither men nor women in the France of today are so addicted to the club habit as we are in London. But during the revolution it was different. Then, among women as well as

men there raised a veritable club mania. Clubinomani, the French called it. They had caught it in England. It had been a symptom of the 18th century Anglomania. Before the revolution, French clubs were for men only. A pamphleteer of the time deplores the habit Frenchmen were contracting of avoiding women's society and isolating themselves in clubs. With the introduction of this pernicious practice, he says,

set in the decadence of French manners and the substitution of something called energy, which was in reality nothing but rudeness and roughness for the earlier social virtues and charm. These clubs were mainly social. Members met to talk and play cards. One of the earliest of them, founded in 1782, called itself the Club Politique, though it paradoxically tabooed political

as well as religious subjects. Another, Le Clube de Boston or Des Ameriquins, was founded in 1785 by the Duke of Orleans after one of his visits to England. others followed and so rapidly that the government began to fear a political danger. Whatever attempt might be made to exclude politics in those days of political ferment, politics would keep breaking in. Consequently, in 1787, the Comptroller General Calon closed all clubs. But he could not prevent people meeting together to discuss the questions

of the hour. One of these little groups consisting mainly of lawyers used to meet during the election of the States General in 1788 and 1789 at the House of Dupin, a counselor in the Paris Parliament. In this gathering, some have discerned the origin of the most famous of the Revolution clubs, the Jacobey. After Cologne's dismissal from office, the government stopped trying to check the club mania. Then, all over France, clubs began to spring up like mushrooms and to vanish in many cases almost as quickly. The club Fury, writes a contemporary author, spread through all classes, all ages, all sexes. In certain towns, artisans left their work to go and derisone in clubs.

There were clubs for everyone, not only for men and women, but separate clubs for old men, for old women, for young men, for young girls and for children. Clubs for every type of character, for every shade of temperament, and political opinion. Clubs for the furious, les enraget, for the impartial, for the poor, who wore woolen caps, the indigent or le bonnet de l'en clubs for loyalists for the enemies of despotism for the defenders of the republic for the conquerors of the bestie a club for the federated a club for divorced women a club for l'en noir a club for servants a club for ladies a club for the electors of seventeen eighty nine a club from twelve till fourteen o'clock most of these clubs were political but not all the last for instance the club from twelve till fourteen o'clock which made

at the house of one Calabas in the Palais Royal, was a purely social club of jovial old men, the youngest of whom was 60. The veterans occasionally invited young women to their assembly. Louise Fuzzi, the actress, tells how she was once their guest and how witty, amiable, and gay she found her elderly hosts. But it is with the political clubs that we are mainly concerned here, and among them we may distinguish three categories. First, clubs for men only. Second, clubs for men and women third clubs for women only in all three we shall

find women for a while exercising a certain influence they threw themselves into the club movement says the patronizing Michel with all the blind ardor of a woman's heart with the passions of the middle ages employed in the service of the new faith it would be difficult

to exaggerate the immense importance of these clubs the power of the Jacobin for a while rivaled that of the National Assembly This club, whether or not it originated in the assemblies at Du Paz, dates from the earliest days of the revolution. When the States General assembled at Versailles, some of the deputies began to meet together to discuss the deliberations of the assembly. As many of them came from Brittany, their gatherings were called Le Clube Breton. It was essentially a club of professional men discussing political matters in private.

After the 6th of October, the Club Breton followed the assembly to Paris. The assembly had established itself in the riding school, Manage, in the Lu Saint-Honore, on the site of the present Rue de Rivoli, where it is now joined by the Rue Castiglione. The Bretons rented for their club hall the refractory of the black friars or Jacobain Monastery, which henceforth gave its name to the club. These monastic buildings were on the site of the present St. Honoré market. As time went on and as the Jacobin Club expanded, it and its affiliated societies came to occupy not only the black friars refectory, but the library also.

Then the crypt, and finally, the church itself. Arrogating to themselves the high title of Friends of the Constitution, Ami de la Constitution, our quantum Bretons regarded themselves as aristocrats among clubists. When they deign to admit women it was by ticket and as a rule only to certain parts of the hall. But sometimes, from their special seats, women were, addressed the club and even proposed amendments and resolutions. More than once they were voted the honors of the session. In 1792, on the 29th of February, a member was severely reprimanded for having introduced

three women into his private box. Perhaps the severity of this reprimand may have been due to the fact that one of the woman was Madame Roland, who was not popular in the club. With her were Madame and Mademoiselle Pache, wife and daughter of the future war minister and mayor of Paris. Counter-revolutionists who never hesitated to bring the vilest charges against their opponents accused Pash of sending his daughter to the club to be kissed by drunken Jacobin. Madame Roland, unlike most of the revolutionary women, was not a clubist. In fact, neither she nor her husband can have been in the least clubbable.

More than once both Monsieur and Madame Hollande were denounced in the Jacobin Club. One of the members, when he wanted to be ironical, announced that Madame Roland was was about to found a woman's club at the Tullery. Ultimately, Roland's name was erased from the role of members. But there were other prominent women who, for a time at any rate, were great favorites with the Jacoubin, and large numbers appear to have been fortunate enough to obtain tickets of admission. Madame Julien, to whose diary we shall refer later, says that when she went to the club on the evening of the 5th of August, 1792, she found there some two or three hundred ladies dressed

as if for the theatre. The journalist, Madame Robert, often addressed the club. Two days after Madame Julien's visit, she told how three men had attacked her in the street and tried to make her pluck the national cockade out of her hat. Of the first, the sight of a little knife and a firm refusal made short work. Against the sword cane of the second, she defended herself with a role of engravings she was carrying. When the third was pulling off her hat, a fourth came up and said, You fools!

don't you know this is not the day? The last remark referred doubtless to the counter-revolution that most revolutionaries believed the royalist to have planned for a certain day. The voice of Tierwang de Mericourt was also frequently heard in the club. The de Goncourt's right of the pitiless Herodius, who revealed herself eloquent and legal-minded at the Jacobin Club. We have already seen Tierwang in three revolutionary parts, as a rebel in the October insurrection,

as an assiduous attendant in the galleries of the National Assembly and as the founders of a salon. We left her in May 1790 at her home at Marcour, whether she may have gone to escape prosecution by the Chatelle Law Court, which, as it will be remembered, issued a warrant for her arrest in the following August. Tirwang was absent from Paris for nearly two years.

On her return, she received an ovation from the Jacobin Club. And well, she deserved it, for her experiences had been strange and her sufferings many in the revolutionary cause. While staying with her Flemish relatives in the autumn of 1790, she had been secretly seized and carried off to the Austrian fortress of Kufstein in the Tyrol, where she was imprisoned during the Emperor's good pleasure

on the charge of having attempted to take the life of the Emperor's sister Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, during the insurrection of the previous October. One may readily believe that so inveterate an agitator would leave no stone unturned in the effort to obtain her release. Europe resounded with Terwang's complaints. They resulted first in her being taken out of her dungeon and placed in a private house, then in her being granted something like freedom to go and come in the immediate neighborhood,

and finally in her complete liberation. By the end of 1791 she was back in Paris, and on the 26th of January 1792, a member of the Jacobin Club declared that he had to announce a triumph for patriotism. Mademoiselle Thirwine, famous for her civism, and for the persecutions she has endured, is here in the ladies' gallery. Immediately several Jacobey Rose went up to the gallery and escorted the heroine down into the main body of the hall. There, for the first time, she addressed the club.

Her oratory was wonderful. Only the pen of a de Goncourt can do justice to her eloquence. It was extraordinary, audacious, unbridled, overwhelming. It proceeded from a brain. packed with the confused and jostling memories of miscellaneous reading from lips on which the French language halted. Yet notwithstanding, down the torrent of her enfaz rolled the grandeur of Pinder, the majesty of the Bible. In her voice were the imperiousness and the threatening of a people in wrath. The great club received her, with all the interest due to her sex and her misfortunes.

She accepted an invitation to write the story of her sufferings and to read it at the club's next meeting. The reading when it occurred on the 1st of February produced a veritable feminist manifestation, the only one to which the Jacobin ever gave expression. Unfortunately, the actual document which in an expanded form the writer promised to publish does not exist. But references to it may be found in newspapers of the day, in Le Patriot Francaire, for example, which reports Terwang as having said that the only way to establish the revolution on a firm basis was, to make war on the rebels and despots who threaten us with war, but who fear it more than we.

The heroine went on to give encouraging reports of the progress of the revolution in the low countries, in Germany, and even in the emperor's own household. The chairman of the meeting Madame Hollande's friend Lantonet, ignoring Terwang's cry for war, congratulated her on having triumphed through that passive resistance, which in civilized countries is woman's role, which has so often caused tyrants to grow pale, and to which to unenlightened nations appear supernatural. He adjourned the oratress to repeat her story whenever citizens assembled in great numbers.

After L'Anonat, Manuel took the floor and waxed even more enthusiastic. He hailed Ther Wang as one of the first Amazons of Liberty as a martyr to the Constitution. He referred to a society of men that had once presumed to question whether women had souls. But those men were priests, double-faced, calumniating women

in order to appear not to love them. them. If our fathers, said Manuel, had so poor an opinion of women, it was because they were not free. Liberty would have taught them that nature can create Portia's as easily as Sivolos. In conclusion, the orator demanded for Tierroying the honors of the session. She received them, and not of that session only, but of many that followed. For the next few months, La Belle Lijois was as free of the assemblies as were any of the men members. The Scotsman, Dr. John Moore, when he visited the club, saw Thierre Weng not relegated

to the gallery with her sisters, but sitting in the body of the hall with the men and wearing a semi-military costume. Her favorite attire was, as we have seen, a riding habit, white or red, green or blue. But at one festival she appeared in Greek drapery, a robe alauléque. But alas, Tirwang's popularity with the Jacobin endured but a few weeks, for she spoke too long and too often. The same may be said of another woman clubbist, Rose, or, as recent research has it, Claire La Combe. La Combe was born in the south of France at Pemier in Ariege about 1765. Very attractive with dark hair, eyes, and eyebrows, she went on to the stage and enjoyed considerable success in provincial theatres, until the violence of her revolutionary opinions involved her

in a quarrel with the managers of the Lyon Theatre. Then she came to Paris where she made her first public appearance on the 25th of July 1792 at the Jacobin Club. There, she read amidst much applause, a petition which she was to present a few hours later to the Legislative Assembly. Of that petition we shall have more to say in another chapter. Apparently, living on her savings, as she said, La Combe now devoted herself to promoting the revolution. Her conduct on the 10th of August during the attack on the Tuileries won for her a civic crown, for which a fortnight later she publicly thanked the assembly amidst loud applause. The second and influence of the great revolutionary clubs, the Cordilliers, was also the

scene of women's activities. Founded on August 5, 1790, the Cordellier met on the left bank of the Cennes, at first in the monastery of the Greyfriars, or Cordellier, which was in the street of that name, now called La Rue de L'Ecole de Mitzine. The monastery from which the club took its name, was as vast as that of the Jacobin on the other side of the water. It had a large library, one of the finest in Paris, and it was in the library hall that the club held its meetings. But only for the first eight months of its existence. In May, 1791, it was compelled to seek other quarters.

For months it wandered from hall to hall, until it finally settled in a house known as L'Otel de Jean-Lise at 24 Rue Dauphine. Though in popular parlance, club retained the name of the monastery which had been its first meeting place, its correct title was, La Societis des Amis des Ars de Rois de L'Holme and the Citoyen. As the title implies, the club was occupied rather with the rights of individuals than, like the Jacobin, with broad legislative measures and political machinery. At the head of all their documents, the Cordellier had engraved

an open eye, intended to designate the vigilance of the society, ever on the watch for any official delinquency, especially for any miscarriage of justice. The Cordolier, having protested in vain against the imprisonment of René Odou, subscribed for her to have a private room in the Chattelais Prison and sent her close by one of their most active adherents, Mademoiselle Lemore. The successor of the Cordelie in France today is La Ligne de Dros de laum and of Citoyen, which was founded during the Dreyfus affair, and of which Professor Olaar, the great historian of the Revolution, is one of the most prominent and

and active members. The Cord de Li were completely democratic. Their members belonged to all classes. Women played a prominent part in their proceedings. Whether women were ever actually admitted as members of the club is doubtful. Monsieur O'Laur thinks it possible. Another reliable authority, Professor Mathier, merely mentions women as being present and sometimes taking part in the deliberations.

There remained to us two striking accounts of the appearance of women at the the Cordolier. The first an address given by a woman. The second, a woman's description of a debate. But in neither case was it probably the Cordellier Club. The first, the speech of Terwain de Merrick de Merrick was to the district of the Cordellier before the club was founded. The second was the visit of Madame de Jean-Lis to what she calls the Cordollier Club, but which was more likely to have been the Cordilliers Fraternal Society that was closely connected with the club. It was in February 17th. that Thierwang visited the club and there achieved her most brilliant oratorical success.

The account of it and a full summary of Tierwang's oration was given in his Révolution de France and de Bramont by Camille de Moulin, who heard it. Camille had come to enroll himself on the register of the Cordilliers district and was about to leave the hall when the usher informed the president of the assembly that a lady was asking permission to enter. She was thought to be some ordinary petitioner and great was a surprise when it transpired that she was none other than the famous Mademoiselle Tyroing. Enthusiasm seized the members, and one cried,

It is the Queen of Shiba come to see the Solomon of the districts. Tirwang, who was already on the platform with never-failing readiness, replied, Yes, it is the renown of your wisdom that brings me among you. Prove that you are Solomon, that to you it is given to build the temple and hasten to build one for the National Assembly. Then La Belle Lijewaz let loose the flood of her or. With flowers of classical allusion and biblical imagery, Tirwang drove her point home. The assembly was unworthily housed, moving from the Jeux de Pome to the Hotel de Manupleisier at Versailles,

then to the manage at Paris, it was like Noah's dove, sent out from the Ark of the Covenant it had no sure and certain place were on to lay its foot. Meanwhile, the sight of the dungeons of La Bastille stood empty. One hundred thousand workmen were unemployed. What more is needed, O Cordilliers, model of all districts, patriots, Republicans, Romans? Lose no time. Open a subscription list. Invite your architects to send in tenders.

Cut down the cedars of Mount Lebanon, the fir trees of Mount Ida. Ah, if ever stones were to move, it would not be to build the walls of Thebes, but to construct the temple of liberty. Then, calling on her woman hearers to give their jewels to the cause, Tire Weng said the example by taking off her own ornaments. Amid's violent applause, the meeting resolved that the officers of the district should draw up an appeal to be addressed to the districts and to the departments. But, like many another appeal, if ever made, it was fruitless. That glorious Temple of Liberty never had any existence outside Tireweng's feverish brain. Madame de Jean Lise, when she visited the Cordilliers, said she heard women declaiming there with loud, deep voices,

Voix de Poitrine, against the nobles and priests. They waxed most eloquent in attacks on the rich. A fishwife, a Poissard, repeated over and over again that Prejuge Mobiliar, she meant nobiliere, could not be tolerated. But no one paid the slightest attention to this little slip of the tongue, and the speaker was warmly applauded. It seemed to Madame de Jean-Lise that the great delight of all these people was to imitate, contra-ferre seriouslyman,

the President and members of the National Assembly. The third in influence of the Revolution Clubs was the Circle Social, or, to give its full and formal title, L'Asembly Federative de la Verity. It met twice a week on Mondays and Fridays in the huge partially subterranean circus which had been constructed by the Duke de Chartre in the middle of the Palais Royal Gardens in 1788.

The Friends held their first meeting on the 1st of October 1790. bring each of you a rayon de lumenier bring each of you a ray of light was the motto inscribed over the platform if that requisition were complied with the light must have been dazzling for no less than five thousand are said to have been present the club immediately became one of the great institutions of the capital and the favorite resort of fashionable ladies at the end of the first six weeks its members numbered three thousand the subscription was eight livres a month gondercet was a frequent speaker there the grand eloquent title of the club could not fail to provoke the irony of the journalists one of whom wrote truth has set up her throne in the circus that place is put to many uses on tuesdays thursdays and sundays it is a concert-room on wednesdays and saturdays nymphs of the neighborhood turn it into a dancing saloon on mondays and fridays people come there to tell the truth not oratory alone was provided those who were bored by condorc's eloquence as many were might play cards or billiards drink coffee or read in the library the circle social was the daughter of an earlier group le club philosophic a gathering of cultivated doctrinairs with cosmopolitan and feminist sympathies while the jacobins within closed doors at first were occupied in preparing the deliberations of the national assembly and the cordelier with the rights of the individual

the social circle was a kind of political academy concerned with the theoretical side of the revolution. Its most active member was the Abbe Foschet, described in one anti-revolutionary newspaper as Bishop, by the wrath of God. Like many other clubs, the Club Revolutionaire Des Arles and the Club des D'Am, for instance, the Circle Social had its own organ in the press, a weekly paper which Foschet edited. It was entitled Bouch d'affair, Ironmouth, because at the door of it, its office in La Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, stood an open iron box ready to receive in writing the expression of every grievance. The paper entirely occupied with the ventilation and discussion of these complaints contained no news. Though women were not denied the privilege

of paying a monthly subscription to the social circle, they were debarred from exercising any control over the society. Its direction remained entirely in the hands of the little band of masculine philosophers who had founded it. There would seem to be no doubt that some of the well-known men's revolution clubs actually admitted women as members, for Thirwang and La Reine Odou were members of Le Club d'Aminim, and Therese Cabarrus, afterwards Madame Talien, writing to the Journal de la Cour and de la Ville, to protest against certain allegations made against her, described herself as Membrest of the Club deselecteur of 1789. But on the whole, in these clubs we have mentioned, women were kept at a certain

distance. We now come to a different kind of club, Les Societie Fraternal, in which women played a really important part, as is shown by the fact that many of them were called Societis des Dues'Eux. The societies stood in relation to the clubs in much the same position as in the religious world of present-day England the Mission Hall stands in relation to the church. These fraternal societies were popular assemblies, often the resorts of whole families, of children as well as of parents. As the Revolution went on, each of the great clubs came to have one of these popular societies attached to it,

and they multiplied rapidly, especially in the provinces. Their importance in instructing the mass of the people in Revolution principles can hardly be exaggerated. The subscription, only a few sous a month, was small enough to admit the lowliest. End of Chapter 3 Part 1 Chapter 3 Part 2 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Part 2 of Clubs and Club Women This movement, like that of the clubs, had its chief center in the St. Honorary quarter,

and the earliest of these popular societies, instituted in 1790, met in the Jacobey Monastery of the Rue Saint-Honore. Its founder was a schoolmaster, when Claude D'Azzar. At a time when Robert Rakes and Hannah Moore were starting Christian Sunday schools in England, it occurred to this Parisian schoolmaster that he might profitably employ his Sunday and holiday afternoons by gathering together the costermongers of the Saint-Honore market and other tradespeople of the neighborhood in order to make clear to them the mysterious ways of the National Assembly. So, he invited them to come to the crypt of the Blackfriars. They accepted his invitation in large numbers.

Women especially, lone females, who found it hard to keep their feet in the world in which they were living, and who came to Monsieur Nassau for advice and consolation. as the darkness of the crypt thickened in the winter months the schoolmaster would draw from his pocket a tinder-box and a bit of candle and by its faint glimmer supplement the light of his own cogent reasoning as the assembly grew other candles became necessary to provide for them the hat was sent round and thus arose the habit of paying a small contribution soon the society began to attract the attention of the leading jacobin club members who met above and of other politicians of the day and as the society began to attract the attention of the leading jacobin club members who met above and of other politicians of the day and as the society he grew famous, the good d'Anseau found himself ousted. Some say he withdrew on account of a scandal about his daughter. At any rate, he was replaced by a committee of which the eminent journalist Francois Robert was a member.

Now, side by side with the tradesmen of the district, sat such exalted personages as the Duke de Chartre, Danton, Téliin, Roder, and Manuel. In this, its glorified state, the society called itself by the loud-sounding title. of Societis fraternale de Patriote de l'e and of sex, of tutage and de tout etat, later to be amplified still further by the addition of Defonseer de la Constitution. The society had now, as well as two men's secretaries,

two women, whose duty it was to keep a list of the names and addresses of the women members, and to deal with the women applicants for membership. All applicants, men and women alike, must be proposed by one member and seconded are supported by two others. If the application were questioned, a committee of six citizens and six citizenesses reported to the Assembly of the Society, which admitted or rejected the member in question. From every new member the following oath was exacted.

I swear to be faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king, later to the Republic, and to maintain to the best of my ability, the liberty of France and the rights of man and of the citizen. I promise to remain faithful to the regulations of the society as long as it exists. Among the rules of the society was one which attempted vainly it is probable to ensure the order of debate. Seeing, it ran, that a free interchange of thought and opinion is one of man's most imprescriptible rights, no member of the society shall be at liberty to interrupt a speaker, nor to refuse him a hearing, but merely to refute him at the close of his speech. By the time this elaborate organization had been completed, i.e., by April 1791, the Jacobin Society had emerged from the shadows of the crypt into the daylight of one of the upper rooms of the monastery, where it met at four o'clock on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday afternoons.

Meanwhile, similar societies had been springing up in the provinces and all over Paris. Well, nigh, every section had one. Women were admitted to membership in most of them, but not in all. In some of the meetings, they were separated from men, though in one case only by a tricolor ribbon. In others, the sisters had their own special galleries. From one of these at Colmar, they were urgently entreated to come down and to help their brethren engage in a mouse hunt.

More courageous than Chaucer's prioress, the Colmar ladies accepted the invitation and gloriously vanquished the four-footed intruders. In some societies, women were not asked for regular subscriptions, but only to pay for the printing of the rules. In some again they were not permitted to vote. In others, when they did vote, their votes were not counted. Certain of these fraternal unions following the Pauline tradition

prescribed silence on the sisters, exhorting them to make bandages and to leave the brethren to do the talking. Children, as we have said, were frequently admitted. Now and again they were received into membership. Twelve was the age limit in one society, but there are many examples of the presence of much younger children. In one case, a young priest, a curé assermante, brought his whole family to the society's meeting. My eight-month-old daughter, Cornelia, he said, will be presented to you by her mother and placed on the platform by her nurse.

Thus she will learn betimes to savour the sweetness and the joy of true Republicans. We read of a little girl of six, reciting the declaration of the rights of man, was such charm that the whole audience rose and embraced not her, but her mother. Was it the daughter's aleck? or the mother's attractiveness that arouse such enthusiasm. Another child of six, taken to the meeting by her governess, rose and spoke with so much vigor that the whole assembly loudly applauded. Throughout the provinces these societies multiplied rapidly.

L'Antona, a friend of Madame Roland, wrote to her that these seemed to personify the majesty of the sovereign people and that their ardent patriotism moved him to tears. Madame Roland herself, though at first disdainful, and always objecting to women openly taking part in politics came round in the end and joined the Jacobin Fraternal Society. Rebes-Pierre regarded the societies as the finest of forcing grounds for Republican opinions. Their activities were varied.

In Paris, they seemed to have been mainly occupied with deputations, receiving them from and sending them to other societies and clubs, and sending them also to the bar of the National Assembly. Thus, in 1791, after the King's Flecky, and humiliating return to Paris, 55 presidents of fraternal societies petitioned the Assembly to consult the communes of France

as to what should be done with a captured fugitive. The societies were always eager to denounce traitors and to bring them before the Revolution tribunals. They were ever on the watch for conspiracies against the government.

One day, the Jacobin fraternals in the crypt were honored by a visit from Mirabeau and Barmav, who had been deputed by the Jacobin Club above, to descend and thank the society. for its vigilance in detecting the theft of a quantity of bullion many of those fates and ceremonies which were so numerous in the revolution period were organized by the societies when in the hall of the jacobin club the busts of rousseau franklin and voltaire were unveiled eight women members of the society simple as equality beautiful as liberty received from a procession of boys and girls one of the bastie stones deposited it amidst the busts and crowned them with civic wreaths then with the high moral earnestness of that time a prominent citizen addressed these simple beautiful ones mothers and wives he cried you who have done as much for the revolution as we do yet more an honorable task remains for you great revolutions are born in tempests which time alone can calm teach your children to lisp with the words father mother those of fatherland and liberty at these

words, let your child's eye flash. Let his heart beat fast. As he grows up, let the nation be indebted to you for a citizen. A defender of the nation's rights, one who, like his fathers, shall be the horror of tyrants. Some of the societies had attached to them philanthropic committees composed mainly of women engaged in helping the poor, the sick, and the orphan, and as soon as war began in making lint bandages and clothes for soldiers. Couson, filon, Couson bien, ran the popular son. song. Allon, sa va, sa va, la dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee for the year who deeufes dee dee dee dee dee dee, you nemecrie dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee deeer

being told that if they refused they would be regarded as traitors to their country. In some societies women presided. sisters Garos, for example, at a club near Oche. One was chairman, the other secretary, while their father was the mover of resolutions. After a time, feminine influence became too dominant in the societies. At Air Surlis, women came in such numbers that there was no room for the men, and when one female insisted on space being found for her foot-warmer as well, such an outrageous demand was seized upon as a pretext for expelling her. It was a gross injustice, because in other societies, foot-warmers were expressly permitted.

As the influence of women grew in the societies, men lost interest in them. The men of the Jacobin Society preferred to listen to the debates of the club to taking part in their own assemblies. This annoyed the other sex. And women of the revolution were not accustomed to suffer in silence. When it grieved, their way was to organize a deputation. So now, on July 12, 1792, we find a deputation of Jacobin's sister. airing their grievances before the Jacobin Club. They complained that, men disdained to pursue their instruction among us,

but by that time, women had begun to have clubs of their own. The fact that they often met under the same roof led to a good deal of confusion, both in the contemporary records and in subsequent histories, between these purely feminine clubs and the popular societies of the two sexes. Many of the fraternal societies, as we have already indicated, tended to become women's clubs.

it is clear however that there were certain clubs founded by women and for women alone a considerable number and by no means the least influential were in the provinces notably at lyon mccon and dijon at least two were in paris les amis de la verity and the citoyenne republican revolutionaire of all the women's provincial clubs that of lyon was the most influential it was founded in june seventeen ninety one the members were called upon on to take the following oath. I swear to be faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king. I swear on every occasion to urge my husband, my brothers, and my children to do their duty to their country.

I swear to teach my children and all others over whom I shall have authority to prefer death to slavery. When in 1792, as the result of profiteering, Leon was on the verge of starvation, the women's club took matters into their own hands. Having failed to obtain satisfaction from the town council,

they placarded a notice all over the city, fixing the price of no less than 60 necessities, including bread, wine, oil, fresh and dry vegetables, cheese, fruit, candles, etc. Then a well-organized body of women police took possession of shops and markets, and for three days, the 16th, 17th, and 18th of September, until such time as the municipal council decided to fix prices,

the women's club practically ruled the city. At Paris, the earliest women's club seems to have been Les Amis de la Verite. Founded in 1791 by a Dutch woman living in Paris at a Palm Delters. It was an offshoot of the social circle, La Semi de la Verite, which, as we have seen,

met in the Paler Royal circus, and where Madame Delders was one of the most frequent and popular speakers. She is said to have been the first woman of the revolution to address a public meeting. as in the cases of other revolution heroines a veil of mystery hangs over much of the life of etta palm delters was her father an innkeeper as her enemies maintained or a manufacture of wall-paper as others have asserted was her husband an obscure student loderick palm or the baron delters mysterious and inconsistent throughout etta changed her name from time to time about seventeen seventy four though married she was calling herself by her mother's name desidels a few years later she reverted to Palm and added to it von Delders.

She would appear to have been born at Hornehen in 1743 and to have married at 19. Her husband seems to have disappeared after a few months, leaving Etta to console herself for his absence, first with the Dutch Council Jan Munix at Amsterdam, then with a comte de Mai Bois at Paris, and during the Revolution with Basile, a member of the Jacobin Club. When the revolution broke out, Eta was living in a charming little flat, an entre sole, at 348 Rue Favre. In her salon was the portrait of an officer

and an Ottoman six feet long upholstered in crimson and white Damasque. In her bedroom were four mirrors, one at the back of the bed. She is said to have been well-educated, intelligent, conversant with public affairs, and having powerful friends in diplomatic circles. Of the part she played in the social circles,

we shall have more to say later. It was in one of her public orations that she first proposed the foundation of Les Amis de la Verite, or Societ des D'Am Patriotique and Béphazante, and her idea, though she never realized it, was to establish these societies throughout France and to place them under the supervision

of the social circle. The patriotic and philanthropic ladies met every Saturday at the office of the newspaper La Bouch de Fere. The questions discussed were rather social than political. the granting of outdoor relief, women's education in their apprenticeship,

homes for nurses and for young girls. Three young girls at least the society thus provided for. Two were apprenticed to dressmakers and one to a lace maker. Systematic efforts were made to increase the number of members. Each section of Paris was asked to send two representatives to the society. Madame Legreau, the deliverer of Latud, joined, so did the Duchess de Bourbon. But after a few years,

months, for some reason or other, was it that the subscription of three francs a month was too high, or that the mainly philanthropic objects of the society were not sufficiently interesting, the members dwindled, and in the autumn of 1792 the society broke up. The other women's club at Paris, Les Femme, or Les Cittoyenne Republican Revolutionaire, was founded in May, 1793. During its short existence of but a few months, it was extremely active and influential. On May the 10th, 1793, a band of women came to the secretary of the Paris Municipal Council and declared it to be their intention to found a club to which women only should be admitted. They explained that their object was to discuss how the designs of the enemies of the Republic could be thwarted.

This club was to be called La Societie Republican Revolutionaire, and it was to meet in the library of the Jacobin in the Rue Saint-Honnery. The majority of these revolutionary women belonged to the extreme party known as Les Enraget. They out-jambined the Jacobin, and in a few months we shall see their violence and disorderliness furnishing the convention with an excuse for the suppression of all women's clubs. The proximity of the revolutionary Republican women to the Jacobin Club and to the Jacobin Society of the two sexes soon became a nuisance. Three clubs under one roof was really too much. Moreover, the women were constantly leading deputations to the club, and taking up the members' time with their interminable harangues.

Consequently, after a few weeks, the women's club was removed from the library of the Rue Saint-Honore to a much less aristocratic quarter to the charnel house of the Church of St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. St. It is an interesting coincidence that the revolution clubs, which in their influence on the people, to a certain extent, superseded the church, should so often have met under an ecclesiastical roof. We may notice also that when the apostles of liberty appropriated ecclesiastical premises, they assigned the church to the aristocrats of the clubs, to the Jacobin, for example, the crypt to the tradespeople of the popular fraternal societies,

and the charnel house to the newest arrivals on the political scene, the women. The club's first president was Pauline Leone, a chocolate maker. She was succeeded by three women in turn, who are mere names to us, Rousson, Champion, and Le Quintre. Then came Clare La Combe, whom we have met already and of whom we shall have more to say. Even before her presidency,

she had been the moving spirit of this club. The president, whoever she was, wore the red Phrygian cap of Liberty. La Conve once said that the members numbered more than 4,000. That was a gross exaggeration. They were probably about 170. Their main business seems to have been

to lead deputations to other clubs and to the convention. These deputations demanded, among other measures, the establishment of a military force in every town, the raising of the Paris force to 40,000 men, the establishment of military workshops on every public square, the conversion of all the iron and steel in the country into weapons of war, the exclusion of C. de Van Nobles from all offices

and laws to prevent profiteers from starving the people. From the beginning, the meetings of the report, Republican revolutionaries were no more orderly than were the meetings of the men's clubs, or, for that matter, those of the convention. And it did not conduce to harmony in the Charnal House at St. Eustache, when the ex-president Leone married Leclerc, who had had for his mistress the president de facto la Combe. The women of the Jacobin Fraternal Society, which now met in the Jacobin Library, where the revolutionary Republican women had once held their meetings,

were anxious to make it perfectly clear that they had nothing to do that they had nothing whatever to do with this women's club. Indeed, the society went so far as to request one of its members, Lesitoyen Baudroix, lesi of the Chinese Bath, to insert a notice in the newspapers declaring that the society was quite distinct from the club now meeting in the St. Eustache Charon House. This notice suggests that the society in its anxiety to hold a loof from the club may have been responsible for the latter's removal. About this time, Terwang de Mericour, not far away, in the Foubourg Saint Antoine, was having trouble with another fraternal society, calling itself Defonseer de Trois de l'ombe and anemis du despotism. Tierre had started a club for working-class

women on La Place Royale, now La Place De Vos. To induce women to join, she showed them the signature of Madame Senter, wife of a well-known revolutionary leader, and the owner of a large brewery in the district who, said Tire Weng, had promised to become a member. Then, to celebrate the inauguration of the club, which was to meet three times a week, Thierroen, in the names of Robespierre, Colauderbois and Senterre, invited the women to a civic banquet. Civic was the great word in those days.

With extreme French progressives, it is still a favorite expression. But the men, defenders of the rights of man, apparently did not recognize those of women. At any rate, they considered that Therwang was tempting their wives to neglect their duties, and they sent a deputation to the Jacobin Club,

to complain of her conduct, which they said had thrown the whole Fobour into a tumult. They alleged, moreover, that Madame Sinterre's signature that had been shown round was obviously a forgery, being in Tierre Weng's own handwriting. Robespierre, never one of Tierwang's friends, was eager to deny that he had any connection with the matter. Collauderbeau followed his example. Sant'er was much more chivalrous. He excused Tirewang, saying she had never pretended that his wife's name was written by her own hand. He argued that if there had been a riot in the St. Antoine quarter, it was not Terwang's fault, but originated with the women themselves,

who had insisted on the girls from a certain convent of pity attending the club against the wishes of the Mother Superior. But he added that at the bottom of all the trouble was the men's fear lest their wives would be attending club meetings when they ought to be looking up to their homes. Sinterre proposed a resolution closing the incident. But though the resolution was carried, the incident was by no means closed. Tierwang could not forgive Robespierre and Collaud-Dherbe. At a session of the club ten days later at which Terwang was present, Derbois publicly congratulated himself and Robespierre on having forfeited Mademoiselle Terwang's friendship.

Thereupon, that lady, infuriated by the insult, jumped over the barrier separating the woman's seats from the main body of the hall, and pushing back those who tried to restrain her, made her way to the platform and demanded the right of speech. No one would listen to her, however, and she was forcibly ejected from the club. As the fever of the revolution heightened, scenes of this kind were constantly recurring. In the St. Eustache Charnell House, revolutionary Republican women were getting out of hand. Their meetings were becoming more and more tumultuous. Rushing forth from their grim clubhouse like veritable furies,

they are said to have paraded the streets and to have insolute. insisted on every woman they met, donning the tricolor cockade, then the red cap, and finally, so the story goes, masculine trousers. Such tyranny could not be tolerated.

Outside the club, women themselves opened a campaign against it, protesting to the Jacobin Club, to the commune and to the assembly, against the infringement of their liberty to dress as they pleased. A deputation of women from the popular societies on the 28th of October 1793,

petitioned the Convention to close the Club of the Republican and Revolutionary Women. By that time, as we shall see, the Convention was only too glad of the excuse, for the feminism of the early revolution had been succeeded by a virulent anti-feminism. A commission of the Committee de Surte General was appointed to inquire into the whole question of women's clubs and societies, and as the result of the Committee's report, which was presented on the 30th of October 1793, they were suppressed. thus in this as in so many episodes of the women's movement women had proved themselves their own worst enemies men's clubs and the popular fraternal societies went on for some time longer of the latter women continued to be members but more and more it came to be realized that these political groups were a danger to the central government accordingly one of the last acts of the convention was on the twenty third of july seventeen ninety five to revert to calen's

policy and to suppress them all. End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Libre Fox recording is in the public domain. 4. Women Writers. Madame Roland. Quote She Whose Glory Casts in Shade France and Her Best and Bravest. W. S. Lander

For centuries, no period of French history has been without its women writers. The Middle Age had its Marie de France and Christine de Pison. The Renaissance, it's Marguerite de Navarre, the 17th century is Madame de Sivigny. The 18th is Madame de Lombert and it's Madame D'Epiné. And so we come to the Revolution when authoresses were more numerous and wrote more than ever before. The Revolution established the title of women to rank among the great writers of their period. In truth, the most brilliant of all the Revolution authors was a woman, Madame de and next to her comes Madame Roland. A comparison between the two is inevitable.

While in several branches of literature, Madame de Stal was unequalled in her day, in one particular branch, the memoir, Madame Roland was unsurpassed in her own time and almost in any period of French literature. In the actual making of the revolution during its three most critical years, 1790, 1791 and 1792, Madame Roland was more intimately involved than Madame de Stal. Though the two women lived in the same city and worked in the same cause, there is no reason to believe that they ever met. Madame de Stahl, in her books on the Revolution,

never even refers to Madame Roland. Madame Roland only once mentions Madame de Stahl, whose name she does not even know how to spell correctly. In a letter found among the papers of Brissot, the Girondist leader, after his death, Madame Roland writes from Lyon on the 22nd of November 1789. Stories are told here of Madame de Staal, who is said to be very assiduous in her attendance at the Assembly, where she is reported to have admirers among the speakers, and to send them notes to encourage

and support them when they move patriotic resolutions. It is added that the Spanish ambassador at her father's table reproached her with doing this. You can't think the importance are aristocrats attached to such trifles, which very likely proceed from their own imagination. But they want to represent the assembly as guided by a few wild enthusiasts and animated by some ten women. In influence, character, and temperament, Madame de Staal and Madame Roland differed widely. Madame de Staal's influence was mainly literary, Madame Roland's mainly political.

They regarded the revolution from different angles, for each was essentially of her class. Madame de Stahl, a great lady, Madame Roland, a bourgeois, a bourgeois. With Madame de Staal the heart came first, with Madame Roland the reason. Nevertheless, the emotional, effervescent Madame de Staal succeeded in producing one of the sanest judgments of the revolution, and this, because she wrote it years after the events she was considering when the fever of the great upheaval had cooled down. Rational Madame Roland, on the other hand, when she came to her memoirs, thought with her heart, as she said, for they were penned in the white heat of the revolution in prison, while the knife of the guillotine hung suspended over her head,

and over the heads of all those she loved most dearly, and to whom she had looked for her country's salvation. No wonder that even this reasonable woman who had kept herself so well in hand through four years of party strife, now let herself go and wrote bitter pages. Les Mémoire envenimae de la Citoyenne Minister, Robespierre called them. One bond, however, there was between them. Madame de Staal and Madame Roland drew their literary inspiration from the same source. They were both ardent disciples of Jean-Jacques. But the genius of Madame de Staal molded part of the master's teaching to her own use,

the rest she never fully realized. His love of nature, for example, was utterly foreign to the nature of the town-bred Salonier, who, when gazing on the Bay of Naples, longed for the gutters of the Rue de Bac, and who said that she might have taken some interest in agriculture, if only it had smelt less of manure. Madame Roland was also town-bred, but she followed her master implicitly, and she instinctively shared his passion for the country.

"'He savet ecute' la nature "'dancet secre solitude,' says Saint-Beuve. "'But in following Rousseau along other paths, "'especially in an excess of candor, "'we may hope she was doing violence to her own nature. "'That Madame Dostal could ever have followed her master "'in this direction is unthinkable.' Mary Jean Flipon, later Madame Roland, was born in 1754, the only living child of an unsuccessful Paris engraver.

For dowry, her mother had little more than a heavenly soul and a charming countenance. Mary Jean's parents, therefore, could endow their child with no great store of worldly goods. Nature was kind to her, however, lavishing upon her rich gifts of body and spirit. Though in the detailed portrait of herself at fourteen, that Madame Roland paints in her memoirs. She does ample justice to her virtues. She underrates her physical attractiveness. True, it resided rather in the charm of her expression than in the regularity of her features. Although as she tells us, her mouth was large or hazel eyes small but prominent, her nose too big at the tip, her forehead high and imposing. There were many who found her loveliness and trancing.

One who knew her before 1789 wrote that, her eyes, figure and hair, of hazel color. were of remarkable beauty, and her delicate complexion was of a freshness and brilliance which united to her air of reserve and purity made her appear singularly young. At a very early age, Manon began to develop that intellectual curiosity which was to render her the best educated woman of her time. "'It fellier to-jure that I apprise something,' she writes. Her father, though otherwise no ideal parent, knew the value of a good education and saw to it despite his narrow means, that his daughter had excellent teachers.

Her mother, a woman of culture, taste, and judgment was admirably fitted to aid and direct Manon's studies. Manon was unable to remember a time when she could not read. At eight, she was carrying Plutarch's lives with her to church in lieu of a breviary. She had discovered the author whose influence was to dominate her life, as it did that of so many other leaders of the revolution. Her admiration for Plutarch's heroes, as well as other incidents and preferences described in her memoirs, show how early she developed tendencies which, growing more and more pronounced, were to determine her career and lead her to a martyr's heroic death. The injustice of social inequalities troubled her even in childhood.

When paying an afternoon call with her grandmother on some lady of title, she wonders, why ever the hostess should sit in an armchair and her visitor on a stool, Tabouret. Manon was indeed a born Democrat. Her Republican sympathies were strengthened by her reading of 18th century philosophers, and some years later by a visit to Versailles. Through the influence of a powerful friend, Madame and Mademoiselle Filippon were actually invited to stay in the palace.

There, they enjoyed the inexpressible privilege of occupying two insanitary odoriferous garrets, separated by only a slight partition from the apartments of no less a personage, than the Archbishop of Paris. For most of the inhabitants of the palace, the great event of every day was watching the royal family feed. But Manon was never happy except in the gardens. She was born a Democrat, and this week's visit made her a rabid Republican.

So when after a little of this royal splendor, her mother asked whether she was pleased with her visit, she replied, Yes, provided it soon comes to an end, but in a few days my loathing for these people will become uncontrollable. her first great sorrow came to her at the age of nineteen when she lost her wise and excellent mother this sad event closed which she has described as the happiest period of her life by this time she found herself without any orthodox religion although she had at one time been so ardent to catholic that she had thought of becoming a nun the years that now followed she writes made me acquainted with adversity this was largely on account of her father's conduct deprived of his wife's counsel and influence m flippon speculated rashly and indulged in other excesses which threatened to dissipate manon's meagre competency inherited from her mother as a protection against her father's extravagance she was obliged to have recourse to that typical french institution the family council on whose advice after she had attained her majority at the age of twenty-five she went as bordered to the convent where she had taken her first communion

By this time, according to the ideas of that day, Marie Flipon was drawing dangerously near old maidenhood. The position, however, was of her own choosing, for she had received numerous offers of marriage from suitors of all ranks and conditions in life, from a doctor to a diamond merchant, from an acum addition to a grocer. But none of them pleased her, none realized the high idea she had formed of a husband. One admirer, however, she favored. This was a grave and Learned gentlemen, 20 years her senior, Roland de la Plateriere, who was government inspector of factories at Amiens. She had permitted him to ask her father's consent to their marriage. Monsieur Filippon had refused, and somewhat brutally.

That was before her majority. At twenty-five, Manon took the matter into her own hands, and when her elderly suitor next visited her at the convent grate, she promised to marry him. She never pretended to be in love, but looked to find her happiness so she wrote to a girl, in the inexpressible charm of contributing to his. Then followed eight tranquil years of daily duties punctually performed. She became a mother, the mother of a daughter, Eudora, who long survived her. She traveled in England and Switzerland.

She and her husband were living at Lyon when the revolution broke out. They hailed it with delight. It seemed to them to promise the millennium. At the feast of the Federation on the 30th of May 1790, representatives of half the nation assembled at Lyon. Madame Roland was up betimes mingling with the crowds of holiday-makers on the keys, intoxicated by the sight of this new brotherhood of mankind, this wonderful birth of a new world.

That evening she wrote for the patriotic newspaper, Le Courier de Lyon, edited by her friend's L'Antona and Champagneux, an anonymous account of the day's proceedings. Sixty thousand copies were sold. It was not her first literary effort. from her earliest childhood writing had been one of her favorite recreations her ready pen in later years was to render service and perhaps disservice to the revolution at that time government factory inspector at leon had become a member of the municipal council and in the following year he was appointed to go to paris to represent the commercial difficulties of the city to the legislative assembly accompanied by his wife he arrived in the capitol on the twentieth of february seventeen ninety one the rollins lodged in the hotel britannic rue guinego and now madame roland plunged into the intellectual joys of the metropolis there is no place like it she wrote nowhere are the sciences arts great men intellectual resources of every kind so admirably united

the moment of her return to paris was one of the most critical in the whole revolution much that it had set out to accomplish had been achieved class privileges had been abolished something like a comrade constitutional monarchy had been established. The moderate party of Lafayette and La Bourgeoisie were fairly contented, but among the lower orders a seething mass of discontent was beginning to make itself felt, and its spokesmen were new and young men. Robespierre, Brissot, Petion, buzou, Vernou. They and others of like opinion soon formed the habit of meeting at the Roland's hotel four times a week. One of Madame Roland's friends, and probably one of her guests at that time, may have been the eccentric Englishwoman Helen Maria Williams, then living in Paris, who was later to share Madame Roland's fate of imprisonment, although she escaped

the final sacrifice. Most of those who frequented Madame Relan's first salon were members of the Jacobin Club, and all, except Robespierre became prominent in the Gerondiste party. Madame Roland, as we have said, joined the fraternal society which was affiliated to the Jacobin Club. But she cannot have attended their meetings often. either except during the first days after her arrival did she go much to the constituent assembly where the interminable debates leading to nothing the insolence and ailed breeding of the left the superciliousness of the right irritated her I lived chiefly at home as was my custom she told her judges at her trial I was not in good

health and I saw few people those few people however were the people who counted and though on those four evenings a week when they assembled in her rooms she would sit apart, apparently absorbed in needlework or letter-writing. Not a word of their discussions escaped her, and ere long her subtle influence made itself felt. She was far from being one of those who considered the revolution had gone far enough. She and her friends soon began to desire a republic, even if it involved civil war. In fact, she was not by any means averse to civil war. Towards the autumn of 1791, the Rollins returned to Lyon, but only for a short time. The 15th of December found them back again in Paris, lodging this time in gloomy apartments

in the Rue Saint-Jacques. Roland's post of inspector, having been abolished, he returned to claim the pension to which he was entitled after 38 years of service. During the months that followed, he attended assiduously the meetings of the Legislative Assembly and became one of the most strenuous members of the Committee of the Jacobin Club. His stern and compromising virtue so won the respect of the legislators that when in March 1792, the king was advised to form a ministry of patriots, Roland was invited to take the portfolio

of the interior. Madame Roland tells how the suggestion came to her as a complete surprise. Brissot dropped in one evening when she was alone and spoke of it. She took it as a joke, but Brissot insisted, and she promised to sound her husband

on the subject. Three days later, he accepted the office. Then we see the quakerish, Roland, in Puritan costume, round hat and strings in his shoes, kissing hands at the tuileries. Ah, sir, no shoe-buckles! The horror struck master of the ceremonies whispered to General Dumorier. Ah, sir, all is lost, replied the general who tells the story. Roland now took his wife away from their dull lodgings in the Rue Saint-Jacques to the sumptuous gilded saloons and the Venetian mirrors of the Ministry of the Interior. Here, once a week, during her husband's first term of office twice during his second,

Madame Roland gave a dinner party to men only. The extravagance of these entertainments was one of the many charges brought against her during her trial. In her memoirs, she insists on the simplicity, even the austerity of these repasts, served with taste and care it is true, but without profusion and consisting of one course only. The guests numbered usually 15, sometimes 18, and once 20. these gatherings like the revolution itself at an international character an asharsis cloutts tom payne and david william sat at the ministerial board on other days of the week the rollins spent the evening teat-a-tete busily occupied with public affairs postponing the hour of their simple meal until it became so late that their daughter could not join them having supped upstairs in her own room with her governess from a psychological point of view madame roland's description of her life at this time is one of the most interesting chapters of her autobiography for here we find her with unconscious inconsistency attempting in one sentence to prove that she had nothing whatever to do with public affairs and in the next showing how deep and how potent was the influence she exercised over them

in one of these notable passages madame roland wrote i love study as much as i hate cards and am bored by the society of fool accustomed to stay at home, I shared Roland's work and cultivated my personal tastes. I continued this simple life at the ministry. I never kept a salon. I gave a dinner twice a week to ministers and deputies whom my husband needed to see and to talk to about his work. They discussed state affairs in my presence because they knew I would not interfere, and that my associates might be trusted. Out of all the rooms of the vast apartment, I had chosen for my own daily habitation the smallest of all, a little cabinet in which I had my books and my bureau. It often happened that friends and colleagues who wanted a confidential talk with the minister,

instead of going straight to him in his room where he would be surrounded by his clerk and others, would come to me and ask me to call him into my cabinet. Thus, without either intrigue or vain curiosity, I found myself in the heart of things. Roland delighted afterwards to discuss these matters with me in private, and with that confidence which ever reigned between us and caused us to hold all our knowledge and all our views in common. Thus it came about that friends who had any information to communicate or opinion to express, certain of always finding me, would come and ask me to pass it on to the minister at the first opportunity.

No wonder that Louvre, the author of Fobla, once said to Roland, "'Thy wife is a greater man than thyself.' She was indeed the soul of that geraldist party, which had been cradled in her boudoir, in the Hotel Britannique. Why do they not take a man for their leader? cried Danton, the most deadly among Madame Rolland's many enemies. In the spring of 1792, the Girondists, who were now at the height of their power, were very sanguine.

Madame Roland says she did not share the illusions of her husband and his colleagues. They were delighted with the frame of mind in which they found the king. They flattered themselves that the revolution was over and a better order of things assured. Every time I see you set out for the council in that mood, said Madame Roland to her husband. I feel convinced that you are about to commit some folly. And even for these buoyant ministers' disillusionment did not tarry. It soon became obvious that the king was incapable of real seriousness. The most important and urgent decisions were postponed,

while priceless time was frittered away in meaningless discussions. When the question was war, the king would discourse at length on travel, when negotiations he would discuss the customs of various lands. The Royal Council is little better than a cafe, exclaimed Madame Roland. It would be better for you, she told her husband, to spend three hours in solitary meditation on weighty affairs than to waste your time in such futilities. Roland soon began to share his wife's opinion, and when the king at length made up his mind to refuse his sanction to two degrees,

one, condemning to banishment all priests who refuse to take the oath to the Constitution, and the other establishing a camp of twenty thousand men near Paris, the Minister of Interior felt himself useless. A letter was composed chiefly at his thought by Madame Roland and sent to the king. This epistle, though the writer was proud of it, appears today a sorry document, long-winded, tactless and worse, impertinent and foolish. Of course it produced the desired effect. Roland and his Girondi's colleagues were dismissed. On the 12th of June, 1792, Madame Roland exchanged her gorgeous apartments in the Ministry of the Interior

for a flat on an upper floor of the old house in the Rue Saint-Jacques. But here she was hardly less influential than at the ministry. Here she continued to gather around her a steadily increasing circle of friends, most of them young men, whose adoration of her was a part of their politics. Then, on the momentous tenth of office, August, Roland with his geraldist colleagues, was recalled to the ministry. The five months of Roland's second ministry were fraught with disaster for his country, his king, his party, and his own reputation.

Madame Roland admitted that throughout she was her husband's counselor. She advised him badly. But who would have done better? For there was never a more perplexing situation. The opposition between La Géronde and La Montagne or the Jacobin was coming to a head. yet both parties were represented in the ministry. Roland had therefore to contend against enemies within the cabinet. These enemies actually presumed to bring an accusation against Madame Roland.

She was charged with having treacherous dealings with England. Madame Roland appeared before the bar of the convention. Came, writes Carlyle, in her high clearness, her beautiful voice trembled amidst the favorable and the attentive silence of the assembly, This voice of a lovely woman heard for the first time at the convention's bar. It convicted her accuser of impudence. It dissipated him into despicability and air. The Friends of Order applauded.

Robespierre himself despised the ridiculous conspiracy against her. He smiled for the last time at his former friend's beauty and innocence. While Madame Roland triumphed, her husband, alas, had been steadily losing ground in public opinion and in that of his colleagues. Barely a fortnight after his secession to office on the 23rd of August, when the rapidly advancing Prussians took L'Owi, Roland had urged the government's retirement to Blois and had given Danton the opportunity of successfully opposing that unpopular suggestion. A week later began the massacre of prisoners. The Minister of the Interior either could not or would not stay their hideous progress.

Fabre de Glantines said in the Jacobin Club on the first day of the massacre, September the 2nd, that he had seen Roland in the Garden of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, beating his head against a tree, while he cried out that the government must fly to Tour or Tublois. Later he publicly announced that at the beginning he had not completely disapproved, that he merely blamed the continuance of the massacres. When the convention met on the 21st of September, the opposition between La Montagne and La Géronde had intensified. During a debate on the condition of the country,

an accusation was made against Robespierre, of which Roland had 15,000 copies printed at the government's expense for circulation in the provinces. Then, in November, came the affair of the Iron Safe. A locksmith revealed to Roland its existence behind a secret panel in the Tullery, and the minister, instead of at once putting all the documents it contained under seal, until they could be examined on the spot by a commission of the assembly, had them placed in a portfolio and brought to the ministry. This unwise action laid him open to the charge of having destroyed

certain papers which might have incriminated his party. About this time, Roland and the Gerondists were further weakened by the discussions which began as to the king's fate. The Minister of the Interior and the Gerondists strongly advocated the taking of a plebiscite. Roland, probably under his wife's dictation, appealed to the nation in its favor in a pamphlet entitled, Can it be contested that the sovereign people has the right to pardon Louis Capet? And how can it exercise that right if it not be consuling? The King's condemnation on the 18th of January 1793 and his execution three days later determined the fall of La Géronde. On the following day, Roland sent in his resignation.

Four months later, on the 31st of May, a warrant was issued for his arrest. While having been mourned by a friend, he fled to a place of safety, his wife, remembering her recent triumph at the bar of the convention demanded to be heard in his defense. Instead, on that very night by order of the commune, she herself was arrested on no specific charge and lodged in the Abbei prison. As the doors of her prison closed on this brave woman, writes La Martine, all the virtues, the faults, the hopes, the repentance and the heroism of her party seemed to enter the dungeon with her. On the 24th of June, she was released from the Abbeye, but barely had she entered her house when she was re-arrested and sent to San Francisco. Pellagie, the prison for prostitutes. For five months, she was kept in prison without any definite accusation being brought against her.

Then her fate became strangely linked with that of another great heroine of the revolution, Charlotte Corday. On her arrival in Paris, Maras assassin had, as we shall see, gone with a letter of introduction to the Gerondis deputy Dupéééé. Du Perre's association with the slayer of the People's Friend had led to his arrest. and during his trial there had been found among his papers letters from Madame Roland, sympathizing with the Girondis deputies who, after the movement in Paris against them, had taken refuge at Cannes.

This was enough to involve Madame Roland in the accusations then being brought against her former friends, Brissot, Vernio, and others. She was summoned to appear as a witness at their trial. The long silence to which she had been condemned in prison had irked her even more than her confinement. She remembered her triumph at the bar of the convention in the previous winter, and now she welcomed with delight the opportunity of using her eloquence on her friend's behalf. I had resolved to thunder without reserve, she wrote to her friend Busk, and then to make an end. So she had written to Busk asking him to send her poison.

This she had intended to take as soon as her speech was over. But she was denied both the poison and the opportunity of thundering. Bussk refused her the means of self-destruction, the court the occasion for a display of her eloquence. Though summoned to the trial, she was not called as a witness. All she could do was write a protest against the trial. Observation rapid on the act of accusation contra the deputies by Amar. This and her memoirs, 300 pages written in 22 days, and a correspondence with her friends occupied the wearisome days of her captivity. She was also re-reading Tacitus, who was now her favorite author.

She had to write almost under the eyes of her jailers with the warders always at her heels when she received her rare visitors. Nevertheless, throughout her correspondence and to all who were permitted to visit her, she appeared amazingly self-possessed and even cheerful, ever deeply solicitous for her friends. For myself, I have nothing to lose, she wrote. But I am so apprehensive for all who approached me that yesterday, at the Palais, Palace of justice, I hesitated to return the salute of a man I knew, and for whom I feared the imprudence of recognizing me in public. When at last on the 1st of November she was brought to trial, her heroism persisted to the end. Throughout the two days of interrogation, followed by the

passing of the death sentence, throughout all the terrible preparations for death on the scaffold she remained perfectly calm. Do not come into court to-morrow, she said to her counsel Chauveno Lagarde on the eve of her execution. You would ruin yourself without saving me. With complete self-possession as she passed by her fellow prisoners to her cell, she smilingly drew her hand over the back of her neck, making the agreed sign that the death sentence had been passed. On the tumble, as she journeyed for the last time through the streets of her beloved Paris,

from the conciergerie prison to the Place de la Revolution, amidst the howls of the mob, she maintained perfect serenity. Her one concern seemed to be to cheer her companion, an assignat printer who was seized with panic. Finally, arrived at the guillotine, fearing lest the horror of seeing her supper would be too much for him, she asked the executioner to permit him to be the first to die. Do not refuse a woman's last entreaty, she implored when he hesitated, and her prayer was granted. Thus, in the deepening twilight of a November afternoon the ninth of the month, This beautiful, courageous woman died.

Whether turning towards the colossal statue of Liberty on the square, she uttered the words tradition has attributed to her whether she sighed, O Liberty, what crimes have been committed in thy name? Or, according to another version, O Liberty, how they have tricked thee, matters not. For whether or no she expressed them, these sentiments had been hers through all the bitter days of disappointment and disillusion. A male mind, a stoical heart, some have called her.

And so at times she appeared in those admirable memoirs, which seem often to have been written rather by the sort of a cato than by the pen of a woman. But there was another side to her nature. In prison, putting away her pen, alone save for the presence of one female attendant, she would lean on the window-sill and weep for three hours at a time. Despite that grandly courageous demeanor, there were tears in her eyes as she turned away from the

judgment hall, where her doom had been pronounced. And all the greater was her courage, because of the tenderness and fears of which her heart was capable. Famtre femme, Saint-Beau calls her. Separate Madame Roland from the revolution and she appears quite different, wrote the Count de Bignot of Madame Roland in prison. No one could better define the duties of a wife and mother. When she spoke of her daughter and her husband, her eyes failed with tears.

The party woman had disappeared. la martin's opinion of her is that happy and beloved she would have been but a woman unhappy and lonely she became the leader of a party but beloved surely few women have been more beloved her husband in his austere way adored her when the news of her execution reached him in his place of refuge he went out and by the wayside took a dart which he had concealed in his cane and resting the hilt upon the trunk of an apple-tree lent upon it so that it pierced his heart For the leaders of the Gerondiste party, their adoration of Madame Roland was a religion. The poor fallen women who were her fellow prisoners at La Pelagie worshipped her. Immediately she appeared in the courtyard. All brawls and disputes were silenced. The squalid crowd pressed around her as if she were tutelary goddess. But La Mertin used that word beloved, in a special sense,

to indicate the craving of a passionate woman's heart for something more than the stern affection of a pedantic husband. more than the filial devotion of a daughter, or the esteem of political partisans, or the ardent admiration of many intimate friends, or the loving gratitude of those whom she comforted in prison. La Martine, when he employed that word beloved, may have had in mind illusions in Madame Roland's memoirs, which long aroused the curiosity of her readers. Here is one of them. I honor, I cherish my husband, as an affectionate daughter adores a virtuous father,

to whom she will sacrifice even her lover, but I have found the man who might be that lover, and while I remained true to my duty, I was not clever enough to hide the sentiment, which I never allowed to prevail over my sense of duty. My husband, extremely sensitive, wounded in his affection and his self-respect, could not endure the idea of the slightest derogation from his sway. His mind grew somber. His jealousy irritated me. Happiness fled from us.

He adored me. i sacrificed myself to him and we were unhappy earlier she had written of a tempest of passion from which an athlete's vigor barely succeeded in delivering her mature years who was the man who might have been her lover who had aroused that tempest of forbidden passion this beautiful woman had always around her a band of devoted admirers et'etre devouted and due st beawe caused them tell that the femmes honette could en-garde pre d'est without an interneous pendant a while was the man who might be loved

one of these was it busk always devoted was it Lantena the friend of the family was it Barbaru the antinuous of Marseille Michelet thought it was

Bancal desisar Saint-Beuve believed that a sacred veil would forever hide the object of the passion which more and more tumultuously as death approached surged through that noble soul

But Michelet and Saint-Beau were alike mistaken, and Saint-Beau was to live to see the rending of that sacred veil. 29 years after he had written those words, a Paris bookseller, the father of Anatol France, announced for sale by auction among other revolution documents, a packet of Madame Hollande's letters. Straightway, two gentlemen, a Monsieur Dobin and a Monsieur Foggerre, each separately engaged on a new edition of Madame Hollande's memoirs, took their way to the shop of Per France on the Quay Voltaire, each intending to purchase the letters before the sale took place. The first visitor, Monsieur Fogger, did not succeed in making the desired bargain. It was Monsieur Dobin who acquired the precious manuscripts. These letters contained the key to the mystery. By a curious irony of fate, however, their happy possessor whose siege was done,

apparently neglected to make full use of them. It was left for his rival Fogierre, when the manuscripts of the letter were deposited in the National Library to complete his edition, to reread the original in the light of the letters, and to restore the passages in the memoirs which earlier editors had omitted. One of these passages

which had most perplexed earlier editors was the following. Le Malheurue Neupportra not long time a tell coup. Madame Roland referred to her death. In the blank space was an initial, indistinctly written. It might be an R,

but it more closely resembled a bee. busk the first editor had suppressed the passage doban reproduced it with the initial r which he took to indicate roland foger insisted that the enigmatical letter was a b and why because of information contained in these letters for here in these pages clasped the hands of two hitherto unrecognized lovers these letters over which daubin and foger had quarreled solved the mystery they were passionate love-letters written by madame roland to buzot a member of the convention and a geraldist leader to buzzo she referred when she wrote of the man who might have been her lover the suppression of that passage by busk who published the memoir for the benefit of the writer's daughter if the enigmatical initial referred to Bezo was perfectly comprehensible. Had it indicated Roland, its omission would have been inexcusable. In these letters written in prison with death on the scaffold awaiting her, she tells Buzot that she welcomes her captivity because, suffering instead of Roland, it enables her in some measure to atone for her heart's infidelity to her excellent husband.

Also, do you not see, she adds, that being alone, I remain with you. Do not pity me. Others admire my courage, but they know nothing of my joys. When his letters came to her in prison. How many times I reread them, she exclaimed. I pressed them to my heart. I cover them with kisses. I had lost hope of receiving any letters from you. Until I heard of your escape I suffered the cruelest anguish.

It was intensified by the news of your accusation. Your courage merited such an atrocity. As soon as I knew you were in Calvados, my anxiety was allayed. Now, in the full light of this new discovery, could be read that eloquent passage in the Memoir, My D'ernier Ponsé, addressed to Bizzo, Toa, that I know's no me. Thou, who shall be better known on the day when our common misfortune shall be recognized.

Thou, whom the most terrible of the passions hindered not from respecting the barriers of virtue, wilt thou grieve, when thou seest me precede thee to a place where we may love one another in innocence, where there shall be nothing to prevent our union. Buzaud, included in the general accusation brought by the Jacobin government against the gherondist leaders, had fled first to his native province,

Normandy, then to La Géronde. There, some few weeks after Madame Roland's execution, in company with his comrade Petyon, he died by his own hand. Fame, as we have said, has been the usual verdict passed upon Madame Roland.

Yet there was one who, manlike, no doubt thinking to praise her, described her as "'une femme "'quette a grand "'homme.'" End of chapter four. Chapter 5, Part 1

of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Five, part one. The story of the revolution told by its women writers. Quote,

"'La Revolution of France "'is one of the grand "'epoques of the Order Social. "'Seux who he has considered "'com an event-accidentaire not ported their regard, ni down the past, nor the veneer.

Madame de Stahl. One of the many services women writers rendered to the revolution was the record they kept and the account they have given of its history. In this respect, as we have seen, Madame de Stahl and Madame Relan stand first. After them, we must place Madame Lejean

and Madame Julien, then come Louise Fuzzi and Charlotte Robespierre. Madame de Starr's story of the revolution is remarkable for its critical talent and intellectual breadth. It shows, says Professor Burry, a more dispassionate appreciation of the movement than any of her contemporaries were capable of forming. Madame Roland's story written in prison

with the guillotine suspended over her head and all her political hopes disappointed is inevitably partial and frequently acrimonious. She wrote with a two-fold object, one literary, to follow the example of her master Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and to present a sincere and sincere and and intimate picture of her own mind and heart from her earliest years.

The other, political, to give such a description of the Girondist Party which she had founded and inspired, as should justify that party's policy. Madame de Jean Lise was the most prolific woman writer of the revolution. "'On has never been pretty decryveuse than Madame de Jean Lise,' wrote Saint-Beau. "'Had the inkstand not already been invented, she would have invented it.' She was indeed the author of at least one hundred and thirty publishing. works. Her object in telling the story of the revolution was to justify her own conduct, and to clear herself from the charge of having been involved in an orionist plot to overthrow

the monarchy and place her friend and employer, the Duke de Leon, on the throne. Madame Julien's diary and letters are some of the most reliable of revolution documents, for they were written without any idea of publication. Louis Fuzzi was a gay little butterfly of an actress, who, with a novelist charm, wrote what she remembered about the strange sights and scenes of the stormy days through which she had lived. Charlotte Robespierre, who was without any literary gift, wrote at the request of an admirer of her brothers, Le Ponaire, who was editing his works.

It will be seen that the reliance we place on the judgments and historical accuracy of these writers must be qualified by a consideration of the strong political bias under which all of them, except perhaps Louise Fuzzi wrote. Indeed, as we try to piece together a more or less chronological outline of the main events of the revolution, from the various stories told by these women writers, we shall find that none of them, not even Madame de Staal, can be trusted to give a completely accurate account. Who can? However, by comparing one record with another

and by allowing for the temperament, the point of view and the political bias of each author, by taking into consideration the object of the work and the period when it was composed, we may derive from these feminine pages some knowledge of the main currents of the revolution. and of its principal actors. Though all of them were more or less on the side of the revolution, they belonged to various sections of the revolutionary party, and some of them changed their opinions as the revolution went on. This was not the case with Madame de Staal and Madame Roland.

Their opinions never wavered. The former remained always a constitutional monarchist, the latter always a Republican, though perhaps somewhat of an opportunist. The first of the Revolution Parliament the constituent assembly came nearest to realizing Madame de Starr's political ideal. The second, the legislative assembly, the ideal of Madame Roland. With the policy of the convention they were alike in disagreement. As to Madame de Jean-Lise, she was above all things Jean Lisseard, and it is doubtful

whether she had any well-grounded political principles. But she professed to love the revolution with sincerity, especially during its first 18 months. She thought, so she says, that the new Constitution, however imperfect, could not fail to be an inestimable benefit seeing that it destroyed despotism and other horrible abuses. Madame Julien, embracing the revolution with all her mind and heart, evolved with it from constitutional monarchism to moderate republicanism, and then to extreme Jacobinism.

But she remained throughout a recording spectator, and one whose critical sense never entirely deserted her. louise fuzzi while moving in revolution circles frankly avowed that she had no political principles he who said that women always adopt the opinions of the men they love made a curious mistake she wrote for her own part she took care not to espouse the opinions either of her royalist father or of her republican husband both of whom found themselves on the steps of the guillotine from which they were delivered by robespier's death charlotte de robes-pierre though less frank than louise fuzzi was not less devoid of political principles. It was merely the force of circumstances that drew her into the Revolution Whirlpool. These six women wrote at different periods of their own lives. Only two of them, Madame Julien and Madame Roland wrote during the Revolution. Charlotte de Robespierre, Louise Fuzzi, and Madame de Jean-Lise, all wrote in old age

and long after the events they recorded. Madame de Stahl did not live to be old, but she too wrote her most important work on the revolution, Consideration on the Principus Evendon de la Revolution French, years after the Revolution Frenzy had spent itself. This book is her last work, left incomplete and published

in 1818 the year after her death. Widely different were the objects with which these women wrote. Louise Fuzzi took up her pen merely to amuse herself and her friends and to make money. Charlotte Robespierre, for the same reason, probably, and also to glorify her brother Maximilien and to clear herself from the charge of having betrayed him.

Madame de Jean-Lis to give herself the beau role and to refute accusations made against her, notably those of being involved in an Orleanist conspiracy against the crown, and of having plotted with Dumorier to overthrow the government of the revolution. Madame Julien, to keep her husband informed of what was happening, and to build up her son in the doctrine and principles of the revolution. Madame de Staal to vindicate the memory of her father, Necker, and to demonstrate that a constitutional monarchy is the form of government best suited to the French nation. Madame Roland, to justify the political conduct of herself, her husband, and of the

Girondiste party to which they belonged. Neither of these eyewitnesses was in Paris throughout the whole of the revolution. Charlotte Robespierre only arrived in Paris from Arras in the autumn of 1792. Louise Fuzzi frequently went on tour in the provinces and towards the end immigrated to England. Madame de Jolice went to England in 1791, returned to Paris for two days in November, 1792, then hovered for weeks on the frontier

before starting on migrations through Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, from which she did not return until 1800. Madame Junien's first letter from Paris during the Revolution period is dated the 6th of September, 1789, Her last, May, 1793. Madame Roland was in Paris from February till September in 1791. She returned in the December of that year to stay until her death on the 8th of November, 1793. Except for short intervals, Madame de Stahl was in Paris from the beginning of 1789 until her escape

during the prison massacres in September 1792. Charlotte Robespierre, as long as she lived with her brothers, watched the revolution from the innermost keep of the Jacobin Fortress. Louise Fuzi, from the Green Room of the Comedie Francaise, Madame de Jean Lise from the Palais Royal, Madame Julien from the galleries of the Assembly and the Jacobin Club. Madame Roland from the heart of Gerondism, from the Ministry of the Interior,

and, finally, from the prisons of the Abayi, St. Pelagie and the Conservery. Madame Distal, from the study of her father, the Comptroller General of Finance, and from her salon, which she is said to have have converted into an antechamber of the constituent assembly. It is to Madame de Staal that we go for the best account of the opening months of the revolution. No one has described more vividly the meeting of the States General on May 5, 1789,

the first meeting after an interval of 175 years. The day before, from a window at Versailles, she watched the 1,200 deputies of France going in procession to church to hear Mass. It was an impossible spectacle, she writes. and a novel one for French people. All the inhabitants of Versailles and many from Paris had assembled to see it. This new element in the state, the nature and power of which was as yet unknown, filled with wonder those who had not previously reflected on the rights of nations. When the black-coated, black-cloaked deputies, the lawyers, merchants, and men of letters of the third estate came by,

the democratic heart of Nekker's daughter thrilled to see their confident glances, their imposing numbers. and to notice among them nobles who, inspired with 18th century doctrines of equality, had forsaken their own class to mingle with the people. One of these revolutionary aristocrats stood out from all the rest. It was impossible to help looking at him, at his immense head of hair. Like Samson, his strength seemed to depend on it, at his countenance, which its very ugliness rendered expressive, while his entire personality suggested power,

ill-regulated but such as might be wielded by a tribune of the people. This striking figure was none other than the Count de Mirabou, the dominant figure of the first mild phase of the revolution. On the following day, even greater things were to happen. The States General assembled in a building hastily constructed in the Avenue de Versailles. Madame de Staal was one of the many spectators admitted to the opening ceremony. On a raised platform had been placed the throne, the queen's chair and seats for the royal family.

In front of this kind of stage sat the Chancellor Barantin. The three orders were, so to speak, in the pit. The clergy and nobility on the right and left, the deputies of the third estate in the center. They had declared beforehand that they would not follow the ancient custom observed at the last meeting of the estate's 175 years before

of kneeling when the king arrived. If the deputies of the third estate, observed Madame Destin, had knelt in 1789, everyone, including the purest aristocrats, would have considered the action ridiculous, that is to say contrary to the ideas of the time. When Mirabaut appeared, a murmur was heard throughout the assembly. Monsieur Nacquer, as soon as he entered, was overwhelmed with applause. His popularity was then at its height, and the king might have made good use of him

while continuing faithful to the system, the main basis of which he had adopted. When the king took his seat on the third, throne for the first time I began to be afraid, writes Nekheer's daughter, for I noticed that the queen was greatly moved. She arrived late and her complexion showed signs of emotion. The king delivered his speech with his usual simplicity, but the countenances of the deputies expressed more energy than the monarchs, and such a contrast was disquiting at a time when, nothing being as yet established, strength was necessary on both sides. The three speeches of that day, the kings, the chancellors and Nekers, all dealt with a financial crisis which alone had driven the government

to summon the States General for the first time after so long a period. Neckers' speech, writes his daughter, pleased no one, neither the conservative nor the Progressive Party. The former considered Nekar to have proved that the summoning of the States General was unnecessary, by showing that owing to his wise administration the financial crisis was passed. The progressives, on the other hand, having resolved to reform the Constitution, were alarmed to find Necker ignoring this part of their task and confining himself to finance. They accused him of treating this great national parliament

as if it had been a mere provincial assembly. Neckers was indeed one of those moderate men who are doomed to failure in times of revolution. Whilst for most people, the revolution would seem to have broken out on May the 5th, the day of the assembling of the States General, or on July the 14th, the day of the Basties fall, for that egotistical government. governess, Madame de Jean Lise, July the 9th seems the all-important historical day because it happened

to be the eve of her own birthday. The festival was being celebrated by a pantomime, in the very midst of which the news of risings in Paris was announced. The Olion governess and her pupils were then at St. Lu, some miles out of the capital. One of the actors in the pantomime, Giro, a painter, was playing the part of Polyphemus. Eager to see what was happening in the capital, no sooner had he finished his part, then he rushed into a cabriolet and drove in full haste to Paris, without even staying to change his clothes. His costume and his eye, painted in the middle of his forehead, caused so much amazement that he was arrested at the city gate and taken to the guardhouse, where he was detained for over two hours, being minutely interrogated as to the reasons

for such an astounding disguise. He was only allowed to go free by invoking the then-popular name of his patron, the Duke of Orleans. For Madame de Staal and for many others, all the events leading up to the storming and destruction of the Basties centered round her father. Having failed to persuade the king to renounce his project of concentrating great masses of troops round Paris, Neckerre resigned on June the 23rd. So great was his popularity, writes his daughter, that the news of his resignation brought all Paris out into the streets. And it was doubtless this public manifestation that caused both the king and queen personally to implore Neckers to save the state by withdrawing his resignation.

This Nekheer did. But as the king persisted in his design, and as Nekheer also persisted in his opposition, the minister found that his advice was being ignored, though he continued to wait on the king daily. Louis was now entirely in the hands of his reactionary counselors. For Nekar, the wig of the French Revolution, the position was impossible.

He told his daughter that every day he expected to be arrested on the moral, The blow fell on the 11th of July when the controller general received a letter from the king, commanding him to leave France immediately. He showed the king's letter to no one but his wife. It arrived at three o'clock in the afternoon when Madame Nacquhar was holding her salon. Immediately after her guests had departed, without staying to make any preparation for the journey, she set out for the frontier with her husband. The king had wanted to get Naccar away before the people who adored him knew of his disgrace

and had time to make a demonstration on his behalf. The precaution was useless. For the news of Nicarre's dismissal and banishment when it was brooded abroad, produced the first great manifestation of the revolution. On July the 14th, 100,000 citizens as a protest against this treatment of their favorite minister,

captured and destroyed the royal fortress of the Bastille. Meanwhile, Madame de Jean-Luce at St. Louis was in close touch with Paris. Every day a courier brought, out news from the capital. On the 14th, the tidings were such that Madame de Jean-Lis felt she could no longer remain in the country. She and the Duke's children came into Paris, where they found the attack on the Bastille well on the way. From the garden terrace of her friend Beaumarche, Madame de Jandis, surrounded by her pupils, watched men, women, and children working with unprecedented

ardor at the demolition of the fortress. Those avenging hands, annihilating so swiftly the work of many centuries seemed to her to be the hands of Providence. And she shared the joy of the destroyers at the fall of a fortress, on which, so she said, she had never been able to look without a shudder, remembering the arbitrary imprisonments within its walls. To celebrate this memorable occasion, Madame de Jainlis had an elaborate ornament made, which she used to wear at her breast. It consisted of a polished stone from the Bastille set in a branch of laurel composed of emerales,

and inscribed in the middle with the word Liberti outlined in diamonds. Above also in diamonds was the planet that shone most brightly on the famous day, and beneath, in the same precious stone, the moon as she appeared on that night. Surmounting the hole was a tricolor cockade in jewels. The first result of the destruction of the Bastie was Necker's recall. He was on his way from Brussels to Coppe, his country seat in Switzerland, when at Baal, on July the 20th, he received a command. from the king, and an invitation from the National Assembly to return to France and to resume his office.

Once again he obeyed. His return journey was a triumphal progress, wrote Madame de Staal, who by this time had joined her parents and was accompanying them back to France. The transports of a whole nation welcomed him. Country women fell on their knees as he passed. Townsmen unharnessed his horses and dragged his carriage themselves. When he reached the capital, all Paris, was in the streets at the windows around the roofs,

crying, Vive, Monsieur Nacquerre. The next day the hero, for whom the Bastille had fallen, went down to the Hotel de Ville. As amidst thunders of applause, he addressed the assembled multitude, his daughter, so she tells us, lost consciousness in the ecstasy of her joy.

In no period of French history have there been so many public festivals and processions as during the revolution. One of the earliest was the first festival of the Federation, as it was called, held on the chand-de-mars on the fourteenth of july seventeen ninety to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the bastille many prints of the time portray the picturesque preparations for the fed and in a manner no less picturesque the graphic louise-fuse describes them in her recollections the help of all parisians men women and children were requisitioned to construct the huge mounds of earth which were to enclose as in an emerald setting the vast field of marse every one went to work bands of volunteers were organized the theatres were to the four every cavalier chose his lady to whom he presented a light spade adorned with ribbons and bunches of flowers

then with the band leading us says louise we set out joyously the costume was designed which would not show the dust an overall of gray muslin with dainty slippers and stockings of the same color a tricolour scarf and a big straw hat cousin jacques was my cavalier he even composed a poem to celebrate the occasion we dug we wield the earth about we ourselves were wheeled and we had such fun that we hindered the work instead of helping it soon our assistance was dispensed with and we were very sorry for it had been very amusing madame de stal regarded the same festival from a much more serious point of view looking back on it after the lapse of more than twenty years it appeared to her as the last expression of a truly national enthusiasm when royalty and liberty were united when france was about to possess the constitution most fitted for her a limited monarchy like that of england during the preparations madame de stalry rejoiced to see women of the highest rank mingling with the crowd of voluntary workers and the eighty three newly constituted departments sending their delegates and national guards to swear to the new constitution true it was not yet complete but its principles were universally approved of the constitution and its principles do not concern louise fuzzi she as an actress is interested in the way in which these provincial delegates amuse themselves she tells how Mirabeau took the delegates from Marseilles to the Palais Royal Theatre. There, a play called Bayar was being acted, and acted too realistically for these fiery southerners.

For when a band of assassins set upon the knight without reproach, who was being carried on his litter, the Marseillae, horrified to see the incapacitated hero so completely outnumbered, rushed upon the stage and were about to make short work with the assassins when Bayar assured them that he ran no real danger. By the appointed day, July the 14th, though the help of Louise Fuzzi and her colleagues had been dispensed with, the preparations for the festival were complete. In front of the military school, wrote Madame de Staal, were steps leading to a tent for the king, the queen, and the whole court. They occupied the amphitheater. Opposite them was an altar on which Taleran, Bishop of Otin, was to celebrate Mass, while all around from 83 lances planted in the earth, waved the banners of the 80s,

three newly constituted departments. When Monsieur de Lafayette approached the altar and swore allegiance to the nation, the law and the king, the oath and the man who swore it filled the people with confidence. But there was another in whom the people at that time were beginning to place even greater confidence than in Lafayette. That other was Mirabeau. Although Madame de Staal regards him as her father's rival and the leader of the opposition which had led to Necker's final resignation, even she is compelled to admit that had he been more conscientious and less self-seeking, he might have created a strong

party independent of the court, on the one hand, and the mob on the other. There were indeed many who in those early days looked to Mirabeau to save the state. His death, after a few days illness on April 2, 1791, inflicted a heavy blow on the cause of the revolution and was mourned throughout the whole kingdom. Louise Fuzzi, traveling to Lille, was continually stopped on the road and asked whether it was true that Mirabeau was dead. No sooner was his illness known than the street in which he lived who was full of an anxious crowd waiting for the bulletins. The news was passed eagerly from one to another,

and finally, on the announcement of his death, a long cry was heard accompanied with sobs and groans. The day of his funeral was one of universal morning. All shops were closed, and anyone who appeared without some sign of grief was howled at by the crowd. In those days of suspicion and excitement, the suddenness of his malady inevitably gave rise to a rumor, never substantiated, that he had been poisoned by some actresses with whom he was supping when he was taken ill. With Mirabeau died the last hope of French monarchy.

To the king and the nobles it seemed that nothing remained but flight. In June, Louis and his family got away as far as Varenne, where they were overtaken and brought back to Paris. Meanwhile, there was an exodus of aristocrats. and an army of these emigre under the king's brother, Le Comte d'Artois, was assembling at Coulins and soliciting the support of European sovereign sovereign bayonets. Ever since the first meeting of the States General, Madame de Jean Luce, so she says, had been wishing to leave Paris. She dreaded the disorders which she felt sure would break out. In the previous year she had had an adventure which made her more anxious than ever to quit her native land.

She has described it in detail in her memoirs, and we may be sure it loses nothing in her telling. One day, about four o'clock, she writes, Mademoiselle, Monsieur Le Comte de Beaujolet, my niece Henriette de Cercy, Pamela and I drove out in a calais to see a country house some four leagues out of Paris. We passed by the village of Colombe. Unhappily, it was a fair day. Crowds of people from the neighborhood had gathered in the village. As we drove through, they thronged round our carriage, and took it into their heads that I was the queen with Madame and Monsieur Leofin who were fleeing from Paris. They made us get out of the carriage of which they took possession as well as of the coachman and our servants. In this confusion, the commander of the National Guard, a young man of good family named Baudry, came to our assistance and harangued the people.

But he could not pacify them. He succeeded, however, in persuading them to allow him to take us to his service. house, which was close at hand, by giving them his word of honor that he would keep us there as prisoners until the matter was completely cleared up. He led us through an immense crowd, and as we passed on this short journey, we heard many voices crying, at la lantern. Finally, we entered his dwelling. But a quarter of an hour afterwards, four thousand people besieged the doors, forced them open and rushed into the house in a terrible tumult. M. Boudry, courageously and kindly, made every possible effort to calm them.

We were in the garden, and as I heard that they were about to arrive, I told my pupils to play at rounders with me. Then, sure enough, a terrifying crowd of men and women rushed into the garden. They were surprised to see us at play. We stopped our game at once, and I advanced to meet them with the most perfect calm. I said I was the wife of one of their deputies that I was going to write a note to Paris, and, and I asked them to send a messenger with it, in order that the matter might be cleared up.

They listened, but without being convinced, for they cried that it was all lies, and that I was writing to ask for reinforcements, and they concluded by saying that if anyone were so foolhardy as to go to Paris, they would hang him from the lamppost when he returned. Monsieur Baudry then spoke to them, and extremely well, but in vain.

During the dispute I was taking snuff, and I had my snuff box open. Just as I was proposing that we should be given a guard of ten or twelve men and left in peace until the morning, a wretched peasant, dead drunk, filthy and disgusting came and took a pinch of snuff out of my box. I threw the rest of the snuff away and went on with my speech. This action astonished them and had a good effect. Many said that I should not be so calm if I were really the queen. At this point a man from the crowd, seizing an opportunity when everyone was talking at once,

came to me and whispered in my ear. I was once Celerie's gamekeeper. Don't be anxious. I am going to Paris. These words were as balm in Gilead to me. Finally, all the peasants consented to go away. But they left us a guard of a dozen men armed with bayonets at the end of their guns who followed us everywhere.

Most of the people were drunk. They stayed in the streets near the house where we were so that it was impossible for us to escape. At eight in the evening, the mayor of the village arrived to cross-examine us. In order to make himself as imposing as possible, he had put on his tricotter scarf. He asked me gravely to deliver up to him

all the papers in my pockets. I gave him four or five letters. While he was carefully examining the seals, I urged him to open them. He replied brusquely that he could not read, but he refused to give them back to me. Under these conditions we passed the whole night. Our peasant besiegers in the streets

were sleeping themselves into sobriety. When they awoke they were more reasonable. At five in the morning, Silrie's ex-gamekeeper returned from Paris. He had been to the town hall and brought back an order for our release. This good gamekeeper had been quite sure that the people, when sober,

would forget that they had ever refused to let us return to Paris. He was right. No one remembered. They were unanimous in recognizing that I was not the queen and their wrath gave place to repentance. They clamored to escort us back to Paris in triumph.

What a story that would have made for the newspapers. End of Chapter 5, Part 1. Chapter 5, Part 2 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Part 2 of the story of the revolution told by its women writers. It was not until a year after the book. this incident on the 11th of October, 1791, that Madame de Jean-Lis succeeded in getting away from France. Alleging as a pretext that the health of Mademoiselle de Alleyrand required a change

of air, she left for England, taking with her the princess and Pamela, and escorted by the deputy Petion, who was afterwards to become so prominent. Eight months after her departure, the French government declared war on Austria, whose emperor was thought to be in league with the Immigre Army. Today, the king has proclaimed war, wrote Madame Julien to her husband on the 20th of April 1792. His speech was so simple and constitutional, the President's reply, laconic and just. The number of women whom the commissioners had allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary so upset the good deputies that the session was adjourned before two o'clock just after the king had left. The war was unfortunate for France

from the beginning. You have already heard of Dylan's defeat and of his unhappy fate. He was massacred by his own troops, wrote Madame Julien to her husband on May the 3rd, 1792. A second affair before Mons, commanded by Monsieur de Viron, was also a failure. Our aristocrats display a horrible joy which I hope will be but short-lived, she continues. We can scarcely breathe, we are so anxious for news. Mirabeau was right. War is absorbing, and that is unfortunate when there is so much else needing our attention. A fortnight later, Madame Julien writes that she is persuasive. that this stagnation of the armies results from a plot. The conspirators were, to use her own

phrase, all the constituted authorities, and their aim the subversion of the new order, equally disliked by the ambitious, powerful, and by the wicked wealthy. This supposed royalist's conspiracy becomes a veritable obsession for Madame Julien and for many others. She hears in the street below the cry, infernal plot of Le Fayon discovered, innocence of the Jacobin established. to obtain material proofs of this plot is impossible she writes only the idiotic and the vulgar demand them moral certitude alone is possible because these wicked conspirators are far too crafty to leave any trace of their malevolent designs meanwhile paris is growing more and more agitated especially in the paler royal and the tuileries gardens we returned from the tuileries gardens about six o'clock in the evening writes madame julien on may the twenty third 1792. All Paris was there.

We saw two incidents which greatly moved the crowd. First, it was an officer who struck a colporteur because he was selling a pamphlet justifying the Jacobin. The people would have set upon him had not a member of the National Guard, while reproving the officer, promised the people that he should be brought to justice. Nevertheless, he did not escape being knocked about, shaken and howled at, and finally accompanied to the guardhouse by some two or three thousand souls. All this happened on the Fayon Terrace.

The terrace of the Feyon Monastery adjoining the riding school where the assembly sat, at the very gates of the palace. I was sitting on the parapet of the terrace. It was like being on a rock on the shore of a raging ocean. No sooner was calm established than another storm broke out. Again waves of people rushed from all directions. It was the poet Ronschi who wanted to harangue a group of people at whose aristocratic ardor they were about to cool by throwing him into the water.

Happily, a justice of the peace put up his little white wand, and the docile crowd overawed by the sudden appearance of this symbol of the law, contented itself with demanding that Ranch be sent out of the gardens, and two thousand conducted him to the gate near the Pond Royale, so that, from my seat on the parapet, I saw this little scene quite close. Still no news from the frontier, she writes on May the 6th, 1792, and the month of May is over. The stagnation, the inactivity of our armies,

contrasted with French impetuosity, makes those who have long-sighted spectacles tremble. Meanwhile, at home, patriotism burns brightly. Yesterday, she continues, a man from Bordeaux laid 57,000 francs in coin on the altar of the fatherland. The market ruffs, Les Farr de la Hall,

brought 800 francs to the altar in the Senate House. They said that the dead. Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution ought to be carried at the head of the army like the Ark. On the 16th of June, she tells her son that the king has partly changed his ministry. Roland, Minister of the Interior, servant of war, and clavier of finance have been dismissed. She recommends her son to read attentively in Le Moniteur, Roland's letter to the king, generally thought to have been inspired by Madame Roland.

It brought him into disgrace with the court. it will win him the admiration and the esteem of the whole of France. The blindness of kings is the scourge of humanity. Truth cannot come near them, and the fools think that by rejecting they annihilated, whilst in reality they only make it more visible. Roland's memory will be immortal. On June the 19th, the eve of the first mob attack on the Tuileries,

she writes to her husband, "'Tomorrow the people will rise. They will march to the National Assembly to demand sweeping measures. Her servant Marion walks round the Tuileries gardens and finds more people congregated there than there are grains of sand. All speak the same language.

All demand that the king shall either support the Constitution or openly declare himself its enemy. The morning of the eventful 20th, Madame Julien spends in the Assembly listening to the speeches of Bernou, the Geront distortor, and others discussing whether or no the people's demands shall be granted and the sections of Paris admitted to the assembly hall.

Finally, at half-past one, they are allowed to come in. Forty thousand citizens enter through the door opposite the Place Vandome. The true sovereign was really majestic, she writes. For two hours by my watch it defiled through the hall in perfect order in magnificent tranquility. There were citizens armed with pikes, national guards, hussars, grenadiers, troops of the line, ladies, women of the people, all mingling in a spirit of equality and fraternal unity.

They bore the sacred tables of the rights of man and a thousand emblems of the Constitution and of liberty. Military music played the Sahira. The regularity of this procession was broken from time to time by various incidents. When the president of the Assembly was being saluted, flags got entangled and there were cries hailing the accident as a symbol of reunion. One fellow, looking like a Claude Hopper, held up the whole process. session, while he said a few words about the war which were full of force and common sense.

Monsieur Santére came last. In the name of the suburbs, Les Foubour, he presented the assembly with a superb banner. As the last group was passing through the hall, the president stopped it to announce that the brave Lachner had taken Courtre, and captured more than a thousand prisoners of war, and that the Germans in the city had cried, long live the French nation. The procession passed out of the hall onto the Fayon terrace towards the Tuileries Palace which they completely surrounded. They entered it by the gates on the Place du Carousel. Madame Julien now ceases to be an eyewitness. In describing the scenes enacted within the palace, she cites as authorities her hairdresser,

who said the next morning that the invaders had displayed, the greatest moderation and the most profound wisdom, and her faithful servant Marion, who apparently entered the Tuileries with the crowd. There she saw astounding things. The people in the king's house, presenting him with two cockades, one tricolour and the other white. The king choosing the tricolour and putting on the red cap, the red Phrygian cap of liberty. Superb things were said to the king, and doubtless, apparently she was not quite sure about this. He was presented with a petition, asking him to withdraw his veto from the decrees establishing an armed camp of patriots around Paris

and the transportation of the non-juring clergy. Madame Julien, now an ardent Jacobin, was growing more and more impatient of the Legislative Assembly, whose meeting seemed to her a sublime farce, and whose actions she thought calculated to irritate the masses. The June attack on the Tuileries had been no more than an attempt to frighten the king into granting his people's demands. But as July drew into August and the fateful tenth approached,

Madame Giulier began to perceive terrible storm-clouds, lowering. On the eighth, she wrote, nothing but a miracle can save us. On the ninth, the toxin has sounded the alarm. The streets are full of people. Trembling women look from the windows and question the passers-by. Then, as in all revolutions, there were many who failed to see what was coming. On that very evening to Louise Fuzzi, the city seemed tranquil. The people appeared to be mainly occupied with dancing at the Parisian, Vauxhall,

while the woman were busy making those frocks in the coblan's fashion, which had now succeeded Le Costume Constitution and Le Chappeau Revolution. Louise, on that eventful evening, was making a a Coblanc's scarf when her husband and a friend came in wearing uniform. But this had no significance for what she called her mind. It was not until the following day when she saw the squares and streets strewn with corpses that Madame Louise began to take the revolution seriously. At the close of that day, Madame Julien wrote a description of it to her husband. Listen and shudder, she began. The night was uneventful.

The Tuilerie had been filled with national guards. The assembly also had its triple guard. At six in the morning, the king had reviewed his Swiss guards on the swing bridge. At eight, he went to the National Assembly. Suddenly, the Swiss appeared at all the palace windows and fired on the national guards. The gates of the chateau opened

and bristling with cannon let fly a vol. on the people. The Swiss redoubled their firing. The National Guard with barely two rounds of ammunition was riddled. The people fled, then rallied in rage and despair. The Marseille volunteers were so many heroes performing prodigies of valor. The chateau was stormed. Heaven's justice opened up away for the invaders, and the Swiss expiated in death the base treason of which they had been the instruments. The whole royal family mere toys in the hands of a bloodthirsty factory. had taken advantage of a favorable moment to seek refuge with the assembly. They were conducted to the reporter's gallery where they still are.

No newspaper has appeared. I have not heard a word of the assembly, and incredible as it may sound, the assembly may have been calmer today than at any time in its existence. Today, the 10th of August, was to have been the day of the counter-revolution. Three weeks later, Madame Julien was describing the first of those terrible days when the furious populace invaded the jails and butchered between twelve and sixteen hundred prisoners. Would you believe it, she writes, I spent from six till eight in the Tulleri Gardens. Crowds everywhere, agitated yet orderly. Paris has no night now. When daylight fades there are

illuminations, two magnificent pyramids of light on the Great Lake and illuminated booths in the sidewalks. The Fayon Terrace was as bright as day, covered with groups of men, women and children, all ready to follow the most generous impulses, or to give effect to the most terrible resolutions. Then her letter suddenly assumes a more tragic tone. Six masons returning from work tell of the horrors that are being perpetrated. They have seen piles of corpses at the gates of the prisons. The emissaries of the people,

fearing less in the event of the Prussians marching into Paris the imprisoned anti-revolutionaries should rise and join them, have been visiting each jail in turn, and after some kind of inquiry have massacred the prisoners in cold blood. This terrible carnage had seemed to them the only way of assuring the safety of the wives and families of the heroes fighting at the front. My pity, writes Madame Julien, makes me weep over the fate shared alike by the guilty and the innocent. My God, have mercy on a people provoked to such horrible bloodshed. Impute it not.

Then too deeply moved to write more she throws down her pen and, in the middle of a sentence. About the time of the prison massacres, Charlotte Robespierre came to Paris to join her brothers, Maximilien and August, who were both members of the National Convention.

The three Robespierre were invited to dine at Madame Julien's. I am to make the acquaintance of this patriotic family, she writes, the head of which has so many friends and so many enemies. Madame Julien was quick to see

into the hearts of this famous trio. In her portraits, there is a fine aloofness of judgment which we miss in the portraits of Madame Roland. Maximilien's hostess had previously criticized him somewhat severely. His literary style, as displayed in the newspaper, Le Defenceur de la Constitution, she had thought careless and uninspiring. In July 1792, he had seemed to her to be losing credit. She was distressed to hear him in the Jacobin Club,

denouncing the great Girondin, Verno and Brissot. She regrets his ironical tone in his controversy, with her friend Pityon, who after June the 20th, had been suspended from his office as mayor of Paris. Pityon is worthy of respect, she writes. Robespierre should not despise him. Were Robespierre, my husband, I would throw myself at his feet and implore him in the name of the public good to forget his private vengeance. On nearer acquaintance, however, she thought better of Robespierre. The family as a whole pleased her. They convinced her that Maximilien had nothing whatever to do either with the August attack on the Tzuilli or with the prison massacres.

She cannot believe that nature would have endowed an evil soul with so handsome a countenance. But he seems to her about as well-fitted to be a party leader as to take the moon in his teeth. An abstract thinker, dry and academic, he is as gentle as a lamb and as serious as young. I see, she writes to her husband, that he has not your tender sensibility. However, I like to believe that he desires the good of mankind, though it is rather from a sense of justice than from any good will. The younger Robespierre, Madame Julien, liked less. He was more animated than his brother, but less distinguished and of a petulance likely to lead to mischief-making.

In well-chosen, neutral tints Madame Julien paints the colorless Charlotte Robespierre. She is, naive and natural like your aunts, she writes to her son. She came two hours before the others. We had a woman's talk, and I made her tell me about their home lives, simple and frank like our own. Both Madame Julien's diary and Charlotte's own memoirs suggest that the virtuous Robespierre family had a jaundiced look on life, that they were abelious trio, loving, but not understanding even one another. Certainly, from the time of the arrival of Charlotte and Auguste in Paris, their family relations were far from harmonious.

Charlotte was jealous of her brother's friends, especially of the Duplais, the family of a master cabinet-maker of La Rue Saint-Eau-Ré, with whom he had lodged ever since the night of the Chande-Ares' massacre, when he, like the Robes, had deemed it imprudent to return to his own home. These hospitable people, so Charlotte tells us, received her and her brother when they arrived from Arras. But from the beginning, Charlotte was displeased at finding herself and Auguste lodged in rooms remote from their brothers. She tells how finally she persuaded Maximilien to leave the DuPlaise and to establish himself with his brother and sister in a flat of their own in La Rue Saint-Fleurante. But there he fell ill, and Madame Dupley, accusing Charlotte of neglecting her brother,

fetched him away. Then, of course, it was war to the knife between the two women as the following incident, told by Charlotte shows. I often sent my brother jam or preserved fruits or some other dainty of which he was very fond, writes Charlotte. Whenever she saw my servant arriving with such a gift, Madame DuPlet would fly into a temper. one day she said to my servant who had brought some pots of jam take them away i won't have her poisonin robespierre the servant did not fail to report those words to her mistress the terrible blasphemy exclaims charlotte instead of making a scene which would have annoyed my brother she continues i devoured my grief and my indignation in silence soon afterwards she quarrelled with her younger brother august here again her brother's friends were the cause of the despise

She never saw August afterwards, and Maximilien she met but rarely. But to go back to the autumn of 1792, in November, Madame de Jean-Lise, accompanied by Pamela, returned from England, and paid a visit of one night only to Paris. The appearance of the capital and the ferocious and insolent air of the people in the streets justified her worst fears. Only the desire to give Mademoiselle de Alliant up to the Duke her father, and to resign her post as governess had induced Madame de Jean-Lies to risk a return. She had begun to realize that the misfortune of being connected with the House of All Leone, was exposing her to

all kinds of calumny and persecution. But she found it impossible to get rid of Mademoiselle. By bringing the princess back to Paris against her father's wishes, Egality had sent courier after courier to Madame de Jean-Lis forbidding her to return. She had placed her in the greatest danger,

for the convention had included Mademoiselle in the list of proscribed enemies. Even the selfishness of Madame de Jean-Lise could not withstand Equality's urgent entreaty that she would continue in office if only for a fortnight longer, until another governess could be found, and that meanwhile she would hurry out of France taking Mademoiselle with her. Accordingly, on the following morning, she bade farewell to her husband de Cilerie, whom she was never to see again, and to Equality whom she wishes her readers to believe that she then saw for the last time. "'Monsieur leuc d'Aulean,' she writes,

"'glumier than ever gave me his arm and led me to the carriage. "'I was greatly moved. "'Mademoiselle was in tears, her father pale and trembling. "'He stood motionless at the carriage door, his eyes fixed on me. "'His sad, lugubrious glance seemed to implore pity. "'Farewell, madame,' he said. "'His broken voice touched me deeply. "'Unable to utter a single word I gave him my hand.

"'He took it, pressed it. then turning to the postilions he gave them the signal and we started their destination was tournay which was then just across the frontier there madame de jeanly stayed much longer than the stipulated fortnight for no new governess arrived to take her place i did not waste my time at tournay she writes we led a well-ordered life there a person in town lent me books i read aloud every day for an hour and a half i played the harp with mademoiselle she painted flowers so did did I. Then we did all kinds of fancy work. I taught her to make charming little straw baskets. The Paris Church was but a few steps from the house. We went to mass there every day, and our time passed swiftly and even agreeably. As was my custom, I sat up alone every evening for two or three hours, writing my diary and jotting down my reflections. It was at Tournay, writes Madame de Jean-Lis, that we heard of the horrible catastrophe which ended the life of the

unfortunate Louis XVIth. From the bottom of my heart I deplored this terrible event, and for more than one reason. Then she gives a letter from her husband saying that he had voted for la reclusion, imprisonment, just at la pay, that in doing so

he had obeyed his conscience, knowing very well that by expressing such an opinion he had pronounced his own death sentence. Celerie was not mistaken. He was guillotined nine months after the king he had tried to save. it was at tournay in march seventeen ninety three that the commander-in-chief of the revolution armies du morier went over to the enemy madame de jean lise was accused of being implicated in this treachery in her presid de la conduit of madame de jean lise d'est d'holus de l'ye de l'est de j'n l'is d'yevue she attempts to clear herself of this charge of all the lies concocted about me she writes this one is the most absurd and the least probable true i was charmed was so famous a man but never for a single instant was i alone in tte at tte with him

madame de jean lice admits however that during the time that they were both at tournay from march twenty sixth to thirty first she entertained the general to dinner three times when dumorrier left tournay for st armand the thirty-first madame and her pupils followed him there travelling in a Berlin with a blinds down, wearing large, brimped hats and thick veos which completely hid their faces. Madame also admits that on hearing that the conspirator's object was the restoration of a constitutional monarchy, she remarked that it ought never to have been abolished. But, she added, after having shed so much blood to establish a republic, it was better to adhere to it. We cannot follow Madame de Jean-Lis through all her subsequent wanderings, neither can we enter into the details of her temporary rupture with the All Lyon family, and of her parting

with Mademoiselle. But one incident of those travels must be related. It occurred in July 1794 when she was staying in a boarding-house at Altena. There, in a curious manner, she heard of Robespierre's death. It was one hour after

midnight, she writes. I was very surprised to hear continuous knocking at my door, and my astonishment increased when I recognized the voice of my neighbor, Monsieur de Carcy, who was generally so quiet. He was crying, Open your door, open quickly, I must kiss you. When I refused to gratify so singular a desire, he repeated several times,

you yourself will wish to kiss me, open your door. Finally I obeyed. Monsieur de Kersie threw himself on my neck and said, The tyrant is no more, Robespierre is dead. Then in truth I did embrace my visitor and with all my heart. The next day, adds Madame de Jean-Lise, They heard that the effect of the news on one of Robespierre's supporters in the neighborhood had been to make him fall down stark dead.

For an account of the events preceding Robespierre's death, of the famous Ninth of Thermidor, when the incorruptible was arrested by the convention and took refuge at the Hotel de Ville, one turns naturally to the memoirs of Robespier's sister, but only to meet with disappointment. For Charlotte's account of one of the most critical days in her own life and in the whole course of the revolution is brief and totally without any personal touch. Having discussed in summary fashion the moving scene in the convention, having described briefly his flight to the Hotel de Ville, she says, the Termi d'Orion attacked the Hotel de Ville with

troops that the convention had placed at their disposal. The terrible decree of Outlory had scattered all those who had rallied round to my brother to defend him. He was seized, but I cannot continue the story. History must fill in the blank left by my sorrow. One sympathizes with Charlotte when she shrinks from relating the events of a day which must have filled her with anguish. Nevertheless, one would like to know where she was and how she behaved on the Ninth of Thermidor. Did she attempt to fly to her brother's side, or did she simply cower indoors? Did she stay all day in the place where she was then living in the Hotel de Cherebuul, near the St. Gustav's church, and only a few minutes walk away from the Hotel de Ville

where her brother's fate was being decided? As to her doings on the next day The Tenth of Thermidor Charlotte leaves us in no doubt I rushed into the street she says My head in a whirl despair in my heart

She sought for her brothers When she was sure of not finding them When they were in prison But had she sought them on the previous day I run here and there She continues I entreat to be allowed to see them I drag myself to the soldiers

They repulsed me laugh at my tears insult me, strike me. A few pitiful people drag me away. My mind wandered. I did not know what happened or what became of me. When I came to myself, I was in prison. Charlotte had been arrested on the 13th of Thermidor, the 30th of July.

Her replies during her examination by the Revolutional Tribunal show her anxious to save her own life at the expense of her brother's reputation. After asserting, and probably with truth, that she had frequently remonstrated with Maximilin as to his actions and the kind of company he kept, she adds that had she for a moment guessed the nature of the infamous plot, Compleu infame, in which she was involved, she would have denounced him to the authorities rather than have seen her country imperiled.

We must not be hard on Charlotte. She was no heroine, only a dull, peevish woman, totally incapable of comprehending the vast issues at stake. And now she was trembling with fear and possessed by one idea alone. that of saving her own life. Her imprisonment lasted 15 days. At the close of her memoirs, she tells a confused story

of a lady who came to her in prison and made her sign some paper, the contents of which she did not completely understand. She fears, lest the cowardly thermidorians may have used it against her brother's friends. With this reflection, her memoirs close. The paper to which she referred has not yet been identified. Perhaps it never existed.

On the authority of August Robespierre, we know Charlotte's memory to have been unreliable. Charlotte, having adopted her mother's name of Caro, lived on in obscurity until 1830. Two years before her death, she inserted in her will a clause intended to rehabilitated her brother Maximilien's memory. "'Vulant, avant to pay her nature,' she wrote, "'le that all the immortals he doove, "'fair connetter my sentiments over the memory of my brother-in-ne, I declare that I I'll have always

Connue by a strange coincidence Madame de Jean Lise and Charlotte Robespierre died in the same year The former had long before then returned to France

When in 1799 The name of Madame de Jean Lise was erased from the list of Immigreégré and she was permitted to return to her native land she found it greatly changed The streets had all been renamed and the names of philosophers

substituted for those of saints many of the cabs in the streets she recognized as the confiscated carriages of her friends who had perished in the revolution, and in the shop window she saw their books, pictures, and furniture for sale. But perhaps what struck her the most was the change that had come over the manners and habits of the women. Young women, she thought, much less reserved than they had been. They would recline on a sofa without throwing a rug over their feet, so that the slightest movement might reveal a foot or even part of a leg. the girls of the period would call young men by their Christian names, would address their

girlfriends by the second person singular. Such things, said Madame de Jean Lise, were never thought of before the revolution. Men, so it seemed to the returned emigre, treated women with less respect than in the good old times when she would have us believe they always addressed the fair sex with reverence and in a lower tone of voice than they would use when speaking to men. Existence in so coarse and vulgarer world must have been terrible indeed for the exquisite Madame de Jean-Lis. Yet she contrived to live on to a ripe old age through the Napoleonic period and the reigns of the two bourbons of the elder line, and not to die until her pupil, Louis-Philippe was well established on the throne. End of Chapter 5

Chapter 6 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. Ravoc's recording is in the public domain. 6. Minor women writers of the Revolution. Playwrights and novelists, pamphleteers, and journalists. We shall find it convenient to divide the minor women writers of the Revolution into two classes. First, those who contrived to keep the Revolution out of their works, though they moved

in Revolution circles. Second, those who found it impossible to avoid dealing with the great convulsion in some, if not in all, their writings. For our purpose here, the last class is of course by far the most important and must be dealt with at length. But beforehand, let us dismiss rather summarily the first class, of which we need indeed only mention one representative, Julie Corday. She claims attention not only because of her intimate association with many of the women who figure in these pages, but because she was a brilliant social personage endowed with many gifts, at once, musician and novelist, playwright and actress, and because she was a prominent figure in revolutionary society,

although she seems never to have taken part in politics. We have met her already, playing on the piano at Madame Talmas when Mara made his violent intrusion. Several histories of the revolution describe her as the mistress of Verno, the most eloquent of the Gerontese torsors. But Verneau's biographer Vattel completely destroys this legend. He proves from Julie's own words and other evidence that she, she had never even spoken to Vernou. Mademoiselle Cande made her debut as an actress at the early age of 15 in 1782, at the opera,

as Ifigeny in Gluck's Iphigenia Inolis. Though always referred to as Mademoiselle Cande, she was, in reality, thrice married. Thus, she made good use of that right to divorce which the Le Goncour's declared was the only advantage woman obtained from the revolution. The so-called Mademoiselle Cande divorced two husbands. the second she had met under rather unusual circumstances when she was playing at la comédie frances an elderly coach-builder of brussels came to paris to break off a match between his son and one of julie's fellow-actresses

while soliciting julie's aid in the matter the coach-builder fell in love with his collaboratress and instead of preventing one wedding found himself celebrating two after divorcing the coach-builder julie took to herself a third husband with whom she seems to have contrived to spend the remainder of her days. They extended until 1834, for Julie was one of the few people who succeeded in living through the revolution. As an actress, she made no mark, except in a play of her own composition, interspersed with songs set to music of her own and entitled Catherine or La Belle Firmier, played at the Theatre de la Republic in 1797 with the authorous in the principal part. It took the town by storm. The peace was indeed just that blend of sentiment and artificiality at la Jean-Jacques, which would delight playgoers of the day. The scene is laid in the country, where fine ladies and gentlemen mingling with peasants and

peasantsesses indulge in picnics and other rustic pursuits. Catherine herself, the beautiful fermier, is, as we might expect, a great lady in disguise. The wickedness of townsfolk in general and of her husband who at length fell a victim to his sins have driven her to take refuge in the heart of the provinces. There, Catherine plays at the simple life as Marie Antoinette had done in her Amot at Versailles. In the end, her identity is discovered, and her love of simplicity rewarded by marriage with a husband who, though he shares her taste, is of her own station. It is a light, graceful little play.

That the authoress herself acted the principal part no doubt contributed to its success, for Julie Condé was very charming, so much so that some of her sister author, grew jealous of her attractions. Not long after the performance of La Belle Firmier at the Teatro de la Republic, another play by a woman was acted there. It was L'Entry de Dumorier at Brussels by Olymp de Gouge, a wild and incoherent medley with three women's soldiers as heroines. Hist on the first night it was withdrawn after the second performance. The audience refused even to hear it out. After repeated interruptions, the occupants of the pit jumped on to the stage.

and began to dance the Carmagnol. Others demanded the name of the author. Olymp, the vainest woman that ever lived, had concealed it from fear of having her head turned by the congratulations that she never doubted the play well-deserved. Mademoiselle Cande now came forward on the stage and was about to reveal the secret when she was anticipated by the authoress who, from her box,

quivering with rage, cried aloud, "'It is I, citizens. "'But if my play seems to you bad, it is because it was horribly acted. Howells and roars of laughter greeted this announcement and followed the discomfited playwright as she fled from the theatre. But Olympe was not one to suffer in silence. A few days later she attacked actors and actresses in print

and accused them of having made a veritable pantomime of her work in order to please that monster of perfidious jealousy Mademoiselle Condeix. Louise Fuzzi, also an actress, seems to have been almost as bitter against Julie, though she had less cause than Olymp. In the souvenir, to which we have already referred, Louise acknowledged that Julie had a fine figure, a glorious complexion,

that she played divinely on the harp and the piano, that she was well-educated and witty and successful, but she adds, among the fairies invited to her christening one had been forgotten. A petit-fe-carabos who had taken her revenge by endowing the infant with a quality that would nullify all her advantages, the quality of affectation which would read

render her always ridiculous. Of all those who wrote about Julie's Fuzzi was the only person who made this discovery, Madame de Jean-Lise, who devotes several eulogistic pages to her, does not mention it. Though in France today, Mademoiselle Cande has long ceased to be remembered, the curious may find several of her works preserved in the Biblioteque National. Among them are two historical novels. Agnes de France, or the Dozeum Secle, and Matilde, Reyn de France. France. Another novel, Genevieve or Le Ammeau, Histoire de Witte A Moral Tale, Lidie or La Meriage Monque, a subject on which the authorist must have been an expert, an essay on human felicity entitled Dictionaire du Bonner in two volumes,

and The Commissionaire, a prose comedy in two acts. In turning over the pages of these volumes, I have been unable to discover that they possess any literary merit. They are merely interesting on account of their charming and popular authores. Now we must turn to those women pamphleteers and journalists who by their pens helped to make the revolution. "'Ave de plume,' wrote Per Duchin in one of his so-called patriotic letters, "'on have fete d'Anneau'Anneau'Ambastique. "'With de plume, we brunlea the throne of tyrant, remue the globe,

"'and piqued all the people for march to the liberty.' More than one epic-making state document nominally a man's work was in reality a woman's. Madame Roland is known to have revised her husband's political tracts, manifestos, and dispatches when he was minister of the interior. She is said to have written that momentous letter to the king which closed the first Geronday ministry in June 1792. From Madame de Jean-Lise's prolific brain, some say, proceeded the speech made by the Duke of Orleans to the Jacobin Club, afterwards embodied in a letter to the National Assembly, renouncing all rights to the throne. The appearance of an immense mass of pamphlets and newspapers

representing every shade of opinion, faction, and party, was a striking feature of revolutionary society. Pamphlets were written by women as well as men. The most exuberant of these revolutionary women pamphleteers was a writer we have already mentioned in this chapter, Olymp de Guzre, Mademoiselle Condé's unsuccessful rival, Olimp is the queerest and most quixotic of the revolutionary women. As we read her life story, conflicting emotions stir within us.

We are moved alternately to admiration and contempt, to tears and to laughter, for running athwart her whimsies and caprices, her arrogance and her vanity, are fine strains of heroic courage and maternal pity. Moreover, true Frenchwoman as she is, despite her vagaries, we shall find her now and again urging against the opinions of her party, a course which as subsequent events have proved, would have been one of true wisdom. Next to her pity the quality that one most admires in Olymp is the independence of her judgment. As her exuberance would lead one to expect, she was a meridional, born at Montau-Ban in 1748.

Her real name was Marie Guise. Olympe was her mother's name which her daughter adopted because it sounded majestic. Though the so-called Olympe tried to make out that her descent was noble, Her father was probably a butcher, and there seems no doubt that Olimp married a cook one Pierre-au-Bri, by whom she had at least one child, a son. He alone can be identified, though there are references to another. Whether her husband died or whether she left him seems uncertain. At any rate, in the early 80s, she was in Paris and possessed of a considerable fortune.

Once beautiful, numerous passionate experiences had left their mark upon her beauty. Olimp determined to be conspicuous at all costs, and finding she could no longer queen it in the courts of love, although so uneducated as barely to be able to write, she began to lift her eyes to the heights of Parnassus. For her, obstacles only existed in order to be overcome. So, to make up for her literary defects, she engaged, she says, ten secretaries. They were not too many, for her exalted imagination and fluent speech wore out for in a few hours. She started with thirty plays in her head. Only ten of them were ever written, and not all of these were printed. Two at least, L'Eslavage de Négre and Le Runeauphrage were accepted, and the first played at the Comédie de Francese.

When this theatre refused a third play, Molière Che Ninon, Olymp, who liked to fancy herself the Nino of the 18th century, became furious, and with that, itching to write, De Montgeson D'Eur, which she says embittered her, life, she protested in a booklet, Les Comedienne de Masque, against

treatment which she asserted to be grossly unjust. By this time, she was well launched on her career of political pamphleteer. Two at least of her pamphlets appeared in the first year of the revolution. They and those that follow them have titles long and long sounding enough to introduce some lengthy treatise.

One is surprised, therefore, to find them heading no more than a few pages. Thus, for instance, the title of one of the earliest of these writings, action heroic of a Frenche, or la France servé by the femme, would lead one to expect at least the biography of a second Joan of Arc. Instead,

we find no more than four brief pages urging women to sacrifice their jewels in their country's cause, and she does not even tell us of one who did so. The brevity of these manifestos, for they were little more, is accounted for by the fact that they were intended to be posted on the

hoardings. She was also assiduous in sending round her writings to the newspapers, accompanied by a letter demanding notice. In paying for this publicity, as well as for the printing and distribution of her works, Olimp spent the last remnants of her fortune. Disappointing as they are, for the most part, it is in these writings that we catch here and there a gleam of what we now recognize to have been political insight. Thus, in the matter of the dispute between the three estates as to voting by head or by order in 1789, Olimp's suggests that each deputy should write down clearly on a piece of

paper the instructions he had received on this subject from his constituents, that the papers should be placed in a ballot box and counted, and that the method which was advocated by the majority of the papers should be adopted. Like most early revolutionists, Olymp's sympathies were at first monarchical. She looked to the king to carry out a program of social reform advocated in her pamphlets, and inspired by her keen sympathy with the terrible sufferings of the people. By her proposal to solve the problem of unemployment through the establishment of national workshops, Olimp anticipated the revolutionaries of 1848. Her object, she says, was to electrify humanity,

and to this end she sermonized everybody high and low but chiefly high, the king, the queen, the prince de conde, the duke d'Or leon, the National Assembly, and Robespierre. Olimp, like most leading women of the revolution, detested Robespierre. She held him responsible for the second attack on the Tuileries, and in order to wash off the bloodstains which had covered him ever since, she invited him to plunge with her into the seine. We would tie bars of lead to our feet and thus cast ourselves together into the flood,

she added. When the princes had immigrated, Olymp had implored the king to appoint her to follow them and persuade them to return. With the woman's procession on October the 6th, 1789, she had no sympathy whatever. It horrified her to see royalty thus led captive. The monarchical edifice, completed by Louis XIV, then seemed to her almost sacred. Fourteen years' work, she wrote, have improved its excellent constitution. It is madness to think of changing it.

And yet they do think of doing so. What a time! It was not long, however, before Olympian, herself became firmly persuaded that nothing could save the state but the destruction of this sacred constitution. The king's flight to Varenne suddenly made her a Republican. After the humiliating return of the sovereign and his family to Paris, Olimp protested, and, quite reasonably, against the retention of an institution which had forfeited the nation's respect. Nevertheless, when at length monarchy was abolished and the republic proclaimed, when Louis had ceased to be king,

when he stood before the bar of the assembly to answer for his life, Wilamp's passionate pity went out to him. Then she performed the most exquisite and the most courageous action of her extraordinary career. She offered herself as Louise Defender, and in so doing doomed herself to the scaffold. Already by her outspoken criticism of many acts of the Revolutionary Party, she had made herself unpopular in clubs and societies,

especially in the Jacobin Club. Now she was regarded as a traitor to the revolutionary party, revolution. The letter to the convention in which she made her proposal is so characteristic through its inconsequence and contradictions, its naivete and queer metaphors, its inflated vanity, its superb courage and, spite of all, its strain of common sense, that we quote it almost in full. Citizen President The universe fixes its eyes on the trial of the first and last of French kings. I hasten to pass on to the National Convention original letters.

written to me by Les Seurs, Brissac and La Porte. I add to them five hundred copies of my Count Rendue. Citizen President, a great matter occupies me today, that of my country's honour. I offer myself after the courageous Mazerbe to be Louis' defender. Let not my sex be an objection, that heroism and liberty may be possessed by women

the revolution has shown by more than one example, but I am a frank and loyal Republican without blame and without reproach. No one doubts it, not even those who pretend to call in question my civic virtues. I may therefore undertake this case. I believe Louis guilty as king,

but, once shorn of this forbidden title, he ceases to be guilty in the eyes of the Republic. His ancestors had failed to overflowing the cup of the sufferings of France. Unhappily the cup broke in his hands and all its fragments rebounded upon his head. I may add that, had it not been for his court's perversity, he might perhaps have been a virtuous king. It is enough to recall that he hated the great, that he succeeded in obliging them to pay

their debts, that he alone of all our tyrants kept no courtesans, that his morals were primitive. He was weak. He was deceived. He deceived us. He deceived himself. In brief, this is the charge against him. Citizen, President, I shall not hear produce the reasons that I have to bring forward for his defense. I desire only to be permitted by the Convention and by Louis Capet to second an old man of more than fourscore years in a painful function, which to me seems to demand all the strength and all the courage of a greener age. I should certainly never have entered the list with such a defender had not the cruelty of the sire target, as cruel as it was selfish inflamed my heroism and excited my pity. I am ready

to die now. of my Republican plays is about to be acted. If, at a moment, it may be of personal triumph, I am deprived of life, and if laws continue after my death, my name will be blessed, and my assassins, when their eyes are opened, will weep tears over my grave. Louis Capet may suspect my zeal. Doubtless, his infamous courtiers have not failed to paint me as a cannibal thirsting for blood. But how grand thus to undeceive an unhappy and defenseless man! With the permission of the National Convention, I will state an opinion which seems to me worthy its close attention.

Is Louis the last more dangerous to the Republic than his brothers, than his son? His brothers are still in league with foreign powers and are working for themselves alone. Louis Capet's son is innocent, and he will survive his father. May not pretenders fill centuries with faction and with strife. In history, the English occupy a place very different. from the Romans. In the eyes of posterity, the English are dishonored by the execution of Charles I. The Romans are immortalized by the exile of Tarquin. But true Republicans always had nobler maxims than slaves. Beheading a king does not kill him. He lives long after his death. He is only really

dead when he survives his fall. Here I conclude, in order that the National Convention may make those reflections which arise, from what I have said, we all know that many subsequent historians have adopted olymp's last argument against the execution of a king the convention after having heard this document read passed on without note or comment to the next business but the letter had aroused considerable opposition a crowd of infuriated idlers gathered round the door and as olymp came out boldly into their midst one of them seized her and handled her so roughly that her cap fell off disclosing a bald head "'Who will give twenty-four sous for the head of Madame de Guz?' he cried, whereupon O'Lyne with perfect serenity rejoined. "'Friend? I bid thirty.' The crowd laughed and O'Limps' assailant relaxed his hold.

Determined to give her letter as much publicity as possible, O'Lanpe had had it posted on the walls with the added statement that no true Republican would vote for the death of the unhappy offender, l'infortuny culpable, whose greatest crime was to have been born at a time when philosophy was silently laying the foundation of the Republic. Confronted by so incontrovertible an argument, the anti-feminist newspaper, Les Revolution de Paris, could only exclaim with a sneer, what business is it of hers? Let her knit trousers for our brave sans-cudette.

With Olymp's feminism, with her arrest and execution, we shall deal in our last chapter. The Journalism, said the de concourse, using a metaphor which perhaps was less hackneyed in their day than in hours, sprang fully armed from the brains of the revolution, and sought all armé du Cervo de la revolution. From the very beginning French newspapers took women into account. Women contributed to them, as we have seen in the case of Madame Roland. Several papers intended specially for women were published, edited, and in some cases printed by women. The most widely circulated of these was

The Veritable Amis de la Raine, or Journal des Degam by a Society of Citizens, Then there was Le Boulthin of Madame de Beaumont and the Observateur Feminine, which was soon succeeded by L'Etoil du Matin'Eau, edited by Madame de Verte Allure and ex-None. There was a paper which recalls one with a similar title today, Les Anals. But Les Anal of the Revolution was devoted to education and had as a subtitle, Journal de Demoiselle. It was edited by a Madame Morey, who was said to be a descendant of La Fontaine. The market had its paper, La Gazette de Hall, owned by women and printed on La Plasmo Berre. Another woman's paper, this one edited by a man, was the Courier de Liemann.

Like the masculine newspaper, Bouch de Ferre, it invited its readers to air their grievances in its columns. Women especially were urged to give expression to any complaints they might have against the National Assembly or even against their own husbands. The paper also served as a matrimonial agency. it announced for instance that an american who had the honor to sit in the national assembly or its american equivalent would like to share his fortune with a young citoyenne of paris even if she brought him as her dowry nothing but a good education a charming character and a pleasing countenance although he was a member of the legislative body this american did not require his wife to hold pronounced opinions as to political parties he would prefer her to be neither on the right nor the left but in le juste milieu unfortunately such announcements were too few and as the newspaper depended on them it collapsed after the appearance of forty-five numbers women editors did not confine themselves to women's papers at eras the citoyenne marchaud edited the journal du pa de at paris madame robert helped her husband in the editorship of the chief organ of the republican party the mercur national louise de carealeo afterwards madame robert was the most eminent and capable of the revolutionary woman journalists.

Born in Paris in 1758, Louise was the daughter of a Breton knight, the Chevalier Guinemant de Carallio, professor at the Ecole Militare, member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belle Lettre, and editor of the Journal de Savant. Her mother, too, was a writer, and in this literary atmosphere,

Louise, at an early age, began to earn her living by her pen. She translated English books. She wrote novels and historical, works, The Crime of Reign de France, from the commencement of the monarchy at Marie Antoinette, and a history of Queen Elizabeth of England, which it took her some years to complete.

These books won her the honor of admission to a literary academy, that of Arras, which was presided by none other than Maximilian Robespierre. In her reception speech on the study of history, Mademoiselle de Carallio displayed those oratorical gifts, which later were to win her renown in the Jacobin and Cordellier clubs. Robespierre, in his reply, made the newly elected academician, his admirer for life, by justifying the admission of women into literary societies. To that speech of his, Robespierre was indebted for the support he received later from the Mercur Nacional, which, as we have said, Louise edited in collaboration with her husband, Francois Robert.

Robert, whom Louise married in 1791, was a lawyer Avliage. The Mercur was the organ of the Republican Party which came into existence in this year, and, and which is said to have been founded in Madame Robert's salon in Paris. This young Republican was also a frequent visitor in another Republican salon, that of Lucille des Moulin in La Rue de Lodeon. It was in the year of the Robert's marriage that the petition to the Constituent Assembly for the King's deposition was drawn up and presented for signature to the crowds gathered on the Chande-Amas

for the Feast of the Federation on July the 17th. Though this petition was in Robert's handwriting, the staccato, direct, emphatic style, says Michelet, was much more like that of the lively Bretonist Madame Robert than of her rather heavy Flemish husband. While most of the other Republican leaders absented themselves from the Chande Maas on that critical day, the Robespers were there, standing together on the steps of the altar of La Patry, collecting signatures to the petition when Beilly and Lafayette, in obedience to the orders of the monarchist National Assembly, began to fire on the crowd.

The altar steps were strewn with corpses. The Robes narrowly escaped with their lives. That evening, all the members of the Little Republican Party, whether they had been present on the Chandamouse or not, felt themselves in danger. Robespierre did not return to his lodging that night, but accepted for the first time the hospitality of one Dupley, a master cabinetmaker in the Rue Saint-Hen-Ary,

with whom he continued to lodge except for one brief interval for the remainder of his days. The Robeses too feared to go home. But they were less fortunate than Robespierre. They were not offered. They had to crave shelter. And it was granted them unwillingly as it transpired later by the Rollins, who were then, as we have seen, lodging in the Hotel Britannic, Ruegen-Ego.

The Rollins, not having been present on the Chant-Domouths, were not in danger. Madame Roland describes the incident in her memoirs written in prison two years after the event. The caustic tone of her narrative, and her dislike of the Rabers, may be explained by the fact that Robert had worried Roland when he became Minister of the Interior to give him a place in the government. Madame Roland makes much of the trouble in the danger of entertaining these unwelcome guests. She complains that she had to have beds put up in her sitting-room for the two men, while she took Madame Robert into her own room.

The next morning, the Rébert's were in no hurry to depart, and when they did go it was only to return in showy clothes to lunch, and afterwards to disport themselves. on the balcony making loud remarks on the passers-by. From that day until Roland became minister, his wife accuses her guests of having given no sign of gratitude or of life. Then, by clamoring for some high official post for Robert, that of ambassador at Constantinople was mentioned,

they rendered themselves a nuisance to the whole government. It was unfortunate for the Rollins that while they turned a deathier to Robert's request, it was granted by the Roland's worst enemy, by Danton, who made Robert his secretary. He was already a member of the National Convention. The Robes were probably not in the least heroic. They may very likely have been just the type of adventurers with whom the sublime Madame Roland would have had least sympathy.

We are not surprised to find, therefore, that while their hosts of 1791 perished, the Robert succeeded in surviving the revolution. In 1815, Robert was banished from France. He went to Brussels, presumably to, taking his wife with him, and there, when we last hear of him, he was carrying on the business of a wine merchant. Throughout the revolution, we find women printing as well as editing and contributing to newspapers. One woman at least, Madame Colombe, was the owner of a well-known

printing press. A movement was started to train women as printers. The citizen del Tufo established a school for women printers. In 1794, after it had been in existence for some time, he and his pupils presented a petition to the National Convention, asking the Assembly to give it work and to grant it an annual subsidy. To enforce his demands, Del Dufo pleaded that if women became compositors, men would be set free to practice the arts of war and agriculture, where they were badly needed. All he required of his pupils was to know how to read and write. The Assembly authorized the school to call itself Imprimery des FAMme So Les Hospice of La Convention National, and sent a citizen-compan. called Griguerre to inspect the school. His report was highly satisfactory, and the inspector was told to confer with the Committee de Salue Public. The result of the conference does not appear.

End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Women of the French Revolution by Winiford Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. 7. Women at arms. Quote, Quo'gegeon a femme.

Oh, I senti'en in our "'that I could, like, "'combeen'n't so much value, "'when, under the brave Lafayette, "'onet, we're on des lorriere, "'om, femme, infant. "'Tus want to be guerrier.' "'A Gazette de Hale.

"'A leading French woman of today "'when she was asked whether she were a feminist, "'I.e., whether she desired the recognition "'of equal rights and equal duties "'between men and women,' she replied, "'as to rights, yes. "'As to duties, take care. lest they should imply military service, lest instead of giving life, women should take it.

The women of the revolution, far from being troubled by any such scruples, demanded the right to take life in the service of the cause to which they were devoted. When Madame Roland's friend, Lantonah welcomed Therwang to the Jacobin Club, and praised passive resistance in women, not many of his feminine hearers can have agreed with him, and certainly not she whom they had met to honour, for Thirwang only a few minutes before had been advocating war as the best way to establish the revolution.

Madame Roland, though she would have disapproved of women fighting, was a militarist who did not scruple to advocate even civil war. Olymp de Guge went further and claimed women's right to wield the sword. She regretted that when women had been taught the art of kindling war, that of waging war had been denied them. Olymp, as early as 1791, announced her intention of organizing a woman's legion. The next year she attended the fate of the festival, at the head of a body of women all fully armed, and she looked for all the world like

a trumpet major, said a contemporary newspaper. But neither she nor her women legionnaires, as far as we know, ever made use of their weapons. Though once when an editor presumed to ridicule one of her pamphlets, Olimp summoned him to fight her in a duel with pistols, I will give you the advantage of firing first, she said, for I am persuaded that your trembling will make you miss me. But this duel, like many another piece of revolutionary Bragadocio never came to pass. In one of her pamphlets, Olimp proposed that women should form themselves into a bodyguard to protect the queen. Later women did form a bodyguard to protect Robespierre,

and this at a time when he was being threatened by members of their own sex, one of whom, the royalist Cecil Renaud, was accused of having tried to assassinate him. One of the first acts of the Women's Republican Revolutionary Club on the 12th of May 1793, was to send a deputation to the Jacobin to demand the arming of all patriotic women between the ages of 18 and 50, who should be formed into a regiment to fight against the royalists in the Vandé. Pauline Leon, who, as we have seen, was the club's first president and Tirwang de Mericour, both attempted to form regiments of women. Tierwang had returned from her Austrian dungeon all on fire with military ardor.

Barely had she received her ovation from the Jacobin, then she turned her attention to the training of her sex and military prowess. Her Fobour Saint-Antoine club was to have been a club of armed women. On the 25th of March at the Club Daminim in the St. Antoine quarter, Thirwang made one of her eloquent speeches. It was a call to arms. Open a list of amazons, she cried. Come and drill three times a week on the Chans-Elysé.

The women responded in considerable numbers. They assembled on the Place Louis-13, where Teruang presented them with a banner. The anti-revolutionary papers did not fail to make fun of all this. One of them, Le Petit Gautier, said that in the burning heat of her military fervor, Tirling's false mustache, becoming unstuck, had fallen off and been lost. Before the end of the month, a petition signed by more than 300 women was presented to the legislative assembly.

Legislators, it began. Women patriots present themselves before you to claim the right of every individual to provide for the defense of his life and liberty. Everything seems to augur a violent and imminent shock. Our father's, husbands, and brothers may perhaps fall victims to our enemy's fury. Are we to be denied the satisfaction of avenging them or of dying by their sides? After a long harangue in which the women assured their hearers that their object was not to neglect domestic duties, but merely to place themselves in a position to defend their home should the need arise, the petitioners went on to make specific demands.

1. Permission to provide themselves with pikes, pistols, swords, and even guns. 2. To meet for drill on the Chande de la Federation or some other suitable place on Sundays and holidays, and to nominate former French guards as their officers. Besides this petition of the 300, the Assembly, the Commune and the clubs were constantly receiving offers of military service from individual women. These offers, like that made by Claire Lacombe, when she first arrived in Paris in July 1792, were generally received with applause. But on one occasion they met with a different kind of reception.

The legislators, to translate their rejoinder very roughly, practically replied, "'But why all this fuss? Why do you not enter the army if you want to? There are no laws to prevent you doing so?' And indeed, those women who were really in earnest in their desire to fight quickly went about their business, and, without any petitioning of the assembly, as we shall see later, they disguised themselves as men and entered the army, where two of them at least did valiant service. There, they fought like men with masculine weapons. They scorned those fantastic

feminine pikes, which, with their wooden handles carved to represent a laurel branch bearing a cap of liberty, may still be seen in the Carnivalet Museum. The women who in Paris and the provinces formed themselves into regiments seem to have been mainly concerned with designing banners and elaborate uniforms, white coats with red ornaments, blue hats with white feathers

and broad tricolour belts. Yet, after all this ostentation, not one of these feminine regiments ever came under fire. One woman, Manette DuPont, told the convention that she had 900 citizenesses disguised as men, ready to set out to fight the tyrants of the nation on the frontier,

and on their behalf, she petitioned the convention to organize a corps of 10,000 women and girls in the Department of Paris, also to command shopkeepers to substitute women for men assistance. Manette's regiment was to bear the name Ferneig, after two sisters who were then actually serving at the front. You have allowed Les Demoiselle Ferneig to serve in Dumorier's army, consequently you cannot refuse us, Menet pleaded. The convention had indeed, not only recognized as soldiers, but had rewarded the valor of these enterprising Demoiselle Ferneig. It had presented them with two war-horses richly caparisoned.

It had decreed that the Fernig's deserved well of their country, and it had rebuilt at the government's expense their birthplace at Mortagne near Valenciennes, which had been burnt to the ground by Austrian soldiers. But then the Fernig girls had gone quietly to work without any blast of trumpets and without asking permission of anyone, not even of their own father. These remarkable maidens were the daughters of Louis-Josef de Fernig, an Alsatian nobleman born on the 3rd of October 1735. He served with distinction in the seven years war from 1755 to 62, and then renounced the army for literature.

The friend of Voltaire, he spent a year with a philosopher at Fernie. He married a woman of Eno of good family and had by her five children. The son, Jean-Louis Joseph, who became a soldier, two daughters, Emmy and Louise, who married young, and two younger daughters, Felicity and Theophil, with whom we are now concerned. Felicity was born in 1776 and Teofil in 1779. Their mother died soon after Teofil's birth. On the outbreak of the revolution, Monsieur de Ferneig returned to his old occupation and became commander of the National Guard of the Valenciennes district.

In that frontier region, the inhabitants and their property were daily exposed to the ravages of war. Felicity and her sister, Hardy Lasses, renowned throughout the, the countryside as excellent horsewomen and first-rate shots, felt their martial ardor inflamed as they heard their father returning from his military expeditions, tell of the ravages committed by the Austrians. It seems to have been the news of the French defeat at L'enui in September 1792 that finally decided the youthful Mademoiselle Fernig to donned the military clothes which their brother, serving in another part of France had left behind him, and with the connivance of some of their friends, officers in the army, to join their father's company,

without his knowledge. Their disguise was apparently so complete that Deferneig did not even recognize his own daughters when in one engagement they intervened to save his life. How long he would have remained in ignorance, it is impossible to say. But one day, General Bernonville

reviewing Defernege's company, espied two soldiers who seemed particularly anxious to escape his notice. This intrigued him. He called them out and questioned them. Now, at length, their disguise failed them, and their shrill voices betrayed their sex. What the commander felt when the discovery was made is unknown.

But he cannot have been displeased with his daughter's heroism, for he allowed them to remain in the army. Bernonville reported his discovery to his commander-in-chief Dumorier, who made them his aid-de-car, and bestowed such commissions on their father and brother as kept all the Farnigues together. They've been tué their home, Bernon-Ville reported to the convention.

Dumourier described them to Madame de Jean-Lise as audacious and fearsome soldiers. They became the object of the respect and admiration of the whole army, and until April 1793 fought in all Dumarier's battles, Valmy, Jemap, Andolacht, and Niervindon. The general would point them out to his soldiers as a happy augury of victory. According to Madame de Jean-Lis, he loved to tell of the courage they displayed on more than one occasion. how felicity was with the duke de chartre afterwards louis philippe during his most perilous enterprises how teophyll in an engagement near brussels when an enemy officer summoned her to surrender with one pistol-shot stretched him at her feet

how at jemap when with a handful of horsemen she was attacking a hungarian battalion with her own hand she took prisoner and disarmed the most formidable of the grenadiers he was so tall that even on foot says madame de jean lise he towered over his capture on her horse. Incredible. Though both sisters were below the average height. But Dumorrier's favorite story was of Teotille's capture of a huge Austrian, whom she led to the commander-in-chief, saying in her girlish trouble, General, here is a prisoner I have brought you. The piping voice staggered the Austrian, who was furious to find that he had surrendered to a girl.

When Dumarier went over to the enemy, the devotion of the Fernig family to the General prompted them to follow him. Neither the convention nor the directory ever forgave them for this. They were considered as emigre for the rest of their lives. The convention visited the offenses of two women in particular on women in general. On May 30, 1793, it passed a decree banishing from camps and cantonments all women useless to the army, i.e., all who were not authorized to be there as washerwoman and Vivandier.

Women actually fighting were to be forbidden military service and given a passport and five sous a league to return to their homes. Though the Farnig's occasionally visited Paris and their native village of Mortein, they were not allowed to reside in either place. The utmost the directory government would do for them was to offer them domicile in the colonies, and that they refused. Felicity married a Belgian general and settled at Brussels. Teofil did not marry. She was was the most original, as well as the best-looking of the two. Madame de Jean-Lis met her during her wanderings while she was staying at Sieck in Holland, with a Monsieur de Valence, to whom Teophil was at that time secretary. She was then twenty-one, and, says Madame Jean-Lise,

had the prettiest and most modest face and tiny, delicate white hands. She wrote a very fine hand and knew how to spell, evidently a rare accomplishment in those days. Madame de Jean-Lis was charmed with her sweetness and equanimity. and one day she saw for herself evidence of that unflinching courage of which she had so often heard from her friend Dumorier. One morning, when the men with their valets had gone out hunting, the cook rushed into the salon terrified, saying that a robber was in the kitchen doing untold damage. Straightway, the sweet and gentle Teophil assumed a warlike air and seized a walking-stick,

which happened to be in a corner of the room. Thus armed, the heroine of Jean-Map, rushed into the kitchen where the thief threw himself upon her. but Theophil and the walking-stick soon reduced the burglar to beg for mercy which he received. And then, being released, he fled from the house. Mademoiselle Fernig returned to us, says Madame de Jean-Lise, as calm and natural as if she had just performed the most ordinary action. For the rest of the day I could not help looking at those pretty little hands which could be so brave and strong in moments of danger.

Teofos' letters from Amsterdam and elsewhere to a cousin, an officer in Bonaparte's army, show her to have been lively, sensible, and something of a feminist. Men, she writes, have not a shade of that delicacy of feeling of which women are capable. Then, quoting so she says,

her father's friend, Wolde, she tells her cousin that, women are never false, save when men are tyrants. This ex-Amazon was naturally an ardent admirer of the greatest of generals. To her cousin, then at Venice, she writes from Amsterdam,

somewhat timidly, wondering whether she dare ask him to do something for her that she desires with all her heart. Then taking courage, she says, I will risk it. You have seen the hero, Bonaparte. Well, this is what I want you to do, to send me in your next letter a portrait of him, which is a true likeness. Here we have nothing but caricatures which are ridiculous. Although these letters reveal nothing more than a purely platonic and cousinly friendship, one wonders whether, on Teofi's part at least, there may not have been a warmer sentiment. When a wealthy husband is found for Felicity, one is also offered to the younger sister. But writes Teofil to her cousin,

I feel that the heart alone should be master, that the heart alone should be consulted in so fundamental a matter, and my heart has nothing to say in favor of this suitor. At the same time, she is her cousin's confidant. He tells her of his love affairs. when in the intervals between his campaigns he comes to Holland, they meet generally, but not always. In one letter, Teofil writes, "'You ma'vée tu'all does not appear.' In January, 1803, the correspondence ceases at any rate that part of it that has been preserved and published. In 1818, Teofil died at Brussels, where she

was buried. Other women, besides the Farnig's, without any bravado, quietly took up their swords and fought. At Jemap, there were at least two other amazons, Catherine Poshla and Dullier, both artillery women. At Lille, a widow, Mary Gillotte, was a gunneress. And when she came to Paris, the Jacobin Club invited her to sit on the president's right hand. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of the Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. 8. Charlotte Corday Quote,

Hearts must not sink at seeing law lie dead. No, Corday, no. Else justice had not crowned in heaven thy head profaned below. Three women France hath born, each greater far than all her men, and greater many were than any are at sword or pen.

Corneille, the first among Gauls Rimer race whose soul was free, descends from his high station, proud to trace his line in the W. S. Lander Unlike many of the women in the last chapter, Charlotte Corday the most self-possessed, the most determined and the most dignified

of all revolutionary armed women kept her own counsel all too well. For that reason, she needlessly sacrificed her life for her country to which had she lived, she might have rendered valuable service. Had they only known her intention, said Charlotte's fellow politicians, they could have directed

her knife to a much more profitable quarter than the heart of Mara, whom disease had already condemned to an imminent death. The angel of assassination, as La Mertine calls Charlotte Corday, appears to many as one of the most striking examples of the complete heroine. It seems appropriate, therefore, that she should number among her direct ancestors, that most heroic of tragic dramatists, Pierre Corneille. Charlotte was born during that seventh decade of the 18th century, which saw the birth of nearly all the Revolution Heroes and Heroines. At Ronserre, in a picturesque Norman farmhouse on the 27th of July 1768,

Marie-Charlotte Jacqueline de Corday gave birth to her fifth child, her third daughter, a second Marie-Charlotte, to be known among her own people and in history as Charlotte. Her family belonged to La Petit Noblesse. Her parents were what we should call country gentry, living on their own land. Her father, Jacques Francois de Corday, Knight and Seigneur d'Armon, brought up his children and habits of the strictest economy. To this youthful training are do no doubt the ordilliness and attention to detail which all the records of Charlotte's life reveal, and which are seldom found in one of her idealist temperament. She was a pretty child with glorious golden hair, a dazzling complexion and good features.

Dreamy and silent, she loved to wander alone through the woods and fields which surrounded her whole. home. She was still a child when her father's resources grew so restricted that he was glad to farm out his children with more prosperous relatives. A priest uncle, a worthy and cultured person, highly respected in the neighborhood, received Charlotte and taught her to read in a precious heirloom, a valuable edition of her illustrious ancestors' place. Thus early did Charlotte drink of that well of patriotic heroism which was to remain the source of all her inspiration. At the age of 12, Charlotte lost her mother, who died in giving birth to her sixth child. And for a while the Cardez lived at Cannes,

while the Signor d'Armon was conducting with his wife's relatives, one of those numerous lawsuits in which Le Petit Nobles seems to have delighted. The lawsuit was probably successful, seeing that Charlotte, when she grew up, was possessed of some small fortune, which enabled her to live independently away from home. "'Jue de me revenu,' she told her judges. While her father was at Cannes,

he put Charlotte and her sister to school in the famous St. Trinity Convent of the town. It was a highly aristocratic institution, receiving as a rule no more than five noble maidens of reduced circumstances, whom the king himself nominated. And it was only by means of high and powerful influence that Charlotte and her sisters were admitted.

There, Charlotte spent some years and rose to occupy a position of authority in the management of the convent. There, she doubtless would have continued, possibly becoming superior or at any rate canonous, had she and her companions not been driven out when in 1790, the National Assembly decreed the suppression of all convents. Charlotte then joined her father and sisters in the country. With her determined will and pronounced opinions, she could not have found it easy to settle down

in family life. While her father and brothers were royalists and Catholics, Charlotte was skeptical and Republican. I was a Republican before the Revolution, she said to her judges. Always of a studious and thoughtful disposition, like Madame Roland, she had spent her girlhood in company with the heroes of Greece and Rome, and in drinking deep of 18th century philosophy. Plutarch's lives was her breviary, and with passionate interest she was already following all the events of the revolution. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that after a few months in the family circle, she left it and returned to Kant. There she lived with an aged relative, Madame de Britte, in a set of rooms in a dilapidated old house known as Le Grand Manoir occupying the back of a courtyard in the center of the city.

That by this time Charlotte had grown into a beautiful girl there is no doubt. The exact color of her hair, whether her eyes were blue or gray, whether she was tall or below the average height has been hotly contended. Perhaps the description in her passport may be taken as the surest evidence, though it is by no means infallible as the recent war has proved. According to this document, Charlotte's hair was chestnut brown, her eyes gray, and her height five feet one. As to her manner, there is no diversity of opinion. All agreed that she was graceful and dignified, still pensive, talking little in society, and on the rare occasions when she took part in conversation, startling her companions by her opinions.

Thus, at a family dinner party in honor of Charlotte's brother and a friend, whom it was hoped she would marry, both on the eve of starting to join the Amigre army, the king's health was proposed. Charlotte refused to drink it. What? exclaimed one of the guests. You refused to drink the health of our king who is so good and virtuous. I believe him to be virtuous, she replied.

But a weak king cannot be good, for he is incapable of preventing his people's misfortunes. But Charlotte's republicanism, like that of Olympe de Guzge, did not prevent her deploring the king's execution. She was by this time, as we have said, intensely interested in the important events going forward, a diligent newspaper reader, and a careful

student of the hundreds of pamphlets for and against the revolution that the press was constantly pouring forth. Her sympathies were with the party of La Géronde, especially after the gerondist members of the Convention who had been prescribed on the 31st of May, 1793, had made Charlotte's City of Gaugh the center of the insurrection they were trying to raise against the Jacobin government. Buzot, Pityon, Louvre, Barbarou, and other Girondin were appealing to the people of Normandy to march on Paris and there to overthrow the dictatorship of the convention. Charlotte attended all their meetings. Her silent enthusiasm enhanced her beauty, wrote one who saw her there. She wept to hear the Gerondin tell of the anarchy prevailing throughout her beloved France.

Charlotte's was a practical nature. No sooner had she realized the existence. of an evil, then her mind flew to devise remedies. It seemed then that one man, Mara, the so-called people's friend, was in reality the people's enemy and cause of all their suffering. Mara was one of the most prolific journalists and pamphleteers of the day, with his turbulent brain goaded to fury by the perpetual irritation of an agonizing skin disease, in page after page, each more vehement than the last he clamored for blood and for more blood.

All these writing Charlotte read until Mara became an obsession, a veritable Antichrist. If only his pen could cease writing, his brains ceased devising horrors, then her poor country might at length find peace. This was Charlotte's one idea. She never paused to ask whether some other tyrant might not take Mara's place. She knew no conflict of emotions, such as her ancestor, the great Cornet, loved to portray. No sooner had she realized that Mara was a ferocious beast about to devour France with the fire of civil war, then she determined to destroy him. Then swiftly, inevitably, she sped towards her tragic goal. The idea first occurred to her, she told her judges, on the 31st of May, 1793. Only seven short weeks elapsed

before the deed was done. During that brief space, Charlotte was busy making arrangements for her journey to Paris. There was a passport to be procured on the pretext of presenting a petition to the convention on behalf of a friend, an immigre who was in great poverty in Switzerland. Then there were introductions to people in Paris who might be useful. These she obtained from the Gerondist leaders. Barbaru especially she often saw. She talked with him about public affairs and he gave her a letter to the deputy du Peret. After Charlotte's death, Barbaru said that on her last visit something in her voice filled him with a vague foreboding he could not understand. Afterwards he wished he had known her design.

For, he said, if we, the Girondins, had been capable of a crime by such a hand it was not Mara we should have pointed out for vengeance. But Charlotte never by word or look or any sign hinted at the project she had in mind. The poet André Cheneier never wrote truer lines than these dedicated to Charlotte. Soule adieu de'er of an aligres amable, in his detour profound, your arm impenetrable, had to be taken. It is not surprising that during those weeks Madame de Bretville found Charlotte more than usually preoccupied. Once she discovered her in tears. I weep, said Charlotte, over my country's

misfortunes, over those of my family and over yours. For while Mara lives, no one can be sure of life for even a day. There is a legend that one morning when Madame de Bretville went into Charlotte's room to awaken her. She found on her bed an ancient Bible open at the book of Judith and at a page on which was the verse. Judith went forth from the city, adorned with a marvelous beauty, which the Lord had bestowed on her to deliver Israel. Before finally leaving Cannes for Paris, Charlotte went into the country to bid her father and sisters farewell. She told them she was about to immigrate to England where she had friends. Then, returning to Cannes, she told Madame under Bretville that she was going on a sketching expedition into the country.

So, on the 9th of July, she set out, carrying a small bundle of clothes, a copy of Plutarch's lives, and a large sheet of drawing paper. The last she gave to a little boy, the son of one of the tenants of the house whom she met at the foot of the staircase. Here, Robert, she said, take this. It is for you. Be a good boy and kiss me. You will never see me again. As the child kissed her, he felt a tear of her. He felt a tear of it. upon his cheek. In the Paris diligence, Charlotte's beauty so bewitched a fellow-traveller that he inquired her name and the address of her family in order that he might ask her hand in marriage. She, seized with the grim irony of the situation, promised to tell him later.

It was noon on Thursday, the 11th of July, when the con diligence rumbled into Paris. Charlotte engaged a room at the Hotel de la Providence, 17 Rue des Vieues Augustin. Worn out with her journey, She went to bed at five o'clock and slept soundly until the next day, Friday, when she rose betimes and went to Du Peres' house, hoping to see him, and to present her letter of introduction from Barbarou. But Du Peres, she was told, was at the convention and would not be home until evening. Charlotte returned to her hotel and passed the rest of the day in reading and meditation until six o'clock

when she returned to Du Peres. He was at dinner, but he left the table to come and talk to Charlotte in the salon. He promised to take her the next day to Sigara, the minister of the interior, to whom she wished to speak about her friend in Switzerland. Charlotte advised Du Perret to flee from Paris to Cannes before the next night. Her manner, as well as her words were mysterious, said the deputy afterwards. That very Friday evening, the possessions of Duperet, who was known to be in sympathy with a prescribed Gironde, were placed under the government seal. Nevertheless, early the next morning, Du Peret kept his promise to Charlotte and told, took her to Garaz. They failed to see him, however, and Duperre advised Charlotte to abandon her

intervention on her friend's behalf, seeing that she had no written authority to act for her. The deputy took Charlotte to her hotel and left her there. Soon afterwards, she went out to the Palais Royal. There she purchased not a dagger, as some have said, but an ordinary table knife for which she paid three francs. Concealing it beneath her kerchief, she sat down for a while on a stone bench in one of the colonnades. Charlotte's design had been to slay Mara in the convention. Afterwards, she poorly expected to be set upon and killed by the mob. Thus, she would die unknown, unrecognized, leaving no record to shame her family.

Since arriving in Paris, however, she had heard that Mara was now too ill to go to the convention or even to leave his house. She must make some other plan, therefore, and thus, much against her will, she was compelled to resort to deception. So she brought herself to address a note to the man she hated, offering to give him news of the con insurrection. As to when and how this note was delivered,

historians differ. Some say Charlotte posted it, and that it did not reach Mara until the evening, shortly before Charlotte's final and fatal visit to his house, others, that she delivered it herself. There seems to be no doubt that she went at least twice,

once in the morning and again in the evening, to Mara's house, number 20, Rue des Cordolier, now Rue de L'Ecole de Midezine. It is equally certain that the first time she failed to gain admission. The interval, or intervals between these calls, she spent at her hotel writing an appeal to posterity, and a second letter to Mara intended to be a final appeal,

and imploring him to see her on the ground that she was unfortunate, a sufferer in the cause of liberty. She also changed her frock. In the morning she had worn brown, in the evening her dress was pure white, or, according to some witnesses, of a spotted material. At any rate, she dressed with great care, and about seven o'clock set out again to drive to the Rue des Cordelieu.

Having arrived there, Charlotte stopped her coach on the opposite side of the street. Again, the concierge refused her admission. Mara so diseased that after four years of suffering he said he would give all the dignities and honors in the world for a few days of health, lived in perpetual dread of assassination. Though there was constant coming and going in the house of the editor and proprietor of Lamy du Pepl, none but assured friends or denouncers strongly recommended were actually admitted to the editor's presence. Charlotte, this time, refused to accept the dismissal of the concierge.

Mara's mistress, Simone Evrar came to the door, and, guessing Charlotte to be the writer of the letter Mara had just received, she went to ask him whether he would receive the visitor. He consented, and Simone showed Charlotte through an answer. chamber into Mara's study, which was also his bathroom. There, Simon withdrew, taking care to leave the door partly open so that she might hear the slightest sound. The room in which Charlotte now found herself was small and dimly lighted. Its most striking article of furniture was the slipper bath, in which the wretched Mara

spent his days and nights. Only his head, shoulders, the upper part of his chest and his right arm were visible. As on the last time we saw him in Madame Talien, salon, a dirty scarf was tied round his matted hair, accentuating the receding forehead, protruding eyes, prominent cheekbones and vast, snaring mouth. Only in this posture, with the greater part of his body bathed in water, could Marant endure his miserable existence. Across the bath was placed a plank which served as a writing table. It was covered with papers, open letters and half-written articles. Beside the bath on a large block of oaks stood a leaden inkstand. When Charlotte entered, Mara was holding his pen suspended over a half-written page,

a letter he was writing to the convention demanding the prescription of the last bourbons who remained in France. He asked Charlotte about the state of Normandy, inquired the names of the Girondis deputies who had fled to Kahn, and when she gave them exclaimed, Well, before they are a week older, they shall have the guillotine. At these words, Charlotte drew the knife she had bought that morning from her kerchief, and, with unerring aim, plunged it up to the handle into Mara's heart, then withdrew it.

Death was almost instantaneous. Mara had only time to cry to Simon for help. Simone rushed in. She found the printer's messenger and the cook wrestling with Charlotte who had been thrown to the ground. Simone vainly endeavored to stay the tide of blood streaming from Mara's heart with her hand.

A surgeon dentist who lived in the house bandaged the wound, took Mara from the bath and put him on his bed. but his pulse had already ceased to beat. The grief of Simone and of her sister Catherine, who in a few minutes was in the room, alone among the terrible incidents that followed the assassination, threatened to deprive Charlotte of her self-possession. Hitherto she had thought of Mara as a savage monster hardly human. I killed one to save a thousand, she said. Now, Simone's and Catherine's tears revealed her victim as a fallow creature,

a man passionately loved by women. but she had barely time to reflect before the little room was full. The tidings of the murder of Mara quickly ran through the district. Neighbors flocked in, and soon they were followed by police officers and members of the Committee de Surte General. The latter there in the antechamber, while in the next room Mara's corpse was being laid out

and preparations for its embalment were being made, began Charlotte's cross-examination. Her interrogators made every effort to elicit from the accused something to show that she had acted as an agent of the persecuted geraldin. But even in that grim and horrible situation, Charlotte kept her wits about her. One of her interrogators had the effrontery to put his hand behind her fichu, expecting, he said, to find some paper to incriminate the gherondin. Charlotte's hands were bound.

She could not defend herself with them, but with her body she repulsed the aggressor so forcibly that he fell back and at the same time the fastenings of her bodice gave way. The other members of the committee, horrified by their colleague's brutality, caused her hands to be set free so that she might readjust her frock. They also allowed her to put gloves on her hands beneath the chains. This terrible interrogation lasted until two o'clock on Sunday morning. Only then was it decided to convey the accused to the Abayee prison. Crowds still surrounded the house crying for vengeance on the assassin of the people's friend.

As the door opened and Charlotte appeared, the mob rushed forward with so fierce a cry of terror that for the first and only time Charlotte's courage entirely forsook her and she fainted. When she recovered consciousness, she was astonished to find herself alive. In the Abbei prison to which she was now conducted, the cell she occupied was that in which Madame Roland

had been imprisoned only a few weeks earlier. Three days later, Charlotte was transferred to the conciergerie. There she wrote two letters. They are in the heroic style of her great ancestors. and as she no doubt intended, they have become famous. One was to Barbaru, the other to her father. In both she was obviously bent on representing herself as entirely serene. Knowing that her letters would be read by others than those to whom they were addressed,

she magnified the importance of the Gerondist rising. She little knew that the insurrection was already suppressed, that her own deed had been the one result of Gerondis' propaganda in Normandy, and that the Gerondist rebels had been completely rebelled. routed by the Jacobin army at Vernon. She told Barbaru that the courage of the Girondists volunteers whom she saw set out for Paris on July

8th had finally determined her to slay Mara. That which most unnerved her at the time of the assassination, she said, was the cries of the women. But, she added, he who saves his country must not pause to count the cost. To her father, Charlotte

insisted that at one time she had hoped to die unknown. Yet she bore upon her person her passport, which was sufficient proof of her identity. Indeed, once the deed was committed she could not but be proud of it, so certain was she that it marked the deliverance of her country by the substitution of peace for anarchy. Consequently, she dates her letter, the second day of the preparation of the peace, and of her own imminent death, she writes that her family may rejoice as they think of her, at peace in the Elysian fields with Brutus and other heroes of antiquity.

She asks her father's pardon for having disposed of her life, without his permission. If I sought to persuade you that I was going to England it was because I hoped to remain unknown. I trust that you will not be molested, but you have those at Kahn who will protect you. I have chosen as my advocate Gustave Dulce de Ponticoulon, but only for form's sake, as such a deed admits of no defence. Adieu, my dear Papa, I pray of you to forget me, or rather to rejoice at my fate, the cause is noble. I kiss my sister whom my love with all my heart. Do not forget, Corne's line.

Le crime fa'raunt and not pas les chaffaut. Already regarding herself as a heroine and desiring that her memory should be perpetuated, Charlotte allowed her portrait to be painted in prison and asked the painter to send a copy of it to her family.

The artist told of the close attention she paid to her toilette, that while in prison she had spent 36 francs on the cap she was to wear at her execution. She was methodical in all her ways. A thimble with a needle and thread were in her pocket at the time of her arrest. Before leaving Kahn, she had taken care to make provision for her old nurse. She had ordered presents to be sent from shops to some of her girlfriends, and had distributed among them

all her books, except the Plutarch, which she took with her. At her trial, before the revolutionary tribunal, the attempt was repeated to draw from her some confession that might prove her to have been the agent of the Gironday. "'Who inspired you with such bitter hatred?' she was asked. "'I did not need any inspiration. My own hatred was strong enough. But this deed must have been suggested to you. Deeds are not well executed when they do not come from one's own heart.' Again, as at the time of the assassination, the grief of Mara's mistress and sister unearthed her.

She could not hear out Simon's evidence, but cut it short, exclaiming, "'Yes, it was I who killed him.' Neither could she bear to look at the fatal knife when it was produced for her identification, and turning her head away, she said in a halting voice, Yes, I recognize it. Except for these two displays of emotion she remained marvellously self-possessed throughout the trial. Perceiving that an officer of the National Guard was sketching her, she smilingly turned towards him in order that he might produce a better likeness.

The painter Hower, who had begun her portrait earlier, was continuing it in court. after her inevitable condemnation returning to herself for the last hours of life that remained to her she sent for howard to complete his portrait and asked him to send a copy to her family before he had finished the executioner's knock was heard at the sight of the scissors and the red blouse she turned pale and exclaimed already then glancing at the unfinished portrait she said to the artist sir i do not know how to thank you for the trouble you have taken taking the scissors from the executioner she cut off a lock of her hair and gave it to the artist saying sir i thank you for what you have done for me all i have to offer you as a proof of my gratitude is this lock of hair When a priest entered her cell, she told him to thank those who had sent him, but she did not need his ministrations. The only sacrifices I can offer to the Eternal, she said, are the blood I have spilt, and my own, that I am about to shed. At seven o'clock in the evening of the 19th of July, Charlotte passed for the last time

beneath the low arched doorway of the conciergerie prison and entered the tumble awaiting her. The crowds were so great that the journey from the prison to the Place de la Réry, Revolution took two hours. Barely had the lugubrious procession started when a thunderstorm burst over Paris. But the sky soon cleared, and as the tumble passed over the Pond Neuf and down the rue St. Honour, the evening sun came out in all its summer splendor and transfigured in its ready glow the martyr's noble figure, as in perfect serenity, she was born through the howling mob.

At the sight of the guillotine she turned pale for a moment. when her head fell, one of the executioner's assistance, more than brutal, took it up, and being a devoted disciple of Mara, struck it there in the face of the crowd. Someone said that the dead face blushed. A murmur of horror escaped from the assembled throng which would not be satisfied

until this gross offender had been imprisoned. That one so beautiful and so charming as Charlotte should have had suitors was inevitable. We have already mentioned the fellow traveller who, having fallen in love, at first sight, wished to ask her hand in marriage. Whether she returned the affection of either of her other admirers, or whether hatred of Mara had driven every other passion from her heart, it is impossible to say. There is a story that, before leaving Cannes, she had corresponded with the youth of the city, won Franklin and had given him her portrait. Franklée joined the Girondiste

volunteers. He was present at the review on the 8th of July. As he and his comrades marched beneath Charlotte's balcony on that memorable Sunday, Pityon, who was near, saw her turn pale and weep. Do you not want them to go? He asked, and received no reply. After Charlotte's death, Franklin withdrew to the depths of the country where he died not long afterwards, leaving instructions that Charlotte's letters and her portrait

should be buried with him in his coffin. Years later so runs the tail, the coffin was opened and found to contain the letters and the picture. A better authenticated story is the, that of the young German from Mines, Adam Luke's. Lux was one of those to whom the revolution seemed to promise the millennium. He and his fellow townsmen craved for their city the honor of being included in the French Republic, and Lux was commissioned to go to Paris and lay their request before the convention.

But alas, no sooner had he set foot in the French capital that his dream vanished. He found the Republic a prey to civil strife. He saw, with horror, a beautiful maiden, the noble apostle of freedom, condemned to sacrifice her life for the cause. Twice only did Luke's actually see Charlotte, once before the Revolution Tribunal, and then on the scaffold. But that was enough.

Henceforth, he had no other thought than to rejoin her as it seemed to him he might by sharing her fate. The guillotine beneath which she had suffered became to him an altar. He too aspired to die beneath its blade. He implored the convention to accord him that high honor.

At the same time, he demanded that a statue and memory of Charlotte inscribed with the words, greater than Brutus, should be erected to her memory on the place where she had died. So assiduously did he court death by attacks upon the convention and the Jacobin that he was arrested and condemned. He followed Charlotte to the guillotine on the 4th of November, 1793. The story of Adam Luke's would seem to prove the truth of Michel's saying that in Charlotte's blood a religion was founded.

But the same might be. said with truth of Mara's blood. For Mara's admirers were as devoted as Charlott's and far more numerous. Among them were multitudes of women, women in Paris and in the provinces, women more especially of the revolutionary clubs. For Mara, among all the leaders of the revolution, had been most ready to make use of women. By a strange irony of fate, it was he who had proposed to arm with daggers the women of the Republican and Revolutionary Club. Les Cubist of Macon called themselves Maras, holy women, Saint-Fam, and venerated Mara as a prophet. Crowds of women mingled in the funeral processions and pageants on the 16th, 18th, and

28th of July, which were so many triumphal processions in honor of Charlotte Cordes' victim. The Republican and revolutionary women claimed to have originated the idea of erecting an obelisk to Mara on La Place de la Reunion, now La Place du Carousel. Though men denied them this honor. The records of the Jacobin Club show that on the 15th of August, Pauline Leon, then president of the St. Ustache Club, led a deputation to the Jacobin to ask them to contribute to the obelisk. As it happened, only a temporary wooden obelisk was erected. But in the August ceremony of its inauguration, which was worthy of a more permanent memorial, women played a prominent part. Setting out in procession from their St.

to Stas Charnell House, they took up their places behind the historic bath, and bore on a litter the relics of their prophet, his chair, table, pen, and ingstand. These women had followed Charlotte with curses to the guillotine. For them and for others, like a L'Amp de Guz, though she was not a Maratiste, Marat's assassin was an inhuman monster, a byword for infamy. Maratis' newspapers would not even allow her to have been beautiful. They described her as a hard-featured Varago, whose face was covered with pimples. Her unwomanly deed dealt a heavy blow at the feminist cause, which, as we shall see, was already declining.

It was no less fatal to the political party to which she belonged. She ruins us, but she teaches us how to die, cried Girondé Verneau in prison. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9, Part 1, of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the the public domain. 9. Women and Religion, part one.

Quote, La femme is bien plus than a pontiff. Shelle et relligion, Michelet. In religion, as in every other department of life, the revolution was a series of experiments. At the outset, the constituent assembly arrogated to itself the power of determining the national religion, and other assemblies followed its example.

Hence, for 12 years from 1789 to 188, We see the French established religion describing a complete circle. It began with the Orthodox Church of Rome, as it had been constituted in 1516, by the Concordat, between King Francis I and Pope Leo the 10th. It passed through the National Church as organized by the Constituent Assembly in August 1789, the worship of reason, instituted by the Convention in November 1793, and the worship of the supreme being inaugurated by Robespierre in May 1789. It returned to the National Christian Church as restored by the Directory in 1796, and it finally came back to the Church of Rome as established by the Concordat between Napoleon and Pope Pius

the 7th in 1801. When the men of the Revolution required women to follow them in this feverish canter through successive phases of religious experience, from ultramontanism to irrationism, from irration Christianity to atheism, from atheism to theism, and back to Christianity again, they found some of them lagging behind in the race. Many looked back, like Lot's wife, to the country of Ultramontane Orthodoxy, to the old faith and the old ritual. They fainted and faltered in this giddy spiritual whirl.

Not a few of them clung to the old faith. Some practiced the ancient rites in secret while outwardly conforming to the new. Many refused to recognize the priests who, having taken the oath to the Constitution, were installed by the government in the places of those who had refused it.

In one parish, the constitutional priest on his arrival was met by a shower of stones from 60 women who pursued him to his presbytery. Danton's first wife, Gabriel Charpentier, in spite of her husband's skepticism, openly remained a devout Catholic until her death in February, 1793. Danton, who adored her, respected her faith,

and when she went to Mass, even accompanied her to the church door. The wife of the atheist Ebert, was an ex-none who, though she had availed herself of the convention's law, enabling ex-nons and priests to marry, continued in other respects to practice her religion. Many women, though willing to be vicarious, as of Bray, found it difficult to relinquish the habit of crossing themselves. One newspaper recommended that those who could not cure themselves of this superstitious practice might at least render it innocuous by mumbling as they made the sign, instead of the traditional phrase in the name of the father, son, and holy ghost, the words, in the name

of my country, liberty, and equality. In certain towns, the authorities reproached revolutionary women with attending church more frequently than their club meetings. In the very clubs themselves, women members were known to have demanded the state's return to orthodoxy. But at the same time, other women were changing their religious opinions with startling rapidity. While at Evreu in 1791, women and men too inaugurated the celebration of the 14th of July by a solemn mass, two years Years later, the same women were commemorating the Republican anniversary by making a public bonfire of priests' vestments, missiles, croziers, and other Bondeuze rie, as they would have put it. The last fuel thrown on the fire was a statue of St. Louis.

The women who most readily approved of these religious changes were those who, like Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, Madame de Stahl, and Madame Julien, had a drunk deep of 18th-century philosophy even before the revolution. Was it to a juring or a non-jurring? priest that you confessed at Kahn. The president of the Revolutionary Tribunal asked Charlotte Corday. Neither to one nor the other, she replied, I had no confessor. Though Madame Rolland as a child had intended to be a nun,

in early girlhood her faith had been undermined by those very works of Bossourette that had been given her to strengthen it. However favorable they were to the cause they were intended to defend, she writes, they enlightened me as to the attacks made upon that cause and taught me to call my belief in question. That was the first step. Many others were to follow before I arrived at the skepticism that was to be my final stage, after I had passed through Jansenism, Cartesianism, Stoicism, and Deism. What a long road to terminate in the patriotism which has brought me to these bonds. Elsewhere, she writes of the religious ecstasy of her

adolescence and of the philosophy of later years. This philosophy seemed as if it would forever preserve her from that tempest of fashion which now in middle age threatened to overwhelm her, though she struggled against it with all the vigor of an athlete. Madame de Staal was brought up by parents of Protestant origin on the Protestant principle of free inquiry, the Libre Examin, as opposed to the Catholic principle of authority. This critical spirit was among the many features of English mentality that she most admired. It was one of those sources of perfect ability, she wrote, which had existed in England for more than a century. But, as in the case of most Protestants, there were limits to the scope of

Madame de Staal's free inquiry. One principle she never questioned was the moral government of the universe. All her lifelong she was an ardent deist, and shortly before her death in 1818, she followed the tendency of the time and reverted to something like Orthodox Christianity. That religious ideas contribute to the happiness of mankind had always been an article of her faith, and for that reason, as she expressed it, she had hesitated to deprive herself of them. Madame Dostal devotes one chapter of her considerations on the French Revolution to a discussion of the ecclesiastical policy of the constituent assembly. She thoroughly approves of the confiscation of church property, but she as thoroughly disapproves of the creation of a constitutional

church. A great fault which I think the constituent assembly might easily have avoided, she wrote, was the fatal invention of a constitutional clergy to exact from priests an oath forbidden by their conscience and when they refused to persecute them by depriving them of their pension and later by deportation was to degrade those who took the oath because of the loaves and fishes that went with it. To act thus she continues was to substitute political for religious intolerance.

Moreover, this measure resulted in alienating from Rome. The clergy who enrolled themselves behind the banner of the revolution Such priests were no good at all. Catholics would have nothing to do with them. Philosophers did not need any priests. The juring clergy were merely a kind of militia discredited in advance who could do nothing but harm to the government they were supposed to support. Madame Julien, a devout disciple of Jean-Jacques had subscribed to his Savoyard-Baker's Creed long before the revolution. Her letters to her son in England abound with Maxim's culled from her master's works. "'One thing is certain,' she writes, "'that we are born good and rational. "'The scandal of the human race is that a vicious minority "'attracts more attention than a virtuous majority. "'I don't want to be a silly old mother,

"'boring you with ethical commonplaces. "'I am addressing a friend, "'whom nature has formed within me "'of the most precious elements of my being, "'sensibility and love of virtue. "'With that, I have nothing to prescribe "'and everything to hope.' "'Madame Julien had a question.

accepted Rousseau's philosophy and become a worshipper of the supreme being before Robespierre established that cult as a national religion. References to L'Aidre Suprem abound in Madame Julien's pages. Every day she prays to the supreme being to keep her son, in happiness and virtue, for the two are inseparable, she says. In April 1792, she writes that the wrath of the supreme being must have been aroused by the insolence of the aristocrats. A few weeks later she gives an... an interesting account of a sermon she heard preached at Saint-Eustache by a priest who had taken the oath to the government. I went with Mademoiselle C., she writes, to the sermon at St. St. St. St.

Never, no, never, was the pulpit of truth more worthily occupied. The preacher's discourse, sparkling with eloquence, was on the best way to prevent civil war and to conquer our foreign enemies. Holding the gospels in one hand and the Constitution in the other, with all the fire of genius he preached liberty, equal. and fraternity. The pictures he painted of the perversity of tyrants and courts, of the degradation and misery of the people, were so strikingly true that never since the beginning of the revolution have I read anything so fine and so convincing.

Sadly pathetic was the irony of the contrast he drew with consummate art between all this and a citizen king who, devoutly faithful to his oath, would walk firmly in the career of virtue, rising with the nation to the highest pinnacle of glory. There is nothing so grand in the greatest oratorical triumphs of Flechier and Baudalou. Just when, in his sublimest invocation, he was calling down the thunder of divine justice on the heads of the guilty, a real clap of thunder resounded throughout the vaults of the church. Roman superstition would have interpreted this incident as signifying that Jupiter was favorable. As for us, we marveled in silence at this chance coincidence that had occurred at so appropriate a moment,

and in our hearts we supplicated the divinity to manifest his justice and his power in a manner equally pronounced and terrible. The congregation was so delighted with the words at this worthy minister of the supreme being that their applause continued long and resounded on every hand. One day in the summer of 1792, on entering the Church of Saint-Germain-Loxer-Rois, Madame Julien finds in the nave a superb stone tablet on which was engraved the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The sight of it, she says, redoubled her devotion, and she offered up an ardent prayer. The revolution's protein changes of dogma and ecclesiastical organization were accompanied by other changes in customs, festivals, the names of days and months, of streets and families, which closely affected the daily life of the people. The convention by various decrees favored the marriage of priests and of ex-nuns.

Prince of the time represent ecclesiastics of both sexes hastening in multitudes to avail themselves of this New Liberty. More than 2,000 priests are said to have married. The first bishop to take to himself a wife was Tomalindé, Bishop of the Heur department. He married in November 1792. On the following 23rd of September, Pontard, Bishop of Dordaigne, presented his wife to the convention. Taking her on to the platform, he described her as, poor in fortune but rich in virtues, of the class of Sancoulot in which reside frankness and amiable simplicity. Cambon, President of the Assembly, greeted husband and wife with la collade fraternal.

Everywhere, the revolutionary spirit thrust itself into ecclesiastical affairs, including baptisms, weddings, and burials. A drummer of the Fobour Saint-Antoine had his baby daughter christened at his Paris church, the Church of St. Marguerite, by the famous constitutional bishop Foucher, whom we have already met as Labe Foucher of the Social Circle

and the Bush-Daffair newspaper. Pityon National Peak, were the topical names bestowed on this unhappy infant. Never would Mademoiselle PN. P.N. P. be able to conceal her age, as some women are said to do, for a Pityon National Peak could only have been born in the year 1792 when Pityon was mayor of Paris, and in the summer of that year when the mayor, at the height of a popularity he was soon to lose, was introducing the proletariat, armed with pikes into the hitherto middle-class National Guard. The metallic element in the baby's name

received visible expression after the christening when women of the fobole, armed with swords, formed them into an arch of metal over the head of the newly baptized infant, while loud cries of, long-lived the nation, resounded throughout the church. But by that time certain leaders of the revolution were ceasing to have their children baptized at all.

Camille de Moulin set the example. For this reason, and also because it afforded, many striking illustrations of the emotional and religious side of the revolution, the romantic story of Camille and Lucille d'Emoulin belongs to this chapter. In December 1790 at St. St. St. Peace, and according to the rights of the Catholic Church, Camille, had married the pretty bewitching Lucille du Placis. But when in the next year their son, Horace was born, his father took him to the Mary to be registered instead of to the church to be christened. Poor little Horace de Moulin, of whom Madame Guillotine was soon to make an orphan, was the first Parisian child to have

his name inscribed on the newly established civic register, which was to replace the parish registers. The father of Oras could not let slip this opportunity of preaching the gospel according to the revolution. Hence, after his son's name, Camille wrote in the register the following proposal. Seeing that liberty of worship has been decreed by the Constitution, and that by a decree of the legislative assembly, the civic status of citizens may be declared otherwise than by religious ceremonies, there ought to be raised in every municipality an altar, on which the father, assisted by two witnesses, shall offer his children to La Patry. Then Camille goes on to justify his own action in dispensing with a religious ceremony.

It is in order that when he grows up his son may not reproach his father with having associated him by oath with religious opinions which could not possibly have been his, and with having on his entrance into the world forced him to distinguish between the 900 and odd religions which divide mankind, at a time when he, the infant, was not even capable of distinguishing his own mother. At length, the mother is mentioned. One had wondered when she was coming in. But Camis's ignoring of her hitherto may be excused by the fact that these dedicatory or registration ceremonies took place so soon after birth that the mother was never able to be present. Lucille Desmoulin was far too charming a person to be ignored either by her husband or his friends.

L'Eternel Rieuze, someone had called her. But in those sad days, tears were never far behind laughter, and so it was with Lucille. She was like an April day, all showers and sunshine. Among the charming and heroic ladies of that time, Michelet admires most Madame de Moulet and Madame de Conde. Men of future ages, he prophesies, will regret not having known them. Even the de Goncours, who failed to see any attractiveness in revolutionary women, made an exception for Lucille. Pover Grisette, they called her.

Egaré and perdu in this epoch sanglante. Figure petite, but amiable, who surrey, pleur, and meur. The term Grisette is misleading. Lucille belonged to an honest family of La Petit Borgiazzi and brought her husband a certain fortune. The Desmoulins love story is an idol. Camille, the journalist, the hero of the Palais Royal, fell in love with Lucille and her no less beautiful mother when he saw them walking one day in the Luxembourg gardens. He obtained an introduction to them, was invited to their flat in the Rue de Tourne, and to their countryhouse at Bourla Rene.

During these visits, Camille soon discovered that it was Lucille who had conquered his heart. But he was then only a poor journalist, and a Monsieur Du Pletie, would not hear of him as a husband for his daughter. The lovers waited for some years. Camille had influential friends. Robespierre had been his schoolfellow. His ability as a journalist attracted the Marquis de Sillerie and the Duke of Léant himself.

They interceded for him with Duplessi. Before such powerful pleading, even the obduracy of Lucille's father gave way, and on the 29th of December 1790, she was married to Camille. The Duke of Leanne furnished their flat in La Rue de Lodeon, and the witnesses of the marriage were five of the most prominent politicians of the day. Pityon, Brissot, Mercier, Silrie, and Robespierre. Lucille's tea parties in the Rue de Lodeon soon became the center of all that was lively, gay, and witty on the left bank. The clever Mademoiselle de Carallio helped the pretty young hostess at the tea table. The d'antons were frequent guests.

The Duke of Orleans was sometimes present, and for a while all seemed sunshine and laughter. But Baby Horace was only a few months old when the horrors of the revolution began to cast a shadow over this charming home. The evening of the 9th of August, 1792, before the second attack on the Tuileries, Lucille spent at the Dantons. Dantone was very resolute, wrote Lucille afterwards. I laughed like a madwoman. They were afraid the affair. The attack on the Tuileries of the Tenth would not come off. How can you laugh like that? said Madame Danton.

Alas, said I, it only means I shall shed many tears before the evening is over. The night was fine, we went out. There were a great many people in the streets. A group of Sanc-culot went by, crying, long-lived the nation. Then soldiers on horseback. A shiver came over me, and I said to Madame Danton, let us go in. She laughed at my timidity. Then, as I continued to be nervous, she also became afraid.

I said to her mother, you will hear the toxin sounding before long. At the house people were trooping in. Camille, my dear Camille, came in with a gun. My God, I ran into the alcove and hid my face in my hands and began to cry. Still, ashamed of appearing so weak, I would not openly tell Camille how I hoped he would keep out of it all. But I waited for an opportunity to. to confide my fears to him without being heard.

He tried to reassure me by saying he would keep with Tanton. I heard afterwards that he had run great risks. I hid in the unlighted salon in order to be away from the preparations. Our patriots set out. When towards midnight the toxins sounded from the tower of the Cordadier Church, Lucille knelt at the window, hid her face in her handkerchief and listened. From time to time, people came in bringing good news or bad. At one o'clock, Camille returned.

He fell asleep on my shoulder, writes his wife. Madame Danton seemed to expect to hear of her husband's death. She listened, grew pale, and then fainted. Oh, my poor Camille, cries Lucille at the close of her narrative, What will become of us? My God, if there be a God, save the men who are worthy of thee. We long to be free. But how terrible is the cost?

many a time throughout the months of terror that remained to her did lucille cry to the god whose existence she doubted if thou does exist she prays receive the offering of a heart that loves thee enlighten my soul i hate the world is that wrong why dost thou allow it to be so wicked oh my god when can i gazing upon thy glory prostrate myself at thy feet and bat them with my tears i adore thee without understanding thee i pray to thee without knowing thee thou art in my heart i feel it yet i divine thee not thou art the secret of nature this happiness that we seek where can we find it no happiness is not to be found in this world in vain do we pursue it happiness is but an empty dream in these tempestuous days the emotions of trust and despair of gaiety and anguish succeeded one another rapidly in ucile's simple childlike breast when towards the end of seventeen ninety three camille had dared to oppose his former schoolfellow robespierre in his thirst for blood and to propose the institution of a committee of clemency his wife courageously supported him at lunch one day a friend tried to dissuade camille from pursuing his perilous course lucille rose went round to her husband kissed him and said let him alone let him fulfil his mission he will save france and any one who disagrees with me shall not have any of my chocolate camille was arrested at the same time as his friend danton and imprisoned in the luxembourg then lucille joined the throng of women children and old men who waited daily hour after hour on the broad walk leading to the prison hoping for a sight of some beloved face through the grated windows the language of flowers much studied at that time was used by these faithful watchers one would hold up a posy of panties or some other flower the special significance of which would have been communicated to the prisoner by a bribed watchers one would hold up a posy of panties or some other flower the special significance of which would have been communicated to the prisoner by a bribed

border. In this way, the captives learned news of the outside world. Thus was a woman prisoner, told that her husband was dead by a friend outside in the park holding up a bunch of scabias, symbol, of widowhood. Camis's cell looked on the gardenware, as he wrote to Lucille, I spent eight years of my life following you. There is one peep over the Luxembourg that brings back to my memory a host of recollections of our love. I am in solitary confinement, but never in thought and imagination, have I been nearer to you to your mother and to our little Horace? I only write you this first little note to ask for the most necessary things, but I shall spend all my time in prison writing to you. Camille fulfilled his promise, and the

letters that followed are all as full as the first of passionate love for his wife and child. But Camille's imprisonment was short, arrested on the night of the 30th to 31st of March, and March 1794, he was executed on the 5th of April, having first been removed to La Conciergerie. Five days later, his wife followed him to the scaffold. She had been arrested on the ill-founded charge of plotting to deliver her husband and other captives from prison. Camille, the impulsive, effervescent journalist, whose nervous temperament betrayed itself by a stammering in his speech which he could never overcome, this excitable Camille completely lost control of himself on the way to the guillotine. He struggled to loosen his bonds. He hurled down curses on the

convention and its dictator Robespierre, until Danton, who was with him in the tumble, adjured him to be calm, and to ignore the vile rabble, said Ville Canaille. Lucille had seemed as excitable as her husband as long as they were together, but once he was dead, her effervescence subsided. At her trial she appeared indifferent to all that was going on around her. La femme Camille, said an eyewitness, overwhelmed, doubtless by the atrocity of her judges, did not raise her eyes, did not betray either hope or fear, but meekly awaited her sentence. I venture to question the cause which this eyewitness assigned for Lucille's calmness. He may not have possessed that knowledge of her previous life and character with which

abundant documents have equipped the judgment of posterity. We now see her to have been not only L'Eternel Rieuze, but L'Eternel Amoreuse. She was one of the few Frenchwoman in whose heart the passion of love beat more powerfully than that of maternal affection. Their little Horace, both these lovers, Camille and Lucille,

were content to leave to his grandmother. Camille refers to him frequently in the letters he wrote to his wife from prison. But after the paroxysms of that last fatal ride, his final word was of Lucille. My wife, my beloved, I shall never. see you again. But Camille's ordeal had been infinitely harder than Lucille's. He had been

called upon to leave her behind. When Lucille died, Camille having gone, life had for her been shorn of all attractiveness and meaning. Camille, in his last letter to her from prison, had tried to inspire her with a consolation which can hardly have been his in face of his last words on the scaffold. Yet in his desire to comfort Lucille he had written to her, I believe in God, and in a few your life. Those words, treasured in Lucille's heart, rendered her indifferent to all earthly affairs, caused her to look to Mare Guillotin, as the deliverer inspired the last little note she wrote to her mother. Good night, dear Mama. I shed a tear. It is for you. I shall fall asleep in the calm of innocence. On her way to the scaffold she was perfectly serene.

Come it is belle, exclaimed the crowds who followed her on her last journey. There was one member of the convention to whom Lucille and her mother had looked to save Camille. That was Robespierre. As we have seen, he and Camille had been schoolfellows. Before her marriage to Camille, Robespierre is said to have been in love with Lucille. Their engagement had been talked of. After Camille's arrest, Lucille had written entreating Robespierre to save her husband. Whether the letter ever reached the Sea Green Monster,

those who have tried to whitewash him, a doubt. It is certainly doubtful whether Robespierre received the following letter written by Madame Duplessie asking him to save her daughter. Citizen Robespierre, is it not enough to have assassinated your best friend? Do you now thirst after his wife's blood? Your monster of a Fouqueton Ville has just signed the order for her to be taken to the scaffold. In two hours she will have ceased to exist. Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human form, if Camis's blood has not intoxicated you so as to deprive you of your reason. If you remember the evenings spent in our home, the caresses you lavished upon little Horace when you held him on your knee. If you remember

that you were to have been my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim. But if yours is the lion's fury, then come and take us also. Adel and Horace, come and tear us to pieces with hands still stained with Camis' blood. Come, come, let one grave bury us all. whether Robespierre ever received that letter or not was all one, for there was nothing in the purely human sentiments it expressed to appeal to the heart, if he had one, or to the intelligence of this Superman. His was the cold, unflinching cruelty of the idealist. No personal considerations that interfered with the pursuance of his convictions

were ever allowed to weigh with him for a single moment. However, he had believed he could save France. but in the spring of 1794 doubt began to assail him. His dictatorship had for some months been threatened. This opposition came from two directions, from the moderate party led by Danton and Desmoulin, and from the ultra-terrorists led by Ibert and Chomet. The two latter had been guillotined on the 24th of March.

Iber's widow, the ex-none, suffered the death penalty at the same time as Lucille. Not even Madame Eber's cathart's cathart. Salicism saved her, though one might have thought it would have placated Robespierre. He could certainly not have included her in the accusation he was bringing against her husband and his followers of going too far in the de-Christianization of France. End of Chapter 9, Part 1 Chapter 9 Part 2 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens.

This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Women and Religion Part 2 To trace the progress of this anti-Christian movement, this rise of the new religion of Civism, which women professed as well as men, we must go back to the summer of 1791 when, as we have seen, Camille de Moulin had taken his newborn son to the Merri. Camille's proposal written in the register on that day had been adopted by the constituent assembly. The Assembly had decreed that throughout France, in every commune, an altar to La Patry should be erected in the room in which marriages were celebrated and births and death.

registered. Thus, as Michelet, the three most solemn moments of human destiny were consecrated at the altar of the commune, and the religion of the family was blended with that of La Petrie. The world has almost forgotten that Joseph Foucher, chief of police, millionaire and Duke of O'Otranto under Napoleon, had once been distinguished for his civic piety after the new model. Yet he had carried on a veritable dragon aid in the Department of Nieve, whether the convention had sent him to superintend the administration of the law against suspected persons. By Foucher's orders, churches were stripped of their ornaments, priests imprisoned, all the insignia of Christianity obliterated, and the gate of every cemetery inscribed with the words,

La Mare is a Somme Eternel. When on the 10th of August 1793, Madame Foucher gave birth to a son at Nevers, the father himself at the municipal altar dedicated the child to La Patry, and gave him the name of Nievre. The altar had been set up on a vast plain outside the town. On it burned the sacred fire of Vesta, and nearby was the temple of love for the celebration of marriages. Some marriages were made without any public ceremony whatever. One was the marriage, for the couple themselves and their families considered it as such,

of Jean-Paul Mara and Simon Ebrard. On a beautiful day, Mara took Simon by the hand, and together they knelt in the sunlight, while Mara called the heavens to witness. that he would never take to himself another wife. After Marais's death, the following engagement was found among his papers. The admirable qualities of Mademoiselle Simone Ebrard,

it ran, having captivated my heart whose homage she has accepted, I leave to her as the pledge of my fidelity during the journey I am about to take to London, my plighted troth to give her my hand immediately on my return. If all my affection should not seem to her a sufficient guarantee of my fidelity, let this engagement be.

forgotten and let me be covered with infamy. At Paris the 1st of January 1792 signed, Jean-Paul Marat, the friend of the people. Here again and in the next chapter we find Mara dignified and honorable in his attitude towards women. Simone, young, well-educated and intelligent, was far from being as she is depicted by Carlyle and other historians, a low creature, a squalid washerwoman. She had admired the patriotism and fire of her writings before she knew him. Like Charlotte Corday, only with a very different intention

she went to visit the people's friend. She found him worried by financial affairs about to give up the publication of his famous newspaper, Lamy du Pepl, and to go to England, there to return to the medical profession on which he had practiced in England some years previously. Simone, inspired with that patriotic zeal which inflamed so many women of the revolution,

at once and unreservedly placed all her, modest fortune at Mara's disposal. Mara still went to England, apparently, but only for a brief visit. On his return, he accepted Simon's money and used it to establish printing works, the manager of which married Simone's sister, Catherine. Both before and after Mara's death, his family treated Simon as his wife. She and Mara's sister Albertine lived in Paris together until Albertine's death which Simone survived many years. By the summer of 17, In 1993, when Marat was assassinated, the apostles of the new Civism were finding it necessary to make some concession to those anthropomorphic obsessions which, from the earliest animism down to the present day, have ever tinged the religious conceptions of mankind. Parisians of the 18th century, like Galileans of old, looked for a sign.

And the founders of the new religion did not withhold it. Ebert and Chomet, so soon to share the fate of other founders of religions, not so soon as well as, satisfied with erecting on the ruins of the Bastille a colossal female statue of liberty, resolved to give their adherence a living symbol. "'Pas an statue mort,' said Ebert. "'Mes an image vivante of this divinity. "'A en ched-euvre de la nature,' said Chomette. "'So Chomette, that arch-ante-feminist, be it noticed,

"'took woman from the domestic hearth, "'the place to which on other occasions he was always relegating her, "'and brought her out into the churches now called, "'the temples of reason.' There he put her on a pedestal, exhibited her as the goddess of reason, and exposed her to such insults that one goddess of reason in a Norman town is said to have worn and scribed on her Phrygian cap, the words, Ne me tourn't in license.

In November and December 1793, throughout Paris and the provinces, Feasts of Reason inaugurated the new religion. The most impressive of all was that held at Paris, in the Cathedral Church of Notre Dame on the 10th of November. Ah, what a fine festival we celebrated last decade, cried Iber in his newspaper, Le Per Duches. In the place of the altar, or rather of the boards on which the charlatans, the clergy, had performed, the throne of liberty had been set up. A charming woman, as beautiful as the goddess she represented, was seated on in eminence. In her hand, a pike, on her head, the

red cap. Around her were all Les Joliet d'Ane de l'Operin, singing patriotic hymn, singing patriotic hymn, more sweetly than angels. Above the white-robed goddess with her mantle of blue and her red headdress, on the top of the mountain, as it was called, was a little round classical temple,

with the words Alaphil inscribed in large letters right across its façade, and on each side of the door were bust, probably intended to represent Voltaire, Russo,

Franklin, and Montescu. Beneath the goddess and halfway up the mountain, the flame of truth burned brightly on a little classical altar. Behind and around this eminence, draperies hanging from the pillars completely concealed the ecclesiastical character of the building. Music played by the National Guard opened the ceremony.

Meanwhile, processions of young girls in white, wearing wreaths of flowers on their heads and tricolour sashes, and bearing torches, came forth from the left and right of the temple. They passed each other before the altar, bowed, and then re-ascended the mountain, and disappeared. Then the goddess on her throne received the homage of the Republicans present, who, with arms outstretched, sang to go sex music, Mary Joseph Cheigny's famous hymn composed for the occasion. Descent, O Liberty, Fee, of the Nature. The people has reconquied his power immortal. On the pompu debris of the antique imposture, his men relive your hotel. Vene, Vaince Vainqueur de Roy, L'Eropos,

Vosue, and tonde your success. Toh, Saint-Liberti, Viette, Vien abite this temple, so la deyess de France. As the last lines of the hymn died away,

the goddess rose, and ascending the mountain, was about to enter the temple when she paused on the threshold to cast one glance over the vast congregation. As she disappeared through the temple door, enthusiastic applause mingled with oaths of eternal fidelity to reason burst forth from the assembled throng. The organizers of the Feast of Reason had been disappointed in their hope that the members of the Convention would have attended in a body.

As the Convention had not come to Reason, Reason must go to the Convention. Accordingly, as soon as the ceremony at Notre Dame was over, the goddess escorted by an imposing procession proceeded to the Tuileries where the Convention was then sitting. At the head of the procession marched a company of musicians and a band of young Republican soldiers singing patriotic hymns with refrains and choruses in which the onlookers joined. Next came the maidens in white, and then the goddess seated on her throne

which was born by four citizens. This group, having entered the assembly hall, paused in front of the president. The maidens formed a circle round the throne, while the rest of the procession defiled past, repeating the hymns they had sung at the cathedral. What could the convention do now but join in the movement and vote that henceforth Notre Dame should be the temple of reason?

Deputy Romme proposed that the goddess should take her place at the president's side. Shomet conducted her on to the platform. The president and his secretaries greeted her with the fraternal kiss amidst great applause. Then the members of the convention escorted her back to Notre Dame, where the ceremony that had been performed earlier in the day was repeated in their honor. Who was this Parisian goddess of reason? Carlisle says it was Mademoiselle Kandej. Michelet, Mademoiselle Meijar, another actress.

Others would have it to be Claire Lacomba. Others, Madame Momoro. Others again, Mademoiselle Aubrey, also an actress. Later, authorities are content to confess that they did not know, although they believe it to have been one of the actresses from the opera. Madame Momorot, the wife of the famous bookseller and printer, may have been the goddess at St. Sudpice, or at St. Andre des Arr, or at St. St. St. Justach, or perhaps at all three. It would seem highly probable that the handsome Clare Lacombes

personated reason in one or other of the Parisian churches, for she was, as we shall see, closely associated with the political party of Les Enrager, the ultra-terrorists, to which the inaugurators of the new religion Iber and Chomet belonged. As to the provincial goddesses of reason, to identify them with certainty is no easier than to identify the Parisian goddesses. They were not infrequently, we are told, members of respectable families, and we trust, well chaperoned,

because in some places the worship of reason showed a tendency to degenerate into something not unlike Saturnalia. This aspect of the new cult added to its negation of theism, and the fact that its inaugurators were his political foes provoked Robespierre against it. Much has been written of Robespierre's attitude

towards women. Whether he was cold as some have maintained, who can tell? He would appear not to have been insusceptible to the charms of Lucille d'Emoulet. There is the much-questioned story of his betrothal to Eleonard Dupley, daughter of the master cabinet-maker, at whose house in the Rue Saint-Honnerie he lodged. The Duchess de Brantès used to tell that when a beautiful woman went to plead with Robespierre for her husband's release, as soon as she had gone, the incorruptible, turned to his companion, saying, do you know that woman is pretty? But, very pretty. As to women's attitude towards Robespierre, there is little doubt.

They either hated him as a tyrant, like the young royalist girl, Cecil Renaud, or they worshipped him as a prophet. The cult of Robespierre was even more widely spread among women than the cult of Marat. On the days when he was to speak, women crowded into the galleries of the convention and applauded loudly. The tricoteuse de Robespierre, they were called. As far back as 1792, Condorcet, writing in La Cronique de Paris on the 9th of November, wonders why Robespierre always and everywhere at his house, at the Jacobin, at the Cordellier, at the convention, is followed by so many women. It must be, says Condorcet, that Robespierre has founded a kind of sect. He is a priest who has his devote. Obviously, Robespierre's power lies with

the distaff. Toce puissance is enkenuille. Thus a patriotic source. of 1793 runs. Suivi de sede de vaude and his coupé entouré enthrie, the deuce december deuce december rubezsche et ontry. Women wrote to him declaring he was Messiah. Some beheld in the sky, the constellation good-looking, despite his billiard sea-green appearance, and he always dressed with great care.

What a man is this Robespierre with all these women, cried one. Why, he is a priest who wishes to become God. And as a god, one woman at least, unfortunately, for Robespierre, would seem to have regarded him. This was Catherine Teo, a spinster of over eighty, who considered herself to be the mother of God and Robespierre her son, or at least so Robespierre's enemies alleged. Of humble origin, she was born at Abranche and received little education. She knew how to read, but could not write.

And when she grew up, she entered domestic service. Her religious mania, for it was nothing short of that, began to develop when she became servant in the convent of the Miriamillon at Paris. There she communicated every day, and for 18 years, neither in summer nor in winter did she ever miss five o'clock mass. Meanwhile, she lost no opportunity of mortifying her. her body by wearing garters and bracelets with sharp iron points, for example. Then she fell to reading the lives of St. Teresa and St. Catherine of Siena.

They proved fatal to the fleeting remnants of her reason, and now she became absolutely deranged. Henceforth, she believed herself the mother or perhaps the bride of Christ. While the majority of priests discreetly avoided her, there were a few who were inclined to regard her as a prophetess. One of these was a constitutional priest, the Carthusian monk, D'Angelle, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly. He and the fanatical Duchess de Beaubon, Egality's sister, sat at Catherine's feet and formed the nucleus of a sect of mystics who soon gathered around her. At their meetings, the scribe Michael Hastain wrote down Catherine's prophecies, which were

generally concerned with the Second Coming of Christ. But, as they also predicted political happenings, Catherine one day in December 1779, found herself lodged in the Bastille. There she was kept for five weeks, then sent to a lunatic asylum for three years. In 1782, being pronounced sane, she was liberated and for a while was cured of prophesying. But the revolution again upset her. It seemed to her the fulfillment of all her predictions. Her hallucinations returned. She resumed her seances, first at the house of one of her numerous friends.

widow Godfroix in the Rue de Rosier in the district known as Le Marais, and later near the Panteon in the Rue Contres-Scarpe. Schomit, when he became Procuror of the Commune, kept these meetings under observation. His spy, Senna, attended them regularly. He described them as liturgical in character. At one end of the room, he said, was a platform on which was Catherine Teo seated in an armchair. On one side of her sat Dongell, on the other, widow.

Godfroix. The latter was the interpreter. To the faithful brethren and sisters, as they called one another, who were seated on chairs some little distance from the platform, Madame Godfroix expounded the Gospels and the apocalypse. D'Angelle preached the sermon, and at intervals another woman intoned the Psalms. Katerine's part was to perform certain initiatory rights, which, however, were only introduced towards the end of 1793. The neophyte knelt before the prophetess while her interpreter clasped his head in her hands and said, You are about to receive the seven seals of the light of God. Then Catherine herself bestowed on her disciple's seven kisses,

one on forehead, left cheek and both eyes, two on the chin, and one behind the right ear. Initiatress, and initiated, mutually signed one another on the face with the cross and kissed one another twice on the lips. One neurotic girl could with difficulty be torn away from these embraces. When Catherine's followers were ill, they came to her for healing, and she is said to have cured them of leprosy, blindness, lameness, paralysis, and other maladies. Soldiers, starting for the front, came to Catherine for her blessing as a charm against death.

Lovers thought she could secure them success in love. One disciple said he had seen the divinity in a white robe conversing with his prophetess. Another that, heralded by a flash of lightning, he had beheld God entering her house. It is not surprising that in the height of the terror, when suspicion ran riot, these seances were held to have a political meaning. Already on the 15th of January 1793, the commune had ordered a raid on Catherine's house. At four o'clock in the morning, three police inspectors had entered and carried off a bundle of papers. But they must have been disappointed to find that this packet contained nothing more compromising

than Catherine's wild vaticinations and comments on text of the Bible which she had dictated to Hastain. The prophecies contained only two political illusions, and these could not have offended the most squeamish Republican, for they referred to the revolution as having been foreordained through the centuries, and anathematized all non-during priests. Some of Catherine's comments on Holy Writ were not without a faint glimmering of common sense. Thus, dealing with the first chapter of Genesis and the text that in the beginning

God created man in his own image, she exclaims, and I, Catherine Teo, who speak to you, declare that God has not yet finished this work, that at present he is only at the sixth day, and that you are as yet not in his image at all, but in the womb of corrupt nature. Despite the failure of this raid to discover any political plot at La Rue de Contrescap, the suspicious authorities were by no means convinced of its non-existence. The mystics were closely watched, first by the spies of Chomet, and after his death by those of Vadier, a leading member of the Committee

of Surte General and the sworn foe of Robespierre. By the summer of 1794, a feud had declared itself between the two great revolutionary committees, Vadier's Surte General and the Salue Public supported by Robespierre. Vadier conceived the idea of using the poor demented Catherine

and her infatuated followers in his attack on Robespierre. What were the precise relations between Maximilien and Catherine will probably never be known. She may have introduced him by some flattering allusion into her wild prophecies, and Robespierre,

puffed up with vanity and accustomed to being addressed by women as a demigod may not have objected. One coincidence has not, I think, so far been pointed out, that Catherine resumed her prophesings after the outbreak of the revolution

in a house in the marais, and that she and Robespierre were then neighbours. Michelet suggests that Robespierre removed the Teodosie from the police-ar archives. However that may be, he did not, perhaps he could not, intervene to prevent the arrest on the 15th of June 1794 of Catherine and D'Angel on a charge of conspiring against the Republic. The absurd letter from Catherine to Robespierre, hailing him as her son, the promised Messiah, which Vadier said was found in the house at La Rue Contres Skerp, when Catherine was

arrested has been proved a forgery. Vadier was not incapable of forging the letter and having it concealed in the house by one of his subordinates. At that time, however, this letter was held to be genuine, and Vadier used it in the convention to hold up Robespierre to that ridicule, to which all Frenchmen are so exquisitely sensitive. This happened at a most unfortunate moment for Robespierre, for it was just at a time when the tide that was to overwhelm him on the 9th of Thermador, July 27th, was turning against him.

After a few months, poor old Catherine died in prison in September 1794. Dengel was released during the directory. "'Le time was at all fanatism,' says Michelet. Catherine Teo was by no means the only woman mystic of her day. There were prophetesses everywhere. Some claimed to have restored the dead to life. One near Lyon is said to have gathered round her no less than a hundred thousand persons with pilgrim staves in their hands

ready to follow her. They knew not with her. Another of these prophetesses with whom Rabbi Spierre's name also became associated was Suzette Labrus. She was born near Vaux Saint in Perrigar on the 8th of May 1747. Her childhood was passed in fits of ecstasy. She could never look at a crucifix without bursting into tears. In extreme youth, she believed herself divinely called to become a saint and a prophetess.

She was a pretty girl, but the admiration her good looks excited annoyed her so much that she endeavored, with incomplete success apparently, to destroy her complexion by rubbing quick lime over her face at night. Indeed, Suzanne, like Catherine, was ingenious in inventing punishments for her poor body. She wore a hair shirt, tried to poison herself by eating spiders, mixed gall with her food, and slept on pebbles. Like Joan of Arc, she heard heavenly voices. They bade her reform the church and drag down the mighty from their seats. As early as 1779, she prophesied that the Pope would lose his temporal power, the French clergy. their property, and that peace would reign among nations. It is hardly surprising that,

much to her annoyance, the clergy of her native province refused to take her seriously. The credulous Dongell, however, heard of her prophecies, among which, so he used to say, was a prediction that he would one day sit in the Assembly of the States General. The fanatical monk determined not to lose sight of so promising a fellow mystic. He remained in constant correspondence with Labrus until the outbreak of the revolution. after the establishment of the national church by the constituent assembly the juring priests whose attention had been called to suzette's prophecies by dongell began to take an interest in her one of them pontard bishop of the dordaigne department encouraged her to go to paris she went tramping barefoot all the way from perigard at paris in seventeen ninety one the duchess de bourbon ever on the lookout for curiosities in the way of religion received suzette into her house and introduced her to a number of during priests and bishops, among whom were the famous Foschet and

Desbois, Bishop of Amiens. To the robust sense of Foschet and Desbois she was a lunatic, but Pontard and others continued to believe in her. In the following year, the Bishop of Dordogne founded a newspaper entitled The Journal Prophetic, which contained little besides the predictions of the Pitoness Perigourdin as the editor styled her. Meanwhile, Susette's voices were telling her to go to Rome, there to deal faithfully with the Holy Father. She had already, so she said long afterwards, entered into communication with Robespierre, who had confided to her that one day he would be compelled to restore the religion he was then striving to destroy, and on that day he would look to Suzette to help him.

Though no credence can be attached to such a story, there seems little doubt that in 1792 the constitutional clergy did actually entertain a hope that La Bruce might be able to persuade the Pope to give his sanction to the lately established National Church. With the object of inquiring into the matter, seven constitutional bishops assembled on the 19th of February 1792, and summoned Suzette before them. She came, accompanied, of course, by her hostess, the Duchess de Beaubon, and equally, of course, intent on displaying her prophetical gifts

before so August an assembly of the constitutional hierarchy. She predicted the resurrection of the Dauphin Louis XVI's Seldice, son, who had died at the beginning of the revolution and of mirabaut. On being asked when the resurrections would take place, she replied, soon. When urged to be more explicit, she was wisely silent. On the inquiry as to whether it would be within three or four months, she equivocally nodded her head. Not even such marvels availed to remove the doubts of Fosh and Desbois, but the remaining prelates were unanimous and deciding to appoint La Bruce to their ambassador to the Holy See. Before starting on her mission, she took Holy Communion at the Church of

of Les Filles Saint-Toma, again accompanied by the Duchess de Beaubon. On her way to Rome, Susette preached in churches, clubs, and by the roadside, addressing her audiences as friends and brethren in the manner of the orators of the Jacobin Club. At Bologna, after undergoing a cross-examination by the papal legate, she was driven from the town. At Viterbo, she was arrested. consequently it was as a prisoner that she finally reached Rome and the castle of St. Angelo, which was to be her abode for the next six years. The directory demanded her release in vain.

Not until the French troops occupied Rome in 1798 did she regain her freedom. Then at length the exile returned to France and to Paris, only to find that Le Tons was plus of fanatism and that the only course open to a prophetess was to subside into obscurity, especially after the year 1799, which she had predicted was to see the end of the world. Suzette lived on until 1821. On her death, she left Pontal, her executor and the sole legatee of her little fortune of three thousand francs.

Suzette's family disputed the will, but apparently without success. Pontal, who had been diligent in publishing his friend's writings during her lifetime, an addition of her collected works chiefly prophecies had appeared at Bordeaux in 1797. does not appear to have published anything after her death. But, as we have said, Le Tonne et de pluto fanatism. We have seen in this chapter many types of feminine religious mentality,

ranging from the Protestant Madame de Stahl, the philosophic Madame Roland, the doubting Lucille d'Emoulli, to the credulous Duchess de Beaubon and the hysterical fanatics Catherine Theo and Susette Labrus. But in all their divergencies, these varying types are united by one common bond, by one passionate sentiment which amounted to a religion,

love of their native land. This was the sentiment that possessed revolutionary women as well as men, Christians, deists, atheists all alike. The revolution, like every other great movement, had itself seekers, its miserable speculators and profiteers and persons bent only on their own personal advancement. But the names of these egoists are not those which are most remembered. The leading women in this book,

even the two poor hallucinated women whose stories we have just told had a sense of national solidarity. Many of the women, like their masculine fellow workers, made hideous blunders. They allowed themselves to be blinded by suspicion, and some of them committed serious crimes against humanity. But they did it all in the cause they believed to be their countries. They deserved to be called patriots, and this was the title of all others that they honored most. they had at last reached one stage in the road that leads to ideals wider and nobler than many of them even imagined. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Part 1 of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens

This Librevox recording is in the public domain. 10 The Rise and Fall of the Women's Party Part 1 Quote Though few, we hold a promise for the race, that was not at our rising. You are free to win brave mates. You lose but marionettes. He who's for us, for him, are we. George Meredith. Hitherto, we have seen the women of the revolution

battling for progress in general, either side by side with men or apart in their own separate fields. We have seen men politicians making use of women in various ways to further the general cause of the revolution. But we should have a false impression of the women. But we should have a false impression of the women of the Revolution were we to think of them as so completely occupied with the common wheel as to be indifferent to the wheel of their own sex in particular. Though the word feminism was not coined until after the Revolution, women's struggle for emancipation went on through the Revolution and had begun long before it. From the Middle Ages onwards there had been feminists in France. Christine de Pizant, Marguerite de Valoiselle, Mademoiselle de

But not until the revolution had there been a distinct feminist movement. Not until men began to combine to demand recognition of the rights of man, did women begin to combine to demand that the rights of men should include those of women? It was in the 18th century, the seed time of modern ideas, writes Mr. Havillock Ellis, that our great-grandfathers became conscious of a discordant break in the traditional conceptions of women's status. The vague cries of justice, freedom, equality which were being hurled about the world were here and there energetically applied to women. In France, throughout the century, philosophers, with the exception of that arch-ante-feminist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had been sowing the seed of revolutionary feminism as well as of much else. In the customs of all lands, wrote Diderot, nature's cruelty to women has been reinforced by the cruelty of the common law.

In marriage, man unjustly arrogates to himself a proprietorial right over his wife. Montesquieu and Voltaire were both in favor of giving women political rights. So were D'Alembert, Beaumarche, and Marcierge. Thus, towards the end of the century, feminism was in the air. In England, two years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Mary Wollstonecraft published the first of her feminist books, thoughts on the education of daughters, to be succeeded five years later by her great work,

the vindication of the rights of women, which was immediately translated into French. In Germany, Kant's friend Theodore Gottliecht von Himmel was preparing his two feminist treatises, Uber di Bergelgé bergé verbeserang der Weiber, and Uber Weiblichet-Bildung, which appeared respectively in 1792 and 18001. Meanwhile in France,

The last of the philosophers, Condorcet, was surpassing in zeal and persistence all these advocates of feminism. We have already seen Condorcet and his wife in their salon at the Hotel de Monnet, including women's political enfranchisement among the ideas which their friends despised as utopian. It was in the year before the revolution that Condorcet in the second of his, Lettre d'un d'un borgi de New Haven to a citoyen de Virginie, demanded that women should not merely vote, but be eligible for election to governing bodies. In the following year, he returned to the same theme in an essay on the Constitution and the Functions

of the Assemblies Provincial, and again in the next year, in an article, On the Admission de Fam, on Road de Cite, contributed to the journal of La Societ de 1789. Later in his classic work, The Tableau de Progret de Lespri Humain, he laid down as a necessary condition

of intellectual progress, the complete destruction of prejudices, which have created a legal inequality between the two sexes, fatal even to those whom it favors. The most revolutionary of his demands, that women should not only vote but be eligible for election to governing bodies, was made in the earliest of these works.

In the matter of suffrage, Condorcet was a very moderate reformer. All he demanded both for men and women was a slight extension of a very restricted property qualification. For we must remember that when the revolution opened, women were not entirely debarred from voting. Ever since the institution of the States General by Philippe LeBelle in 1302,

certain women had possessed this privilege and had from time to time made use of it. Now, when the States General, after a lapse of 175 years, were once more summoned by a royal decree, a clause in that decree called upon all women lay or religious, who held seignorial fiefs to appoint proxies, chosen from the nobility in the case of laywomen,

from the clergy in the case of nuns, to represent them in the electoral colleges. Women complied. Consequently, certain members of the National Assembly owed their election partly to women's votes. This, according to Condorcet, was quite right and proper. The injustice lay, he contended, in the article he contributed to the Journal of the 1789 Society

in limiting the right of representation to the women who held seignorial thieves. Condorcet would have it extended to the fact feminine holders of territorial feifs. It is not the advocacy of this very modest measure of reform, but the revolutionary nature of the arguments by which he supported it that entitles Condorcet to rank with John Stuart Mill as one of the greatest advocates of women's suffrage. With Condorcet's reasoning, striking and novel as it was in his day, we are now so

familiar that there is no need to repeat it here. Yet, hardly any of his men contemporaries agreed with him. Among prominent politicians only the Abbe Siaez, the diplomatist Talleyrand, and the scientist Rom, advocated women's suffrage. But the women who demanded the political enfranchisement of their sex were more numerous. They were led by four fiery agitators with whom we are already well acquainted. Eta Palme von Elders, Olymp de Guge, Tyroen de Merrick, and Claire Lacombaumbe. Probably none of them except perhaps Atapalm had ever read a line of Condorc's writings. They would have had no patience with his moderate and aristocratic notions,

for each member of the quartet at one time or other claimed what is known in France today as Le Suffrage Integral. Eta Palme was the most moderate of the four. For that reason, and also because she was the first to disappear from the revolution scene, we will take her first, although she was not the first to begin feminist propaganda. Eta Palme, or Madame Delder's, as we have said in a previous chapter, was an influential member of the club. known as the Friends of Truth or the Social Circle founded in 1790.

There, and owing largely no doubt, to the fact that Condorcet was a member, women's rights and wrongs were frequently discussed. But the speakers were not always feminist. On the 31st of October 1790, one speaker enunciated the familiar doctrine that a woman's sphere is bounded by the walls of her home. There, he said, is woman's throne. There she is surrounded by her children who should be her only glory. Then, with the revolutionists and failing appeal to the annals of Rome, Cornelia, he concluded,

was neither senator, nor consul, nor general of the Roman armies, she was the mother of the Groki. But anti-feminists were, of course, not allowed the last word at the social circle. A few weeks later, it was announced that on the 26th of November, a young man,

Charles Louis Rousseau, a former deputy extraordinaire, for Chablis and Tonner, would speak, on the following points. 1. Do women exercise any influence over government? 2. How best can that influence be used for the good of the state? 3. In a properly constituted state, what should be the social and political position of women?

4. A proposal to create magisterial functions exclusively exercisable by women. Every care was taken to ensure Rousseau a large and influential audience. The club's newspaper Bouch de Fer, announced that not only members of the Social Circle, but members of the Constituent Assembly, the Paris Municipality and of other clubs, the Jacobin, Les Electeer Patriote, and Les Electeux de 1789, would be admitted on producing their cards. In spite of all these carefully planned arrangements, the meeting resulted in a complete fiasco, and would have covered feminism with ridicule had it not been for the intervention of a clever woman in the audience.

rousseau was a dapper little man well-powdered with a fine tricolour cockade in his hat and another at the hilt of his sword but he was utterly ignorant of the art of speaking in public in vain did his women friends by their vociferous applause endeavour to inspire him with the eloquence he lacked rousseau mendered on interminably until the women who were not his personal admirers and the whole male portion of the assembly were bored to extinction and tried but in vain to cry him down shall he continue inquired the embarrassed president when dr michel yes yes shouted the speaker's women friends but renewed frequent and forcible interruptions from the rest of the audience finally reduced even the persistent rousseau to unwilling silence as at long last he ceased speaking a tall and well-dressed woman emerged from the seats in the amphitheatre reserved for her sex and mounting the platform protested against the disgraceful treatment accorded to the champion of women's rights i demand she cried in the name of every citizeness present that the speaker be allowed to continue but by that time the president had adjourned the meeting and there remained nothing for the women to do but to gather round the oratress to smother her with embraces and to overwhelm her with their thanks and congratulations. This brave champion of her sex was none other than Etta Palm Delders. Etta had so fascinated the social circle

that the club insisted on her fixing a day when she would address them at greater length. They even wanted to make her president. Only the former request was granted. Etta was persuaded to name the day. It was to be the 30th of December. In the interval, the silenced but by no means discomfited Rousseau, insisted on completing his oration at the Paris Vauxhall on the 13th of December. And to guard against interruption this time,

he refused to admit to the hall any man for whose orderly behavior a woman would not hold herself responsible. This plan was apparently successful, and Rousseau was allowed to drone on as long as he liked and to weary his listeners without interruption. Etta's triumph on the 30th was as brilliant as Rousseau's failure had been dismal. O ye gods and goddesses Had cried another Teuton, Anarcharchi Scloots.

Behold the divine hippatia herself on the platform. But Madame Delders was too mistrustful of her Dutch accent To deliver her own speech. It was read for her by one of the club's secretaries, And for the defects of its composition The writer felt it necessary to apologize. Born and bred in a foreign land, she began, If the construction of my phrases is not according to,

the rules of the French Academy, I ask you to believe that I have consulted my heart rather than a dictionary. The audience was ready to make every allowance. The speech was received with immense applause. It was printed at the club's expense, and with other subsequent speeches by Madame Delders, was circulated throughout France under the title of, "'Appel to French on the Regeneration of Emers, and necessities de an influence of women in a government libra. The women's of Craye responded to this appeal by electing its author a member of the recently formed women's section of the National Guard, and presenting her, some say with a sort of honor, but at any rate, with one of the National Medals struck to commemorate the Feast of the Federation.

With much pomp and ceremony the formal presentation was made in the amphitheater of the Palais Royal by the commander of the Cray National Guard, in the name of the captains and members of the Women's Section and of the Municipal Council of Cray. In acknowledging the honor conferred upon her, Madame Delder's proposed that a statue to Fossillon's wife should be erected in the amphitheater in order that the members of the club might have constantly before their eyes

a model of wisdom, modesty, and every moral and civic virtue. The president of the club, not to be outdone in heroics, rejoined that never would the male friends of truth consent to wear chains save chains of flowers woven by Etta's hands, or those of her amiable fellow workers.

As to the speech itself, though it was embroidered with many a flower of rhetoric, if any convinced suffragists heard it, their hearts must have been left cold. Much was said about the reform of women's morals. They were adjourned to adorn their heads with crowns of civism instead of with pompons and other frivolous ornaments. But women's influence on government,

which was supposed to be the main theme of the discourse, was left almost unnoticed. Suffragists must have been disappointed when, after speaking of the injustice of women's position in the family and society, the speaker conceded that for the present anything like equality between the sexes was out of the question. This must be postponed until another revolution. For the present, women must concentrate on moral progress,

on winning educational advantages, on making themselves worthy to be the companions of men. Any anti-feminist might have said as much and did as we shall see when we come to the anti-feminism of Madame Roland. However, with the exception of Monsieur and Madame Condorcet, There were probably few, if any, suffragists belonging to the social circle. Consequently, Madame Delder's enjoyed her triumph undisturbed, and she lived up to her opportunity. The fame she had already acquired as a platform woman made her as eager as all the other orbitraces of the Revolution to display her eloquence to the best advantage,

i.e., in the presence of the National Assembly. On the 23rd of March 1791, she proposed, apparently in vain, to the women of the Social Circle, that this should go in a body to thank the National Assembly for having granted women an existence civil. A year later she was more successful, and on the 1st of April, 1792, she actually found herself playing the coveted part and appearing at the head of a deputation

before the legislative assembly. This time she came out as a real suffragist. Not content with asking for equality of educational opportunities, she demanded equal political rights for women and men, majority for women at 21 instead of at 25, and the right to divorce. The reply of the President of the Assembly was the perfection of la Gallantry Francaise. He promised that in the future, the Assembly would avoid passing any laws which should cause women's citizens to shed tears or displease them in any way.

He granted the petitioners the honours of the sitting and referred their petition to the Committee on Legislation and Education, in whose pigeonholes it was no doubt safely buried. This was probably one of Madame Delder's last appearances in public. By that time, the social circle had ceased to exist, and soon the patriotic and philanthropic ladies also were to discontinue their meetings. The fact is that Madame Delder's was now growing unpopular. It had been whispered that she was a spy in the service of the hated king of Prussia.

His ambassador, it was said, had been seen visiting her flat. The report would seem to have originated with Madame Robert, who made it a pretext for opposing Madame Delder's election to the Jacobin Fraternal Society. Madame Robert's real reason was jealousy. Being the chief speaker at the society, she feared Eta as a rival. The French government of the day can hardly have taken the rumor seriously, seeing that in September 1792, Le Brun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, sent Eta to Holland to inquire whether the Republic of the United Provinces

would be willing to receive an ambassador from the new Republic of France. The failure of Madame Delder's in this important mission closed her public career. Whether she ever returned to France is uncertain. At any rate, she was treated as an emigree. The property she had left in Paris was confiscated, and the contents of her flat in La Rue Favar placed under seal. In the inventory of her furniture figure a bust of Camille d'Amoulin, a great many corsets and four porcelain dolls.

Whether Madame Delder's was a Prussian spy or not, as a feminist, we suspect her of being. a tremor, ready to advocate women's suffrage when, as at the time of her petition to the assembly, the idea was growing popular, but equally ready to adjourn the reform indefinitely when she was addressing an audience with whom the measure was unlikely to find favor. If, during the first three years of the revolution, the idea of women's parliamentary enfranchisement gained ground, it certainly was not due to the advocacy of Madame Delder's. There was a woman, however, who though she changed her mind from time to time as to some

articles of her political creed, remained from first to last, and was even before the revolution as stalwart and loyal suffragist. This woman was Olymp de Gouge. Michelé calls her the high priestess of feminism. She was the first of the Revolution women to organize an orderly feminist manifestation. Hardly had the National Assembly taken up its quarters at Paris, in the writing school of the Rue Saint-Henoré, when on the 28th of October 1789, Olympe, at the head of a deputation of women, laid before the deputies a program of feminist reform, such as, with one exception, might well be urged today by Marie Averron or any other leader of the women's party in France.

It included complete sex equality before the law, the admission of women to all occupations for which they were fitted, the suppression of what was called the dowry system, and then came that touch of eccentricity, or shall we say, utopianism, that rendered so many of Olymp's proposals impracticable. If the dowry system must remain, said she, then let the state provide husbands for girls who were without dowries. In

conclusion, Olymp, with the usual flourish, asked, why women who come from the scepter to the crook are born to scatter flowers over men's lives should receive from them in return nothing but chains, torment, and injustice. In those early days, we may be sure

the Assembly listened patiently to Olymp's declamation. She would have spoken well, said one of her hearers, if only she had not so many fireworks in her brain. As time went on, the assembly grew less patient, for Olympe

never lost an opportunity of displaying her eloquence before them. And at the same time, as we have seen, she was pouring forth innumerable pamphlets and posting many of them on the hoardings of Paris. Feminism figured large in many of these pronouncements. Like Madame

Delders, Olimp, who was self-educated as far as she was educated at all, desired for her fellow women advantages that had never been hers. She demanded that girls should receive the same education as boys, that all careers should be open to women, who with a wider outlook would acquit themselves better of their domestic duties. While she would have all the political privileges that men enjoyed extended to women, she further demanded that in certain directions women should acquire peculiar privileges of their own. That of the for example. She advocated the establishment of a national theater in which only plays by women should be acted. Here we catch the personal note that was never far to seek in Olymp's propaganda.

She had suffered, as we have seen, from the refusal of her plays by the Comedie French and other Paris theatres. She is said to have taken one of her productions, L'esclav des Negre, to London. But there she had no better success than in Paris. That is, by the way, however. But to return to her feminism. A utrance, as it was, did not blind her to the false of her sex. As denunciatory as a Hebrew prophet, preaching at everyone, as we have said, at the king, the queen, the assembly, the clubs, especially the Jacobin, she did not fail to deal faithfully even brutally with her fellow women.

In France, especially for many centuries, she wrote, women have done more harm than good, for the French government has almost always depended on the administration nocturned of them. If in public women have no political power, they command despotically in the mystere. Such frankness as this, Olympus, justified

by saying, I serve my sex by persecuting it. But all the faults of women, their ineffectuality, their sloth, their coquetry, this feminist laid at men's door. To the lowest class of her fellow women, she showed no pity whatever.

In order that honest women in their daughter should not be horrified by so vile as spectacle as was too often seen in the paris streets olinph would sweep prostitutes off the public thoroughfares and shut them up in separate quarters belonging to the state and under police supervision the most celebrated of all her feminist tracks the one which more than any other entitles her to be regarded as the foundress of modern feminism is her declaration of the rights of women contained in a pamphlet addressed to the queen and published in september seventeen ninety one in the opening paragraph marie antoinette was implored to win the gratitude of one half of her subjects and at least a third of the other half by declaring herself the protectress of her sex and by furthering the recognition of their lawful rights the declaration contains seventeen clauses in the first following the same form as the declaration of the rights of man it opens by declaring that woman is born free than it adds and equal in rights to man social distinctions can can only be based on common utility. The principle of sovereignty resides in the nation which consists of men as well as of women.

Laws should express the general will. Citizenses as well as citizens should have a share in framing them, either directly or through their representatives. The law should be equal for all. Citizenses, like citizens, being equal in its eyes, should be equally eligible for all public dignities, posts, and employments, according to their capacity and without any distinction save that of their virtues and talents.

Women as well as men pay taxes. Consequently, women as well as men have the right to call to account the public servants whom they pay. There is nothing in these principles which would not be accepted by the average woman suffragist of today. Few suffragists, however, indeed few social reformers, would agree with the clauses which follow and which deal with marriage and children. still smarting under the wrongs real or imaginary of her childhood, believing herself to have been an illegitimate child, and consequently deprived of what should have been her lawful inheritance, Olimp propounded a new marriage system, the Contra Social of Lom and de la Fame. It is one of her most whimsical and impracticable schemes.

The contracting parties were to hold their property in common, with the reservation that it could be divided in favor of children who might be born of an inclination particular. Mutually agreeing concludes this strange proposal, that our property belongs to our children, de calcule that all alike

without distinction, have the right to bear the name of the father and mother who have recognized them. No one, as far as we know, ever took this scheme seriously. While retaining the institution of marriage, Olymp would reduce it to an absurdity. This was precisely the treatment that Olymp was soon to accuse

the legislative assembly of having meted out to the monarchy. Of the monarchy, she said justly, it would have been better to abolish it rather than drag it in the mud. It is in Article 10 of the Declaration of the Rights of Women that occurs the famous phrase that even those who know nothing else about her always associate with Olymp. Woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she should also have the right to mount the platform. Among all the rights Olimp demanded for women, those two were the only ones that she herself ever exercised. The pity that Olimp refused to the fallen members of her own sex, we have already seen her lavishing heroically on the deposed king.

In a previous chapter we left her on the eve of her arrest, the inevitable consequence of her quixotic offer to defend Louis Capet at his trial. Had anything else been necessary to render her condemnation inevitable, she supplied it by her frequent attacks on Robespierre, whom she described as a perpetual discreet. race to the revolution, and by her espousal of the lost cause of La Géronde. It is my nature, she had written, to be on the side of the weak and the oppressed. On the 20th of July, 1793, while instructing a bill-poster as to the posting up of her latest pamphlet, Le Trois Urne or the Salue de la Patry, Olymp was arrested in La Rue de Arles. She was taken to the

nearest Mary, there interrogated and detained. Among the formal charges brought against her was the publication of a seditious play, La France Savie or the Tyrant D'estroney, and three pamphlets of which the most serious was Les Troas Urne, which proposed that the people should choose by a plebiscite between the Republican government, one and indivisible, a federative government and a monarchy. To profess or even to suggest federalism, as it was called, was then regarded as a crime of the deepest die, as many Gerondists knew to their cost. For three months, Olymp was taken. taken from prison to prison, from the Mary to the Abayi, from the Abayé to La Forse, then to a private

hospital, and then to the vestibule of death, La Conciergerie. All the time she was pouring forth letters and pamphlets, continuing her attacks on Robespierre and the Jacobin Club, which she called a den of thieves, and writing to the son who was to deny and to censure her as, a conspirator who had forgotten the virtues becoming to her sex. Olimp made her will in prison, her fortune. all that was left of fifty thousand francs in investment and furniture valued at thirty thousand she bequeathed to this ungrateful son her heart she left to her country her honesty to men if they needed it her soul to women on the second of november she was

brought before the revolutionary tribunal the advocate who should have defended her was not present the tribunal refused to allow her to appoint another she therefore conducted her own defense and as we might expect with great eloquence. Writing to her son, she said, 20 times did I chase the blood from the cheeks of my executioners. That was, of course, her habitual exaggeration. But it was true that she won the sympathy of the audience

and made a great impression on her judges. As the sentence was about to be pronounced, she cried, My enemies will not have the triumph of seeing my blood flow. I am pregnant and shall present the Republic with a citizen or citizeness. The sentence was taken. until the next day, when after examining the accused, a surgeon pronounced her statement to be incorrect. Psychologists tell us that in all human beings there are masculine and feminine elements.

Olympe had many masculine qualities. But during the final hours of her life, her femininity had come out strong, for her last request had been for a mirror. And, gazing on her face for the last time she had cried, Ah, thank heaven, my face is not playing me any tricks. am not too pale. Not long before her death, Olimp had written of herself. My first impulse is like a tempest, but as soon as the explosion is over, my mind is perfectly calm. All Olimp's explosions were now over. On the 4th of November 1793, she went out into the eternal calm. As she was going

up the steps to the guillotine, the executioner, as was his want, put out his hand to help her. I forbid you to touch me, cried Olimp, except to cut off my head. Then having reached the platform, she said, I wanted to be somebody. Alas, for that fatal desire for renown. Feminism, like every other creed, is colored by the temperament of the man or woman that professes it. We have seen certain faces of Olimp's feminism proceeding from her vanity and ambition. We shall also discern the personal note in the feminism of D'Ire-Wang, which we are now to consider.

Tier Wang was essentially a man's woman, and it was only when her attractiveness to men began to wane that her feminism developed. But even then, she continued to seek men's society. For Tirwang, like that other great feminists, George Sand, frankly confessed that she disliked women, French women at any rate. "'Ina'm not la Famaise,' she said with her flamish accent.

It was through men that in the beginning she strove to realize her feminist state, games. Early in 1790, she founded a men's club, Les Amis de la Lois, comprising a dozen or more members who, for a few weeks, it had only twenty meetings in all, gathered on Tuesdays and Thursdays at her house, L'Otel de Grenoble, Rue Boulouet, and there women's rights were frequently discussed. During the early months of 1790, when Tirwang was not at this or some other club, she was attending the debates of the Assembly. There, when on the 4th of February the King

announced his addition to the Constitution, men and women, and Thier Wang among the latter, swore allegiance to the new regime. Shortly afterwards, somewhere between the 20th and the 25th of the month, Tierwang, having once been allowed to make her voice heard in the councils of the state, proposed to go a step further, and at the close of her famous speech at the Cordilliers asked for a consultative vote in that assembly. But then, despite the applause that had greeted her speech,

she suffered one of those rebuffs which are partly accountable for the bitterness and extravagance of her later career. The reply of the Assembly of the Cordolier district to Teruang's request is significant. According to Camille de Moulin, who related the incident in his newspaper L'E Revolutions de France and de Brabant, the Assembly, after thanking the citizeness for her proposed vote on the motion of the President the following resolution. Seeing that a canon of the Council of Macon has formally recognized, that women, like men, possess a soul and an intelligence, unarmes and the raison. Women cannot be denied the right to make such good use of them as the

previous speaker has done. Mademoiselle Thierre Wange and other members of her sex will always be free to propose anything that seems to them for the good of their country. But as to the question of status, as to whether the Des Moiselle Tierwang shall be admitted to the meeting of the district with a consultative vote, the assembly is incompetent to take any decision, and the discussion is closed. In other words, women may freely use for the good of the state the powers of which a council of the church grudgingly admitted them to be possessed. There was no reason, for example, why Les Situoyen should not arm Les Situayan, as they

inaccurately termed the women of France, with daggers against the enemies of the revolution, why they should not form them into a bodyguard to protect Robespierre. But when it came to admitting the so-called citoyen even into the out-te-of-the-outers, court of citizenship, to giving one of them even so much as a consultative voice in a district council, no, that could not be tolerated, for it constituted an infringement of man's political monopoly, and so fundamental an innovation was not for one moment to be thought of. If this was the masculine attitude towards so very moderate a feminist demand in the early and comparatively feminist days of the revolution, there was little chance later when,

as we shall see, the government's policy became decidedly anti-feminist that much more aspiring demands would be granted. In the two years that followed, Tehr Wang received many an ovation, but I doubt whether she ever completely recovered from the disappointment of that first refusal. Her greatest triumph was that we have already described at the Jacques-Obein Club. This was after her return from Austria in January 1792. Tirwang then became a person of considerable importance. Her salon in La Rue de Tournaud was frequented by all that was most distinguished in revolutionary society.

On patriotic playing cards, Terwang's picture figured as the Queen of Spades, with the Duke of Orleans as king and Saint-Ere as nave. In the Palais Royal Gardens and in the Café d'O on the Feillant terrace, her word was law, and, at a gesture from her, shopkeepers were constrained to remove from their windows pictures she considered to be reactionary. She took part in the first invasion of the Tuileries on the 20th of June. By this time, however, signs were not wanting that her popularity was on the wane. On the 4th of March, in an interminable speech at the Jacobin Club, in which she proposed to raise public spirit to its proper height, as a juste hauteur, Tyrewang succeeded in

lowering the spirits of her hearers. On the 13th of April occurred that stormy debate, in the club, when, as we have seen, she was accused of raising a riot in the Foubourg, St. Antoine. Whether or no, Terwang was to blame in that matter, there is no doubt she was becoming more and more violent and losing her balance.

Probably, this arose partly from the growth of the malady which was finally to deprive her of her reason. Meanwhile, as her attractiveness faded, she began to neglect her personal appearance. She was getting to look emaciated, worn, and haggard. A royalist who knew her

at this time described her as the living image of the revolution. Brilliant in its beginning, fanatical in the middle, and revolting and sanguinary after the 10th of August. On that day, armed with pistols and a dagger, wearing her usual riding habit, this time of blue, and a black hat with black feathers, says one eyewitness, with tricolour says another, she was up betimes and early at the Fayon monastery, where the first prisoners were being brought in. As to what then happened, there has been much discussion. Early historians accused her of having with her own hands

signed one of the prisoners, Sulla, the editor of the reactionary newspaper Les Actes de Apotre, which had made the most scurrilous attacks upon her. Later authorities acquitted of such a crime. Exasperated at the sight of this well-known reactionary, Tier Wang may have clamored for his death.

She may even have laid hands on him herself, but Sulo quickly found himself struggling with several assailants. He had been disarmed, but he seized the sword of one of his captors and fought for his life. But what was one against so many? He was overpowered, dragged out into the courtyard, and there put to debt with that animal savagery which, as we know too well, revolutions seemed to engender.

That Tirwang should have been in any way implicated in this incident is terrible enough, and one is glad to find the even more horrible charge groundless. Equally groundless was the assertion that Thierwang took part in the the prison massacres of September. No contemporary authority mentions her among the perpetrators of those assassinations. Indeed, she seems to have protested against them. They were the work of the Jacobin Party

to which she was now so strongly opposed that she was called Brissotin and Anti-Robespierist. End of Chapter 10, Part 1. Chapter 10, Part 2, of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens. This Librevox recording is in the public Domain. Part 2 of the rise and fall of the women's party

Robespierre had traveled far since the day when at Arras he had charmed Mademoiselle de Carallio by desiring that men and women should work in double harness. Robespierre had now become as inveterate and anti-feminist as his master, Rousseau. Collaud-de-her-Bois raised the laugh against Thir-Wang when in her presence at the Jacobin Club, with mock regret, he said he had heard Therwang declaring that she must withdraw her friendship from him and from Robespierre. Tier Wang infuriated, leapt from her seat onto the platform, and clamored to be allowed to speak. Such an uproar followed that the president put on his hat, thus signifying the adjournment

of the meeting. Tier Wang was at this time living close to the Jacobin at 273, Rue Saint-Honnery, where she held a salon and once she continued to carry on her feminist propaganda. Like Olymp, she had her manifestos posted on the hoardings. one of these exists today in the Bibliotec Nacional. Printed on gray paper, it is an appeal to the 48 sections of Paris, each to nominate from among the worthiest and the most highly respected women of the section, six whose duty it should be to remind the citizens of the dangers threatening the country of the necessity of maintaining order and liberty of opinion. These reminders were indeed becoming more and more necessary every day, and none had more need of them than Therwain. but she herself was soon to fall a victim of that anarchy against which she was protesting in the quarrel between the jacobin and the gheronde which reached its climax in the may of this year seventeen ninety three the former had not hesitated to employ against their political enemies

the tricoteuse, le poissard, and the lowest women of the streets. The most disreputable of these women ruffs, said to be in the pay

of the Jacobin, used to surge in angry mobs on the feyant terrace and round the doors of the assembly. There they refused to allow any to

enter who were not of their own particular brand of political opinion. It had long been the custom of these fearsome mean ads

publicly to flog in the most humiliating manner, any of their number whose views or conduct displeased them. The Prince of the period represent many such scenes which even our Galre might hesitate to depict. Tierwang had protested against these indecent floggings and had threatened to make the whippers lick the dust.

They took their revenge. On the 15th of May, when at 9 o'clock in the morning, Tyre Wang was crossing the Fayon Terrace on her way to the assembly, the women set upon her and fustigated her with such vigor that she might have died had not the guard rescued her from their hands. according to one account Mara was her deliverer, for Mara as we have seen was something of a feminist. This was Ther Wang's last appearance in public. She did not immediately lose her reason as some have maintained, for there is evidence that she was managing her business affairs

with perfect lucidity in the following summer. A year later she was incapable of doing so, and a family council was convened to nominate a guardian who should act for her. By that time, Teerwere's, Wang had been arrested by the revolutionary committee of her section on what charge does not appear, but probably for some imprudent words uttered by her in a fit of madness. A prey to one of the most ghastly forms of lunacy, she was transferred from prison to an asylum and thence from madhouse to madhouse during the 23 years of misery that remained to her,

for she never recovered her reason. Finally, on the 1st of May 1817, her tragic existence closed in the Salpeteriaire hospital. hospital. Terwang's humiliation in May and Olymp's arrest in July 1793 left Claire Lacombaumbre the leader of the woman's party. We have already seen her as the moving spirit of the Women's Republican Revolutionary Club. Her feminism was of a different kind from that of Olymp and Terwang. While they strove for nothing more than women's admission on the same terms as men to citizenship in the bourgeois republic, La Combe aimed at something much wider. While their motto was

Le suffrage integral. Hers might have been the humanity integral. For La Combe and her brilliant young lover Tesey Leclair belong to the most extreme of revolutionary factions

Les Enrager with its headquarters in the club of that name. Though the word socialist had not yet been invented, Les Enrager were the Socialists

of the Great Revolution, the ancestors of the communards of 1871. La Combe, or one of her women disciples, summed up

their program in a petition to the convention which said, We desire that there should not be a single unfortunate person in the whole republic. But before arriving at that blissful condition, Les Enrages were prepared to justify their title by rendering multitudes unfortunate. As sworn foes of the Jacobin, Les Enrages were prepared to oppose them on any ground, even on that of modernism.

But generally, Les Enrager as extreme terrorists of the terror, protested against what they called the indulgence of the Convention Leclerc, who had spent some time at Lyon before coming to Paris, had there proposed that 6,000 aristocrats should be cast into the son. Lecombe never followed her lover to such length. The accusation that she took part in the prison massacres of September 1792 is without foundation. Indeed, one of the charges brought against her at her arrest two years later was that in the Republican Revolutionary Club she had protested against these massacres.

Nevertheless, she and her club threw themselves onto the side of Les Enraget in their attack on the Jacobin and the Convention. Their plan was to demand the immediate execution of the Constitution which the Convention had drawn up, but which it refused to put into action until so it said, the war was ended. On the 26th of August, 1793, La Combe appeared before the Convention at the head of a deputation from the Republican Revolutionary Club. she demanded the execution of the laws of the constitution we have not she remonstrated been the first to accept this constitution in order that anarchy and the rule of intriguers may be indefinitely prolonged we call upon you by dismissing all nobles to show that their defenders are not among you it is not enough to tell the people that their happiness is near you must make them experience it and four years unhappiness have rendered them cherry of believing your fine promises with what indignation must the people behold men gorged with their money and fattened on their blood preaching to them patience and sobriety would you have us believe that the country's enemies have no devoted defenders among you then dismiss all nobles without exception if there be any of good faith they will prove it by sacrificing themselves willingly for the country's welfare be not afraid of disorganizing the army if a general's politics are bad then the more talented he is

the more necessary is it to get rid of him. Do not be so unjust toward patriots as to believe that there is no one among them worthy to command our armies. If, when despotism reigned, crime was rewarded, under liberty's rule, virtue should be given the preference.

You have decreed that all suspected persons shall be arrested. Is not such a law grotesque when those who executed are themselves suspected? Ah, legislators. Is this how you trick the people? Is this the equality on which their happiness was to be founded? Is this their reward for the incalculable evils they have suffered so long and so patiently?

No, it shall not be said that these people reduced to despair must take justice into their own hands. You will execute justice by dismissing guilty administrators, by creating extraordinary tribunals in such numbers that our patriots, when they start for the front, may be able to say, We are not anxious about the fate of our women and children, for beneath the arm of the law we have seen all the plotters of the interior perish. Decree these great measures and a mass levy of all the male population

and you will have saved La Patry. The Convention listened to Lacombe's speech in cold silence, and as soon as it was finished without note or comment proceeded to the next business. The deputation had indeed experienced great difficulty in gaining admission, another which arrived after it had been given the precedence, and against this injustice, the young Leclair, whose influence is plainly discernible in the petition itself,

did not fail to protest. Not all the measures proposed by Les Oranger were as vindictive as these proposals of La Combe. They advocated, for example, the institution of national workshops, somewhat on the lines of those which were to prove a failure in the Revolution of 1848. Olymp, by the way, with her habitual interpretation,

consistency had supported this social reform, though she was anything but a socialist. Girondin and Jacobin alike mistrusted Les Enragete. But the Jacobin in their conflict with their political enemies were glad to make use of these extremists. It is probable that with several other Republican revolutionary women, La Combe was present at the Jacobey meetings of March, April and May when the ruin of the Gerondist party was decided on. When the Jacobin were finally victorious and, the gérondist leaders either executed or driven to wander homeless throughout France, then the victors turned against their former allies. And in this second faction fight,

as we shall see, Lacomb and the woman's party she represented finally came to grief. How far the hooligan women who in the spring of 1793 were constituted, or constituted themselves, the doorkeepers of the convention, were recruited by or even drawn from La Combe's revolutionary Republican women has been much discussed. Girondiste writers maintain that these frenzied meanads were members of the club, and that it consisted of prostitutes and the Plusidioes Coquine of Paris. But the Girondes were not impartial critics of the club, for it had been the most formidable of their political enemies. The Girondist accusation is not borne out by certain clauses in the club's constitution. The Republican revolutionary citizenesses, begins one of these,

are convinced that without morals and principles, liberty cannot exist. The society has resolved, runs another, that it will only admit citizenesses of good morals. This it considers to be the most essential of all qualifications, and it has resolved that any failure to comply with this condition shall constitute one of the principal causes of exclusion. If the club consisted of prostitutes, it was strange that on the 21st of September 1793, it should have sent a deputation to petition the Convention to Transfer Women of Bad Life,

Fem de Maves V, to houses instituted by the nation where they might be occupied in useful work, and by means of patriotic reading induced to forsake their evil ways. For, urge the petitioners, these unhappy victims of libertinage often have good hearts, and it is poverty alone that has frequently reduced them to this deplorable condition. As for the Jacobin, now that their gérondist enemies were disposed of, and they no longer needed the support either of the women ruffs or of the women's club, they began to find both of them a nuisance, and in order to get rid of them were glad of the excuse of confounding the two

with which their enemies had provided them. In this association of the women's party with Les Enraget, the Jacobin found a further excuse for the anti-feminist campaign they now began to carry on in the convention, the Commune, the Jacobin Club, the Jacobin Fraternal Society, and even in the Republican Revolutionary Club itself. This internecine campaign opened when, on the 31st of May 1793, the Convention excluded women from its galleries. On that very day, the Women's Party had received another rebuff. A deputation of women from the Republican Revolutionary Club to the Council General of the Commune

had vainly petitioned that women should be allowed to join in the deliberations of the Revolutionary Committee of their own section. When three days later, the same deputation approached the convention, they were denied admittance. On the 31st of July, the Women's Club was significantly left out of the project to erect a nobilisk in honor of Marat, and this, in spite of the fact to which Lacombes publicly drew attention, that with the women the idea had originated. Meanwhile, Lacombe was having trouble with her own club, for some of its members refused to be identified with the ultra-violent party. One of these who had spoken at the Cordilliers Club was accused by one of the Cordilliers of being too indulgent. In August, Lacombe found it necessary to reproach certain of her followers with their devotion to Robespierre. You are infatuated with Robespierre, she cried.

I regard him as an ordinary individual. In the Jacobin Club, she was accused of having shown disrespect to Robespierre by calling him Monsieur Robespierre. In September, having in her turn become president of the Republican Revolutionary Club, La Conve began a regular canvassing of the members of the Committee de Surte General with the object of obtaining their permission for the members of the club to visit the prisons, to interrogate the prisoners, and to set at liberty those whom they found innocent. Here, Les Enrager were substituting Modestine. Deerantism for terrorism.

Two members of the committee, Chabot and Bacier, reported this extraordinary proceeding to the Jacobin Club. While roundly invading against Lacombe's action, they tried to explain it by saying that she had confessed to one of them her love for one of the prisoners, a royalist, Monsieur de Ré, son of a former mayor of Toulouse. The wrath of the Jacobin, already waxing hot against Lacombe,

rose to fever heat at this further accusation. The charge was, probably groundless, for the object of this prison visitation was doubtless to set free some of the supporters of Les Enraget. Nevertheless, the club was only too ready to believe Bacier and Chabot's story. One member attributed to women the anarchical condition of the city. Protests from the women's gallery. But he continued and demanded La Combe's arrest. Another citizen, Tashro, with great probability accused La Combe of pushing herself in everywhere. Citoyenne La Combe se foo'er partout.

At a meeting at which the Speaker was present, he had heard her clamoring for the Constitution and nothing but the Constitution. What hypocritical and feinté, moderate, language, when she is trying to sap the foundation of the Constitution and to overthrow all constituted authorities. Another citizen, The woman you denounce is very dangerous because she is very eloquent. At this moment, Lacomb herself enters one of the galleries and seems to ask to speak.

The noise and confusion are terrific. The president puts on his hat. When finally order is restored, the president, after rebuking La Combe, puts two motions to the vote. First, that the Republican Revolutionary Club be asked to expel its suspected leaders. Second, that the Comitie de Surte General be asked to arrest such suspected persons. both resolutions were passed unanimously then an amendment was proposed that la combe be taken at once before the committee de surte general thereupon a citizen objected that this could not be done that the committee could only be asked to summon la combe before it i do not doubt added the speaker that she is an instrument of the counter-revolution la combe was not arrested and on la gazette frances announcing her arrest she wrote to the editor saying i will prove to you that my arms are as free as my body for they will give themselves the treat of giving you a good whipping if in your issue of to-morrow you do not eat your words and i keep my word femme la combe president

though for the time being the president went free the debate at the jacobin had destroyed any prestige that remained to the republican revolutionary club on the sixth of october a memorable anniversary a deputation from a club known as la societ du du du du du du petitioned the convention to dissolve the women's club strange to say and most unfortunately for the club's reputation the convention refused but before the month was out the conduct of the women themselves but before the month was out the conduct of the women themselves but a second refusal out of the question. On the 28th of October, 1793, came the final struggle which decided the fate of the women's party. Where its causes less well known,

one might have suspected the government of inciting an anti-feminist pogrom in order once and for all to banish women from French politics. As far as I know, however, no reliable authority has suggested that a hidden hand was behind the ostensible events that led to the disturbance.

In the beginning, the fault undoubtedly lay with the market women, Les Poissard. And here, in this last act of the Revolution feminist drama, as in the first, the bread and cheese question constitutes the determining factor. For though the scarcity of food, the high prices and the consequent scarcity of customers, Le Poissart were turning against the Republic, and having torn off their tricolour cockades were reverting to royalism. In September, the convention had made the wearing of the tricolour compulsory, and the Republican revolutionary women took it upon themselves to exact obedience to the decree. We have already told how they dealt with the recalcitrance,

how donning the red cap and masculine trousers, Les Cubist paraded the streets, forcing the royalist women to resume their cockades, and even to put on the red cap. As was inevitable, Les Poissard refused in their own special way. There were the usual floggings, and La Combe herself is said to have shared Terwang's humiliation. Meanwhile, a horde of Poissard had invaded the St. Eustache Charnal House, where the Republican Revolutionary Women were in session. There occurred scenes of such disorder as to provoke the intervention of a male armed force, La Force Armée.

Not a large one, however, only six citizens with swords drawn and accompanied by a justice of the peace. The justice contented himself with demanding from the platform silence in the name of the law. and then after assuring the invaders of the club that they would not again be asked to put on the red cap but that they were at liberty to wear any head-dress that pleased them he withdrew followed by his swordsmen all very glad no doubt to get out of the medley but the club women were disappointed with this mild intervention and three times asked for it to be repeated the armed men did not return but unhappily for the club as it turned out the justice of the peace only too courageous did put in a second appearance reascending the platform he suggested as the best way to restore order that the vice-president who was in the chair should take off her red cap she did so and put it on the head of the justice of the peace loud applause from the galleries then the justice apparently took his revenge he declared the meeting close les citoyen revolutionaires ne s'n plus en seance he cried anyone may come in and they did immediately the rabble searched into the charnel house and it seemed as if the gruesome place was about to deserve its name only too well had it not been for the intervention of a company of artillerymen there would doubtless have been slaughter of women by women as it was many of the club members were seriously wounded surgeons were called in

the soldiers succeeded in providing a way of escape for the attack who at first repeatedly refused to avail themselves of it all they desired was to have a record process verbal made of what had a occurred. In the end, they yielded to persuasion and the Charonel House was cleared. Thus ended what proved to be the last meeting of the Club of Republican Revolutionary Women. On the following day, the 29th of October, a deputation of women from one of the fraternal societies, La Societe Popular de la Section du Bon Conceilles, appeared before the convention and complained of the disorderly conduct of Les Citoyenne Republican Revolutionaire. Thereupon the Convention on the Motion of Fabre de Glantine requested the Committee de Sorte General

to report on the question of women's clubs. The Committee lost no time in sending its report. Amar read it to the convention the very next day. The measure it proposed, the suppression of all women's clubs and societies was of course a foregone conclusion. But the arguments it adduced struck much deeper than the question

than before the Convention of the Continuance of Women's Clubs' Involves, France. They reached down to the fundamental principles of relations between the sexes. They were a prelude to the laws which from that day to this have determined those relations throughout the country. It was from this broad standpoint that Amar approached the problem. Are women capable of exercising political rights, he inquired, and of taking an active part in the affairs of government? When assembled in political associations, are they capable of deliberating. The committee, said Amar, had examined the two questions and had replied in the

negative to both. Woman's nature is such, he argued, as to unfit her to take part in politics. In the height of the terror, addressing one of the most hysterical parliaments the world has ever seen, Amar declared that a quality essential in all who would take part in the government is imperturbable equanimity. Then he went on to inquire whether a woman's appearance in public is compatible with her good fame. Women, he contended, can best serve their country by influencing their husbands

and teaching their children to love liberty. That Amar was preaching to the converted was obvious. After a brief discussion, the resolution that clubs and societies of women of whatever kind are prohibited

was put and carried with only one dissentient voice, that of Charlieé. He was an obscure Jacobin of whom little is known. He based his objection on the argument that as women were

human beings, they ought not to be denied the right to meet together peaceably. Not a very fortunate line of argument, considering the occurrences of the previous day. Bessier rejoined that Chalier did not seem to understand the question then before the house. Then, forsaking Amar's broad line of reasoning, Bessier maintained that the question was not one of principles so much as of expediency. Whether or no these women's societies were dangerous. They had been proved to be dangerous.

therefore away with principles. It was this argument of an expediency that was used by Monsieur Clemenceau when a woman suffragist deputation waited upon him in 1919. I grant, he replied, that every argument for giving votes to men may be used for giving votes to women, but we dare not give women votes in France, for fear, he added, of increasing the power of the church. The women of the revolution did not submit to their defeat without a protest, denied access to the convention on the twenty eighth of november a large company of them appeared at the council of the commune thence too they were expelled after having been treated to an anti-feminist diatri by anaxagrar

shometh declared that the place in which the people's magistrates deliberate should be closed to all who insult the nation no cried another member who realized that the women were intended the law allows them to enter read the law retorted shomette the law decrees that moral shall be respected. Here I find them violated. Since when were women allowed to abjure their sex? Then, in words which might have been Micheles, this ex-priest fell to the usual anti-feminist tactics for the so-called exaltation of women as the divinity of the domestic sanctuary. How could women be so foolish as to be discontented with a kingdom in which legislators and magistrates are at their feet? Your despotism, he cried, is the only despotism we cannot destroy, since it is founded on love and consequently on human nature. In the name of human nature stay as you are. Remember that haughty wife of a stupid and perfidious husband, that Roland who thought herself able to govern the Republican endangered its fall. Remember that Virago, that woman man, the impudent Olymp de Guge, who tried to meddle in politics and who committed crimes? all these immoral creatures have been annihilated by the arm of the law,

and do you wish to imitate them? Under the monarchy, women were everything because men were nothing. Only in the reign of Charles V, the Seventh, were Jones of Arc necessary. Schomet's resolution that women should henceforth be excluded from the commune's deliberations was carried. Claire La Combe had not figured among the women whom Chomet had denounced by name because he had only mentioned those who were dead. but La Combe, though alive in the flesh, was dead politically. Her political reputation could not survive the events of the 28th of October,

so she now returned to her original profession. Early in 1794, she was about to leave Paris for Dunkirk to keep a theatrical engagement when she was arrested on the charge of being connected with the socialist enemies of the government. The socialist leader Jacques Rue had already been in prison several months. Lecler was arrested about the same time Lacombe. He had by this time married Pauline Leon, who had been La Combe's predecessor as president of the Republican Revolutionary Club. La Combe's imprisonment first in one jail, then another lasted

17 months. For a while, she was at the Luxembourg. There, carefully dressed and charming as ever, she turned an honest penny by selling candles to her fellow prisoners. Meanwhile, her women followers, of whom she always had a devoted band, were leaving no stone unturned in the their endeavors to procure her liberty. At length, in the autumn of 1795, they succeeded. The order for her release, signed by the Committee de Surte General and dated Le Prémyé Fructidor, is the latest document and the latest information concerning this remarkable woman that has as yet been discovered. The women's party went down with the wreck of the Republican Revolutionary Club. The women's movement had resulted in complete failure.

in face of the enormous prejudices against women's direct influence in politics, strengthened by the unfortunate influence of Marie Antoinette in face of the lack of education and experience of the leading women, it had been doomed to failure from the outset. And latterly, had anything further been necessary to render its defeat inevitable, the final cause had been supplied by the alliance between feminists and the socialists who were the sworn foes of the party in power. The feminism of the revolution, as we have seen, was the first combined attempt to win political enfranchisement made by French women, indeed in modern history, by the women of any country. This great pioneer movement could hardly have been inaugurated at a more unfavorable time.

To pilot any movement past the shoals, the quicksands and the whirlpools of the tempestuous sea of the revolution would have required genius of a particular order, and this the women leaders did not possess. Most of the difficulties against which they had to contend have already been noticed. One that has not been mentioned is the anti-feminism of prominent revolutionary women, notably of Madame Roland, Madame Robert, and Madame Talien. Someone has said that there are two types of femininity, the Posse-ish kind and the tigerish kind. Feminists are of the latter type, anti-feminists of the former. Madame Roland, in her affectation of shrinking into the political background is essentially

Passayish. In this respect, her whole career was a paradox. For here was a woman founding and dominating a party, for a time guiding the whole movement of the revolution and all the while insisting on the narrowest sex limitations. She was convinced,

writes her friend Busk, that woman must owe her celebrity entirely to the esteem she inspires by the exercise of her domestic virtues. Madame Roland deeply immersed in politics could yet at same time right to Bancaal. I do not believe it to be in accordance with morals for women to come to the fore. They ought to exert a good influence to foster and inflame every

sentiment useful to La Patry, but they ought not to take any direct part in politics. They cannot come out into the open, agir overtly, until all Frenchmen deserve to be called free. Until then, our frivolity and our bad morals will render all that they do ridiculous. Madame Robert and Madame Talien held the same opinions. Women's domestic duties, wrote Madame Robert, forbid her to exercise administrative functions. The companions of men ought not to be their rivals, said Madame Talien. The only progressive measure either of them ever advocated were Madame Robert's proposal that health inspector should be appointed in order to introduce some improvement into the miserable conditions prevailing in the hospitals,

and Madame Relance and Madame Talien's do. demand for more educational advantages for women, but only that they might be fitter companions for men. All three of them were in this respect the Mrs. Humphrey words of their day. With the exception of short-lived newspapers like Bush de Fair, the whole press of the day was anti-feminist, and one of the most influential revolutionary journals, Les Révolution de Paris, under the direction of Prudhomme, for years carried on a vigorous anti-feminist campaign, mercilessly attacking all the feminist leaders and the women's clubs. Like other anti-feminists, the contributors to this newspaper were inconsistent,

for while they maintained that woman has no concern whatever with anything outside the walls of her home, they called on women to assemble round the altar of La Patry, there to swear that they would never marry an aristocrat, that they would bear lighted torches into the Tullier Palace, and that they would redouble their ardor when the country was invaded. did women then gain nothing at all from the revolution a lamp would not allow that they had benefited in any way whatever but she was wrong the revolution had conferred on women two new social rights the right to divorce and the right to equality of inheritance revolutionary women as we have seen did not hesitate to exercise this right to divorce husbands too in considerable numbers avail themselves of it and we have already mentioned the club for divorced women, Les Dams on Eta de Divorce.

Like certain clubs of the present day, it was a blend of the club proper and the pension. Among its advertised attractions were a piano, a harp, and a harpsichord. It owed its existence to La Citoyenne Neveux, and its quarters were the mansion then known as the Hotel de Subis, in which the National Archives are now kept. One of the famous divorces of the revolution was that of the actor Talma and his wife Julie. Julie was wealthy as well as brilliant. Her house in La Rue de Chantrain was stored full of priceless treasures, many of which served Talma as theatrical properties.

Madame Talma had been a great inspiration to her husband in his profession. But she was seven years older than he. She had been his mistress before their marriage, and after a while he tired of her. Candid friends told Julie of his unfaithfulness. She sued for a divorce, sold her charming hotel to General Bono. apart just home from Egypt, and went to live with her friend Madame de Condorcet in La Rue de Matignon. She wrote an account of the divorce proceedings to Louise Fuzzi.

We, Monsieur and Madame Talma, drove to the municipal offices in the same carriage. On the way, we talked of all manner of subjects like people taking a drive in the country. My husband gave me his hand as I alighted. We sat side by side, and we signed our names as if it had been the most ordinary country. When it was done, he escorted me to my carriage. I trust, said I, that you will not entirely deprive me of your society. You will come and see me sometimes, won't you? Certainly, he replied, rather embarrassed but evidently pleased.

In spite of all my efforts to control myself, I was pale and my voice trembled with emotion. I went home and gave myself up to my grief. Pity me, for I am very unhappy. Telma kept his promise. He often visited his former wife, and says her friend Louise, his presence was always a consolation. In many other cases, divorce did not involve the cessation of friendly relations between those who had once been married. More than one woman who had divorced her husband risked her life to save his. As time went on, divorces grew more and more common. They were granted for insanity, desertion for two years at least, immigration abroad in some

cases, notorious immoral life, and incompatibility of temper. After the restoration, Louis the 18th government abolished divorce, and it was not reinstituted until Nacquez law in 1884. The second benefit the revolution conferred on woman, the inheritance law is enforced today. The statute which forbids a father totally to disinherit his children, provides that he shall distribute his possessions equally among his male and female offspring. The far-reaching results of this measure in giving a certain economic independence to the women of France can with difficulty be exaggerated. Indirectly, it has affected the question of women's suffrage, for it is this measure of economic independence that blinds many French women to the importance of political enfranchisement.

Politically, women at the close of the revolution were worse off than at the beginning. in none of its aims had the revolution failed more signally than in the establishment of equality. It was essentially a middle-class movement, and as such it had abolished but a few of the inequalities between classes. Inequality between the sexes, despite the two reforms we have mentioned, it left more strongly accentuated than it had ever been. For relations between men and women, which before the revolution had been regulated by vague custom, were now clearly defined by law and generally to the disadvantage of the woman. The most notable instance is that of the franchise.

In 1789, as we have said, women were admitted to the Outer Court of Citizenship by reason of a very limited property qualification. But the property vote of 1789 was swept away with other vestiges of the feudalism of which it was a relic. And the revolution left French women, as they have remained ever since, without votes for any governing body.

End of Chapter 10. End of Women of the French Revolution by Winifred Stevens.