Full text of "NINE WOMEN"

See other formats

920.7 S68n
Sokolnikova
Sine 0inen

57-05989

920.7 S68n
Sokolnikova
line women

57-05989
$4.50

KANSAS CITY, MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY

NINE WOMEN

THEROIGNE DE MERICGURT
(In the Musee Carnavalct)

NINE WOMEN

DRAWN FROM THE EPOCH OF THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION

0.5, by

H-ALINA SOKOLNIKOVA

(Serebriakova)

TRANSLATED BY
H. C. STEVENS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MRS, SIDNEY WEBB

NEW YORK
JONATHAN CAPE & HARRISON SMITH

LONDON - JONATHAN CAPE - TORONTO

FIRST PUBLISHED 1932

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

CONTENTS

PREFACE 7

I THEROIGNE DE MERICOURT 1 5

II CHARLOTTE CORDAY*- 35

III MANON ROLAND^ 67

IV MADAME DU BARRY - 13!

V CLAIRE LACOMBE 145

VI LUCILE DESMOULINS 193

VII ELISABETH LEBAS 223

VIII MADAME TALLIEN 243

IX JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE- 269

ILLUSTRATIONS

THEROIGNE DE MERICOURT Frontispiece

CHARLOTTE CORDAY facing f age 36

MANON ROLAND ,

MADAME DU BARRY 5? 5&gt; J 3 2

MADAME TALLIEN

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE &gt; 2 7

PREFACE

WAS it not Renan who said that within a generation
or two, the whole of the history of past centuries would
have been written; definitely, once for all, leaving
nothing more to be done by any historical student?
He forgot that the subject matter of history resembles
a mountain range which, even if it remains unaltered,
assumes innumerable different contours and colours,
and presents an endless variety of peaks and crevices
according to the standpoint from which it is viewed
and even the time of day at which it is pictured.
Thus the past of human society will never cease to
be the subject of curiosity and repeated historical
analysis. It follows that there is not, and can never be,
a history book without a bias ; that is a point of view
upon which the selection of facts depends. When we
feel that a history is impartial, this means merely
that its unconscious bias happens to be our own 1

The series of vivid pictures of personalities in the
French Revolution which Madame Sokolnikova (the
wife of the Soviet Ambassador in London) has now
published in English is written frankly from the
standpoint of one who has lived through another
revolution and one even more drastically subversive
than that of 1789-95. The author has had a whole
decade of experience as a writer including service as
correspondent in China and Turkestan of a Moscow

PREFACE

journal; life as journalist and student in Paris; and the
publication of several volumes of travels and short
stories which have gone through successive editions in
Russian and have appeared also in French and
German. Through her husband, sometime Professor
of Public Finance at the Moscow University ? Madame
Sokolnikova has added to her experience of the literary
life a varied acquaintance with the academic as well as
the political world of mofe than one country.

I welcome this first translation of her work into
English, as revealing, not merely a distinguished
intelligence, but also a new and significant judgment of
incidents in the French Revolution from the standpoint
of Russian Communist doctrine. For the title of the
book must not obscure the fact that what is here
described is more than the life-history of nine French
women of historical prominence. In the vivid accounts
of their ancestry, their family connections, their
changing environment and the men with whom their
lives were intertwined, we are given a vision a
vision from a particular angle of a large part of the
social and economic circumstances of eighteenth-
century France. Very naturally, the vision places
various historical heroines in an unaccustomed light*
Madame Roland, for instance, as the essence of the
haute bourgeoisie^ is not portrayed as favourably as
Claire Lacombe, who voiced the economic aspirations
of the proletariat.

The dominant note of this series of biographical
studies, as sounded by the accomplished authoress, is,
as it seems to me, one of frustration frustration not

PREFACE

merely of the individual strivings of the imperfect
mortals whose doings are described (four of these
women were executed, another died in a mad-house),
but also of the hopes and wishes, and of the very
purpose embodied in the Revolution in which they were
taking part. What economic advantage did the French
Revolution bring to the mass of the French people who,
then as now, were rural cultivators or urban wage-
earners, living narrow lives in penury and periodical
want? The frustration of the proletarian expectations
was felt even when the Revolution was still triumphant.
Liberty, said Jacques Roux the friend of Claire
Lacombe to the Convention in 1793, is only an
empty delusion when one class of people can with
impunity starve another class. Equality is only an
empty delusion when the rich by their monopoly
exercise the right of life and death over their fellow-
creatures. A republic is only an empty delusion when
the counter-revolution finds support in prices for
commodities which three-fourths of the citizens cannot
manage without tears. . . , It is only by stopping the
brigandage of the middlemen. , . . It is only by putting
commodities within reach of the s ant-culottes that you
will attach them to the Revolution and rally them around
the constitutional laws. And what remained even of
the political triumphs of the Revolution, Madame
Sokolnikova appears to ask, when the universal upset
was over, and the guillotine had done its work, and the
wonderful new laws of the Convention had been passed?
The successive reactions of the Directoire, the Consulate,
the Empire and the Bourbon Restoration left almost

PREFACE

unchanged the social and economic circumstances of
the great mass of the French people.

Where the French Revolution failed, so Madame
Sokolnikova seems to suggest, alike in competence and
in durability, was in its limitation to the political
relations of the community to the exclusion of those
that were economic. But it must be remembered that
this negative attitude towards constructive economics
on the part of the Constituent Assembly was inherent
in the teaching of Jean Jacques Rousseau whose
philosophy stood to the Revolution of 1 789 in much the
same influential position as the work of Karl Marx did
to the Revolution of 1917. Man, as an individual,
was, according to Rousseau, sacrosanct, inherently
virtuous and rational, if only he was left uncontrolled
by his fellow men through governmental institutions,
legislative or executive. Perhaps twentieth-century
Communists are prone to forget that the French Revolu
tion of 1789 had its own work to do in sweeping away
the characteristic serfdom of the French cultivator,
together with the oppressive exclusiveness of the
manufacturers guilds from which the urban workmen
suffered, not to mention the ubiquitous tyranny of
priest and noble and monarch and tax-collector. More
over, in these days of disillusionment it is easy to
underrate the effect upon France, upon Western
Europe and upon the political thought of the world, of
the purely political purpose of the French Revolution.
After all, it was the ideas of 1789, and not the
American Declaration of Independence, which made
all the governments of North-Western Europe

PREFACE

although only in the course of a century essentially
Republican and Democratic.

It may well be that the Russian Revolution, with its
abolition of private property in land ,and industrial
capital, and its adoption of the principle of equality of
income, whilst, be it noted, sacrificing, for a time at
any rate, the equality of voting power, has improved
upon its predecessor, and that this momentous trans
formation, with its compulsory socialization of agri
culture as well as of industry, will actually bring about
the promised plenitude of commodities and services for
the bulk of the people. The proletarians of Western
Europe and the United States will, I think, wait and
see. Soviet Russia is assuredly opening up to the
students of all countries an immense laboratory of
social experiments of a novel kind. But nothing less
than the prolonged experience of the successful
working of the system will convince the rest of the
world that such a sudden and simultaneous collectivism
can yield to the manual workers a more secure liveli
hood at a higher standard of life, with more genuine
freedom and more effective control over the public
administration, than a gradual transformation of profit-
making Capitalism into an ever more embracing
Democratic organization of the whole community
the solution of the social problem which is advocated
and practised in Scandinavia and Great Britain, and to
a lesser extent, in other Western Democracies,

I end this preface with the fervent hope that the
adherents of rival ways of reaching the ideal Co
operative Commonwealth a society uniting the larg-

PREFACE

est measure of personal initiative and self-expression
with the maximum cultural development of all the
workers by hand and by brain will help each other
internationally by exchanging ideas and pooling the
results of their several experiences. Has not the time
come for the establishment of an International Institute
of Socialization at the meetings of which, without
seeking to pass resolutions for or against general
principles or specific proposals, those Socialists actively
concerned in the several departments of socialist
services could contribute their experiences, propound
their problems and discuss, in a purely scientific
spirit, the methods and forms, the procedure and the
devices through which the socialization of industry and
commerce, agriculture and mining, banking and
insurance can most successfully be pursued?

BEATRICE WEBB
PASSFIELD CORNER,

LIPHOOK,
August, 1931.

THEROIGNE DE MERICOURT

ONE hundred and thirteen years ago, in SalpStrtere,
a Paris asylum for the insane, a woman died whose
name during the early years of the revolution had been
on the lips of all Paris. She had spent over twenty
years in an iron cage for lunatics. During the latter
years of her life her malady had grown steadily more
serious; the demented creature had spent long days
and nights squatting on a straw palliasse, mumbling
incoherently or howling for hours on end, haunted
by bloody memories. Her filthiness and lack of all
sense of shame filled all who saw her with repugnance.
On June lyth, 1817, the hospital registrar recorded
against her name the laconic entry died. The
stone-paved cell in which the almost naked woman had
lived so long unblessed by a glimmer of rational
thought was left empty. This fifty-five-year-old
lunatic, whose case had attracted the keen attention
of famous psychiatrists, was Th6roigne de M6ricourt,
the beautiful Amazon who had fearlessly led a mob
of starving women to the assault of regal Versailles.

Anne Josephe Th&roigne (she adopted the pre
tentious title of Th^roigne de M6ricourt later) was
born in 1762 in the little Belgian village of Marcourt.
Her father was a peasant oppressed by taxes, shortage
of land, and cares for his children. Every surplus
mouth increased the already intolerable burden on the

NINE WOMEN

family. The question of sending Anne Josephe out
into the world arose early; she was predestined to
domestic service. The young girl was very unhappy at
having to part from her parents; affection for her
family always remained one of the dominating traits
in Th&roigne s character.

A place was found for her in a village not far from
her home, but she did not continue long in service.
The youthful Anne attracted the notice of a rich
Englishman, and when he left for his own country-
she accompanied him. This journey to England
marked the beginning of the bashful, golden-haired
Anne Josephe s transformation into the heroine of the
notorious society escapades of Th6roigne de M6ri-
court.

Many pages of Th^roigne s life-story remain ob
scure, but from fragmentary biographical details we
know that soon after her arrival in England she
embarked on a dissolute and extremely varied career.
Circumstances combined with her own abilities to
win her wealthy and distinguished lovers. She learned
a great deal, easily acquiring such knowledge as was
indispensable to her new position, including an
affected coquetry, the laws of society etiquette, and a
taste for music. After spending some years in London,
frequenting a licentious circle of financial and merchant
aristocracy, she went to Paris. Paris was already a
city torn with conflict and dissension, but, oblivious
of the signs of the coming revolution, Th&roigjtie
continued to live an empty and care-free existence.
Nevertheless, the scepticism and simple democratic

THfiROIGNE DE M^RICOURT

instinct of the one-time peasant girl remained strongly
entrenched beneath the superficial behaviour of the
frivolous courtesan. Th6roigne had never forgotten
her childhood, when the landowner and the tax-
collector had together deprived her family of its last
crust of bread. She had not severed herself from her
native village and her relatives, and she made no
attempt to conceal her origin. One of her brothers
revealed a talent for painting, and when she discovered
this she assisted him to travel to Italy, and wrote
asking her friends and patrons to attend to his educa
tion. She felt no compunction in ruining her wealthy
admirers, acquiring a house, jewellery, a brilliant
equipage, servants, and money in the bank. She was
fully conscious of her beauty and intelligence, and
callously exploited both gifts. She was calculating and
prudent, and decided to safeguard her future by
ensuring herself a regular income. In this she suc
ceeded : one of her friends actually signed the following
obligation very characteristic of the times in which
she lived:

4 I, Anne Nicolas Doublet, chevalier, Marquis
de Persan, Count de Dun and de Pateau, agree to
pay the demoiselle Anne Josephe Th6roigne, minor,
residing at Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, five thousand
livres annually for life, to be paid half-yearly.
This agreement is made on account of fifty thousand
livres received by the Marquis de Persan from the
demoiselle Th&roigne, provided that he may be
released from the agreement on payment of this
sum in full/

NINE WOMEN

Having assured herself a lasting prosperity, Th&-
roigne de M&icourt set to work to reorganize her
useless life. She was far too gifted and intelligent, and
moreover she was too discontented and rebellious by
nature, to be happy as a kept mistress/ TWroigne
was satiated with her mode of existence; she was
experiencing the desolation of spirit consequent upon
orgies and excesses, and the future revolutionary
sought a larger stage and a wider fame. During her
stay in England certain Italian singers had told her
that she had an unusually fine voice, and, remembering
this, she went to Italy to take lessons in voice pro
duction. Before her opened the alluring prospect of
becoming a prima donna. From Italy she wrote
regularly to her banker and friend, Perregaux, telling
him of her hopes and dreams for her future. These
letters are noteworthy for their businesslike tone, and
reveal her ability to understand complicated financial
questions, as well as her anxiety for those dear to her.
Her style, her turns of expression and similes, indicate
extensive reading and an impressionable mind.

In 1789, learning of the revolutionary incidents
occurring in France, she abandoned her studies and
hurried to Paris, burning with enthusiasm and ready
to join whole-heartedly in the revolutionary cause.
At that period the revolution was still bloodless and
genteel* On her arrival in Paris, TWroigne suffered
a complete transformation. Her inconstant and
rebellious character responded to and incarnated the
revolt and protest of the masses* The frivolous
courtesan was gone, never to return. All her powers^

THfiROIGNE DE M^RICOURT

passions, and fortune she devoted to the cause, finding
complete satisfaction in its service.

Th6roigne mixed with the people in the street, joined
in their revolutionary songs, shouted imprecations
against the Bourbons, and worshipped the early stars
of the Revolution Mirabeau and La Fayette. At first
she was lost in the crowd, undistinguished, but she
speedily made her way to the forefront, gathering the
oppressed behind her, and singling out the most
backward, depressed, and unfortunate of the women.
The womanly and sensitive Th&roigne de M^ricourt,
who had herself experienced many sorrows, heart-aches
and humiliations, became the women s organizer and
leader. In her first attempts at journalism and oratory
she gave expression to thoughts which women had
never before avowed. She who had never been a
mother or a wife instinctively found a means of access
to their thoughts, desires, and sorrows. The women
willingly yielded to her irresistible influence, and her
popularity grew rapidly. She became in a sense the
incarnation of women s emancipation. Many years
after, even the Russian reactionary obscurantists of
the nineteenth century who fought against the Russian
women s disenslavement used her name as an appella
tive:

Th&roigne de M6ricourt

Opened schools for females

In order to turn our idiots

Into Nihilists.

So the poet Shcherbin wrote in the fifties in ridicule

NINE WOMEN

of the revolutionary movement of the Russian intelli
gentsia.

From the very earliest days of the Revolution
Th&roigne s once luxurious house was turned topsy
turvy. In it she organized a remarkable club frequented
by representatives of all the revolutionary parties, who
came together to discuss the agitating events of the day.
Robespierre, watchful and not yet sure of himself; the
pug-nosed sluggard and buffoon, Danton ; Desmoulins,
with his petulant mouth; Mirabeau, the gentleman
with delicate hands, wheedling voice and hypocritical
smile; the amorous Ch6nier; the melancholy Abb6
Sieys ; the Russian count Stroganoff who was sym
pathetic to the Jacobins; the Roman* Saint Just, and
many other politicians, journalists and poets were
visitors to Th&roigne s untidy apartments. This was
in the morning of the Revolution.

Heedless of danger, Th&roigne was in the van of
the intrepid assault on the Bastille on July 14th,
1789. She was one of the first to break into the for
tress, carving a road for herself with a sword. She
received an enthusiastic ovation from the crowd.

A few months later, mounted on horseback, in male
costume, a scarf fluttering at her neck, a pistol in each
hand, Thfroigne rode at the head of the emboldened
women who marched to Versailles to demand an
audience of the king. Through a heavy downpour
the armies of the faubourgs moved on Versailles, the
women, commanded by Th6roigne, calling out the
men. This hungry rising of October 6th, 1789, was
the first threatening warning to Louis XVL The

THfiROIGNE DE MfiRICOURT

inflammatory genius of ThAroigne s speeches, her
unswerving confidence and readiness to resort to
revolutionary pressure these were qualities which
made an irresistible appeal to the starving wretches
of the faubourgs, and they willingly made her their
heroine.

Popular among the masses who had revolted against
the monarchy, Th6roigne aroused a furious hatred
among the royalists. The newspapers and pamphlets
published by the aristocrats called her plainly a vagrant
strumpet; their raging pasquils, a flood of caricatures
and innumerable articles reveal the persistence with
which the royalist press baited the Revolution as incar
nated in Th6roigne. The slanders ceased only after
August 1 9th, the day on which the monarchists were
shattered. She was reminded of her peccant past,
which had long since been redeemed by time and her
activities. She who was calling for healthy love and
labour was accused of debauchery, and numerous
wealthy paramours were ascribed to her. The reaction
ary journal Les Actes des Apotres, to which the virulent
pamphleteers Suleau, Rivarol, and Champalnetz were
zealous contributors, was especially bitter in its attacks
on the heroine of the faubourgs/ During these days
Throigne was reduced almost to complete destitu
tion, and was living from hand to mouth, selling the
remnants of her possessions and pledging her furniture
to pawnbrokers. She threw her remaining jewellery
on to the platform of the Cordeliers Club, calling on
the women to follow her example and to organize
the collection of funds to build a palace for the National

NINE WOMEN

Assembly on the site of the demolished Bastille-
Early in 1790 she was forced to hide from the
persecution of the royalists, and she retired to her
native village of Marcourt, not far from Lige in
Belgium. Into this quiet little hamlet she brought
a militant, revolutionary atmosphere. Her merry,
lively mind, homely language and indomitable enthu
siasm won the rustic youth especially to her side. The
peasants of Marcourt took to singing the Paris revolu
tionary songs and dreaming of a struggle with the
monarchists. Surrounded by a crowd of gaily dressed
peasant women, Th6roigne de Mfricourt would stand
in the village street relating the story of October fifth
and sixth, in which she had played so large a part.
Having the peasants turns of speech perfectly at her
command, she captivated her audience with details of
the march to Versailles. Proudly she told how, at the
head of a crowd of hungry women, she had broken
into the Austrian woman s apartments, causing a
ludicrous panic among the queen s favourites. Princess
Lamballe had picked up her heavy skirts which made
her look just like a lampshade; corpulent Madame
Elizabeth had sped on the heels of the fleeing queen ;
Marie Antoinette s hair had fallen down, and she
scattered showers of white powder as she ran* Th6~
roigne had flung herself after them in an endeavour to
prevent the treacherous queen s flight. Overturning
the ornate, heavily gilded chairs in her path, she had
overtaken Marie Antoinette on the very threshold of
the king s chamber, but there the queen had been
rescued by the imperturbable Necker. Th6roigne

THROIGNE DE M^RICOURT

hated the Bourbons and was implacable in her demand
for the abolition of the monarchy.

Even in her native village of Marcourt, surrounded
with the devotion and adoration of her fellow villagers,
Th6roigne was constantly planning fresh activities*
She wished to start a revolutionary journal in Lige
and she went to the city for this purpose. In Li6ge
she sought energetically and persistently for resources
wherewith to establish the contemplated journal. But
for a time she experienced a serious set-back in her
revolutionary course. Suddenly Throigne disappeared
from Lige, Her terrified brother, Pierre, spent all
his time fruitlessly searching for her. In her deserted
rooms he could find no indication whatever of what had
happened to his sister. He wrote to the banker,
Perregaux, in Paris, about her, and suggested the
possibility that she had been kidnapped by a romantic
admirer. But Th&roigne s disappearance had been
due to political, and not romantic causes. In that
little town her hatred for the queen of France, an
Austrian princess by birth, was too well known, and
when the Austrian troops entered Li6ge in January,
1791, they arrested her on the report of Laval ette,
a French courtier tmigre^ and sent her by special
convoy to the Austrian fortress of Kuffstein. Imprison
ment and obscurity were a torment to Th^roigne ; she
longed to be back in France, and in the attempt to
obtain her freedom she deliberately gave false answers
to the questions she was asked. At rare intervals she
succeeded in sending out letters from the fortress
to her brothers and friends, making a point of asking

NINE WOMEN

that above all else they should look after her library.
She had been deprived of her Seneca and Mably
on her arrest.

In their instructions to the investigating com
missary the Austrian authorities said of Theroigne:
Her fanatical enthusiasm in regard to everything
connected with democratic ideas is well known.*
They attempted to frighten her with menaces of
imprisonment for life, in the hope of forcing her to
admit the charge of high treason. As the result of her
incarceration she fell seriously ill, and it became
necessary to transfer her to Vienna, where she continued
to remain under domiciliary arrest. The examination
dragged on, but the information laid against her
by the courtier emigre could not be substantiated, and
the investigating judge inclined towards abandoning
the inquiry. Then Th&roigne succeeded in obtaining
an interview with the Austrian emperor Leopold,, and
this unusual prisoner aroused his interest. During her
talk with him she coolly and resolutely expounded her
revolutionary ideas and testified to her readiness to
fight all the monarchies in the world in the name of
liberty and equality. Leopold resolved on a chivalrous
gesture: Th&roigne was set free, made her way out of
Austria and reached Brussels. In September, 1791^ a
law was passed annulling all judicial processes begun
by the monarchist government against participants in
the French Revolution. Th&roigne hastened to avail
herself of this amnesty, and early in 1792, burning
with impatience and an imperative desire to resume
her place in the struggle, she returned to Paris. In

THfiROIGNE DE MfiRICOURT

the Jacobin club she was accorded a tumultuous
ovation, and the speakers paid tribute to her civic
prowess, expatiated on her political services and
exalted her womanly courage. They regarded her as a
victim of the coalition of European monarchs, an heroic
martyr who had broken through the fortress walls
behind which the emigres and the Austrians had
sought to conceal her. On February ist Th6roigne
told the Jacobins the story of her arrest and the details
of her imprisonment in Kuffstein. She went on to
argue persuasively that the only way to assure freedom
in France was by waging a ruthless war on the rebel
lious tmigrfc and the European despots. Burning
with desire for vengeance on the Austrians, she
concluded her lecture by telling her audience that the
French Revolution had innumerable friends in Holland,
Germany, and even in the Emperor s court. Her
summons to an offensive war found a particularly
sympathetic welcome in the pages of Brissot s Patriote
Franfois.

During the next few months her intellectual and
oratorical powers rose to their greatest height. She
spent her days in the Palais Royale and the Tuileries, in
the editorial offices of various journals, among the
women of the faubourgs, on the platforms of the clubs.
Desmoulins, Danton and others paid enthusiastic
tribute to the acumen and pathos of citizeness Th6-
roigne s speeches and writings. It was Th6roigne de
M^ricourt who proclaimed women s equality with
man not a mere verbal equality, but a practical
equality in domestic and in political life, in learning

NINE WOMEN

and in labour as one of the slogans of the revolution*
In a powerful speech in the Societ6 Fraternelle on the
proposal to organize an Amazons battalion, she cried
as she presented a banner to the women of the Saint
Antoine faubourg :

Citizenesses! Forget not that we owe ourselves
entirely to our country . . . We arm: we have that
right by nature and even by law; we shall show the
men that we are not inferior to them either in virtue
or in courage; we shall show Europe that French
women recognize their rights, and rise to the height
of the luminaries of the eighteenth century, despising
prejudices, which by the very fact that they are pre
judices are absurd, and are often immoral, because they
make a crime of virtue. Frenchwomen ! - . . compare
that which we are with that which we ought to be
in the social order. In order to realize our rights and
obligations we must take reason for arbiter, and,
guided by her, we shall distinguish the just from the
unjust . . . Frenchwomen! I say unto you yet again,
let us raise ourselves to the height of our destinies:
we shatter our fetters, it is time at last for women to
emerge from the shameful insignificance in which the
ignorance, the pride, and the injustice of men have
enslaved us so long; we recall the times when our
mothers, the Gallic and the proud Germanic women,
deliberated in the public assemblies, and fought at
their husbands sides to repulse the enemies of Liberty,
. . . Yes, generous citizenesses, all you who are listen
ing to me, arm yourselves, take part two or three
times a week in military exercises, open a list of French

THfiROIGNE DE MfiRICOURT

Amazons, and let all those women sign it who truly
love their country. . . .

In the Saint Antoine faubourg Throigne organized
a women s club. Three times a week the women spent
their evenings in reading, discussions, and practical
social work. This very quickly began to cause dis
satisfaction among the men: the children were not
being looked after, the dinner was cold, their clothes
were not mended, their wives weren t in their places !
The agitation among the men against the women s
mania for meeting become so powerful that the
Jacobin Club discussed the question of closing the
women s club altogether. The woman the wife and
mother of the petty bourgeois, the artisan, the worker
was the cornerstone of man s entire domestic life.
At that time communal dining-rooms of a type other
than the tavern did not exist, and without the woman
the household economy of the poverty-stricken worker
inevitably broke down.

When the question of citizeness Th&roigne s
excessive feministic ardour came to be discussed in the
Jacobin Club, the debates became impassioned and
revealed the deep-seated antipathies of the members.
Not unconvincingly many interpreted the declaration
of the Rights of Man as a declaration of the rights of
the male. Robespierre dryly abjured any sympathy
for citizeness Th&roigne. Certain of the speakers
referred to her work among the women with Platonic
respect, but the majority resolutely demanded that
their wives, sisters and daughters should return to
their domestic hearths. Two years previously Th&-

NINE WOMEN

roigne had attempted to gain admission as a full
member to her local Cordeliers Club, but her applica
tion had been rejected. But although the Club had
refused to accept her as a member, in its resolution
it had remarked that, as the Church council at Macon
had recognized the existence of mind and soul in
woman, there was no justification for forbidding her
to develop her faculties still further. Evidently the
women had not made much progress during the two
years of the Revolution ! But at moments of popular
revolt the women, and Th6roigne as their leader,
played a more important part.

On August loth, when the king s treachery was
openly manifested and the people poured towards the
Tuileries, Th&roigne was, as always, in the vanguard.
Ruthless and resolute in the struggle, she took active
part in settling scores with Suleau, the young royalist
writer who in his ardent defence of the monarchy had
dipped his pen in venom. On the morning of August
ioth, Th6roigne was with a detachment on guard
at the Terrasse des Feuillants. A party of monarchist
prisoners attired in the uniform of a revolutionary
patrol was brought to the Terrasse. Among them was
Suleau. Th6roigne hated him for the incessant ridicule
to which he had subjected her in the Paris reactionary
Press. She obtained the police commissary *s permis
sion to have him and ten others of the prisoners tried
publicly on the spot. The crowd dealt ruthlessly with
them. Suleau himself was trampled to death under
Th^roigne s feet.

September arrived, bringing with it the massacre

THfiROIGNE DE MfiRICOURT

of the imprisoned aristocrats and of those suspected of
sympathies with the monarchy. It was followed by an
intensification of the conflict between The Mountain
and the Girondins. By the spring of 1792 Theroigne
also had been drawn into this party struggle. At the
beginning of the year Collot cTHerbois unceremoni
ously lampooned her in retaliation for a disparaging
reference to Robespierre. Why did Theroigne attach
herself to the Girondins? Militant revolutionary,
demagogic feminist though she was, nevertheless she
retreated when the final victory over the monarchy
opened a new page of Jacobin struggle against the
moderate bourgeoisie, who were not anxious for further
social upheavals. We know that the wise and eloquent
Brissot, her close friend, had a great influence over her.
The militant bombast of Brissot and the Girondins on
questions of foreign policy was much more to her mind
than the calculating pacifism of Robespierre and the
Mountain. To her the intensification of the civil war,
which led to the terrorist dictatorship of the Jacobins,
seemed only a suicidal internecine conflict in the pre
sence of the external enemy, the interventionist armies
directed by Pitt. In the inter-class struggle Th6roigne
became an advocate of peace.

In the spring of 1792, shortly before the Girondins
expulsion from the Convention, Th6roigne issued an
appeal to all the sections of Paris, calling for reconcilia
tion. Her proclamation, To the Forty-eight Sections,
was posted up all over the city* It opened with the
words :

* Citizens 1 Listen! I have no desire to coin phrases,

NINE WOMEN

I wish to tell you the pure and simple truth. Where are
we? All the passions which could be artificially stimu
lated are taking possession of us, we are almost on the
brink of the precipice. Citizens! Stop and reflect! It

is time!

She Went on to describe the civil dissensions already

breaking out:

Already quarrels, precursors of civil war, have
occurred in certain sections; let us then be on our
guard and calmly consider who have provoked them,
in order that we may know our enemies. . . . Citizens !
Stop and reflect, or we are lost. The moment has at
length arrived when the common interest demands
that we should be united, that we should sacrifice
our hatreds and our passions for the public safety/

Thdroigne proceeded to argue that the victory of the
enemy armies, who were advancing in alliance with the
6migri$) threatened the extermination of all who had
attached themselves to the Revolution, irrespective of
party. And as a means of ensuring internal peace in
Paris she proposed that the women should intervene.
In every section six citizenesses were to be chosen,
the most virtuous and serious ... in order to reconcile
and reunite the citizens, and to remind them of the
dangers which menace the country.* These citizenesses
were to wear a scarf bearing the inscription: * Friend
ship and Fraternity/ and were to maintain order in the
public assemblies.

Throigne s proposal was not adopted. Exhorta
tions no longer availed; the struggle between the
Girondins and the Mountain moved swiftly on to its

THfiROIGNE DE MfiRICOURT

bloody denouement. To the Forty-eight Sections
was of course Girondist in spirit. Theroigne had lost
her former close and direct contact with the movement
and the revolutionary needs of the masses of the
people, and this proved her undoing. A few days
before the expulsion of the Girondist leaders from the
Convention on May 3ist, 1793, Theroigne was in the
Tuileries. In front of the palace the women of the
faubourgs, exasperated by the calamities at the front,
the unemployment, and the shortage of food, were
crying: Down with the BrissotinsP We demand the
overthrow of Brissot T Whenever a Girondist deputy
happened to pass they flung themselves menacingly
towards him. Theroigne was standing under the stone
archway of the palace anxiously watching the incipient
revolt. In the distance appeared the figure of Brissot
himself, cowering and irresolute, and fearfully watching
the infuriated sans-culottes. Theroigne ran to meet
him, in the hope that her intervention would protect
him from attack. She was mistaken. The women
Jacobins could not forgive her for her defection to the
camp of the hated Brissotins. Descrying her in the
company of Brissot himself, of him who to them was the
incarnation of treason and betrayal, their rage burst all
bounds. The Belle Li6geoise, as Theroigne was
called in the faubourgs, was seized by dozens of
women s hands, and heedless of her entreaties, tearing
off her clothes they flogged her cruelly.

Two days after this beating the Paris journal Courrier
des Defartements contained the following paragraph :

One of the heroines of the Revolution suffered a

3 1

NINE WOMEN

slight set-back on the Terrasse des Feuillants the day
before yesterday. It is said that Mademoiselle Th-
roigne was recruiting women for the Rolandist party.
Unfortunately she addressed herself to partisans of
Robespierre and Marat, who, having no desire to
increase the Brissotin party, seized the fair recruiter
and whipped her with all due ardour. The guards
arrived and tore the victim away from the frenzy of
these indecent furies.*

On the stone flags of the Palais de Tuileries, against
which, with sword in hand and rifle slung at her back,
she had so many times led the furious divisions of the
faubourgs, Th&roigne de M&ricourt s mind suffered
an irreparable injury. The shock put an end to her
political activity. Her disordered brain never recovered,
and within twelve months Th6roigne de M&ricourt
became permanently insane.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

THE town of Caen in Normandy, whither Potion,
Barbaroux, and Buzot fled from the persecution
of the Mountain after the Girondist deputies had been
expelled from the Convention in the summer of 1793,
had very little to distinguish it from any other French
provincial town, except perhaps the abundance of
apple trees in its orchards. Grass grew plentifully
in its narrow streets, providing a vivid contrast to the
forbidding grey houses with their low windows, miry
thresholds and precipitous stairways. The bells of
passing cattle, the rattle of carts, the weeping of
infants, were the only sounds that disturbed the peace
of the town.

Only in the street where the fugitives from Paris
had taken refuge in the government office, and were
organizing preparations for the struggle with the
Convention, reigned an uneasy, ominous animation.
The inimically disposed Girondins were more than
ready to assure the citizens of Caen that the terrible
rumours concerning the terror and tyranny of the
Mountain were authentic. The agitated and spell
bound gossips put their stiff" white mob-caps together
and discussed the horrors endlessly.

*I have infallible information/ said one to another,
that already one hundred thousand heads and more
have fallen under the guillotine in all the departments.

NINE WOMEN

It is a kind of poll-tax, you know. And they haven 9 t
forgotten our town either.

Holy Virgin ! Citizeness, is it true that the accursed
Marat is being cured "with human blood?

Thus, like infectious flies, did the hostile, the foolish,
and the discontented of the /evolution spread slanders
as terrible as the plague through the anxious town.

There was a certain citizeness Bretteville living at
this time in one of the most weatherbeaten houses in
the green and peaceful Rue St. Joan. Madame de
Bretteville was one of those rare women of whom it
could be said that all the evil talk about her was
completely justified. The old aristocrat could never
have had any reputation for benevolence and generosity.
Her life was one of utter loneliness, and was compact of
arrogant whimseys and undisguised ill-nature. Only
extreme necessity could have forced anyone to climb
the gloomy stairway to the first floor where her apart
ments were situated.

Unfortunately, Charlotte Corday d Armans had no
alternative when she went to Madame de Bretteville,
her aunt, to ask for shelter. Making no attempt to
hide her disagreeable amazement at the sight of
Charlotte, the old dame conducted her kinswoman
through her apartments to a room with windows over
looking the desolate, dreary courtyard. As she un
packed her scanty baggage the young girl, left to her own
devices, brooded with bitter melancholy over her past
experiences. The town of Caen reminded her especi
ally of the happier years of her girlhood, for close to
Caen was the convent in which she had been educated.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

By y. y. Hauer
(Sketched during the trial and finished afterwards in the cell where she awaited execution

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

Charlotte s father, a feckless, impoverished aristo
crat with a small estate, had never been treated with
great respect by his daughter, who regarded him as a
weakling. Her mother, whom she always imagined
as the quintessence of goodness, had died before the
girl was old enough to remember her. Charlotte grew
up dreamy and proud. Old connections and his
noble origins enabled M. Corday d Armans to
arrange for his daughter to have the customary
aristocratic education in one of the most exclusive
convents in France. In these educational institutions/
when they were not passing the time in various forms
of pleasure the affected young lady residents were
taught society and court etiquette, music, drawing,
and fortuitous scraps of literature and history.

The voluptuous abbess freely permitted her charges
to carry on violent flirtations with the titled gentlemen
who zealously visited the convent. But Charlotte
avoided such brilliant society; she belonged to it by
birth, but from early childhood poverty had placed
her outside the magic circle, and this girl who boasted
of her descent from the great Corneille could not
endure such a slight to her self-esteem. She reconciled
herself only with difficulty to her inequality with
friends who were destined for extravagant luxury and
wealthy marriages. Unwilling to occupy any position
of inferiority, Charlotte withdrew into solitude and
buried herself among the dusty books of the library
shelves. She read a great deal, and thus supplemented
the miserable literary education provided by the
convent. Her mind and imagination dwelt entirely

NINE WOMEN

in the world of classic antiquity; like many of her
contemporaries, she chose the ancient Greeks and
Romans for heroes.

Consumed with ambition, reserved and headstrong,
she believed that she was not intended for any common
fate, but for heroic exploits and resounding glory.
And this mood completely dominated the haughty,
egotistical Mademoiselle Corday when she came to
leave the convent and returned to her father s house.

When the revolution broke out, its fantastic
reverberations reached even that distant country-side,
and compelled the young aristocrat to bestir herself.
She had been waiting for her classic heroes to be
resurrected, but how unlike the patricians of the
ancient world were these tatterdemalion sans-culottes!
These new heroes had sprung from the dregs of
existence, and, shuddering with disgust and loathing,
Charlotte shrank from the contemptible canaille
which had dared to lay impious hands on her sacro
sanct titles, armorial bearings, traditions, and prejudices.

The carnal, bloody and belligerent revolution filled
her with repugnance. All that was customary and
revered in her life had crumbled, and, unable to
understand what was happening, she found vent for
her feelings in hatred for the monstrous Mountain.

Her greatest friends had all fled abroad; the convent
itself was closed. Charlotte did not take kindly to
domestic life. After a quarrel with her father she left
home, to find a temporary shelter in Caen, in Madame
de Bretteville s quiet, cat-infested apartments.

In Caen she listened avidly to all the tittle-tattle

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

and stories of the Parisians sufferings at the hands of
the cannibal Jacobins. The name most on men s
lips at this time was that of Marat, a man whose stature
was such that he inspired extreme feelings of hatred
and of love. Charlotte believed all the legends that
his enemies invented about him, and the idea of an
heroic duel with Marat began to take sombre shape in
her mind.

When Robespierre and the Mountain took a
leftward course and drove the Girondins into the
camp of the counter-revolution, the royalist Charlotte
Corday welcomed the insurgent Girondins arrival in
Caen,, regarding them as her own natural allies and as
largely sharing her opinions. Yet neither P6tion nor
Barbaroux realized the profound egotism and genuine
fanaticism in this strong and healthy provincial girl.
Without in any way betraying her own feelings.
Charlotte seized upon their every word of slander of
the Mountain; and their summonses to save the
Revolution/ to attack the Convention, found in her a
ready response. In common with the provincial small
landowning nobility, Charlotte was prepared to be
satisfied with a magniloquent constitution that merely
imposed certain limitations upon the monarchy.
It is significant that her favourite journal was the
Royalist sheet UAmi du Rot, which she read regularly.
She regarded the democratic dictatorship not as a
step towards true liberty, but as a crime against the
lofty ideals of straightforward liberalism.

The inflammatory eloquence of the Girondins
confirmed her own feelings and raised to white-heat

NINE WOMEN

her hatred for the tyrants and usurpers of power.
When, on June 7th, 1793, the Girondins organized
an unsuccessful parade of their volunteers among the
sand-dunes of Caen, and an insignificant handful of
some thirty men filed past the gaping onlookers.
Charlotte began to doubt the effectiveness of such a
method of struggle. Over her face passed an expression
of disillusionment. Potion, standing at her side,
glanced at her, and far from the thought that his
neighbour was, like Joan of Arc, listening to the voice
of destiny, he jestingly asked whether she were in love
with and grieving for one of the thirty. Charlotte
gave him an astonished and contemptuous look:
she could never reconcile herself to being regarded
as an insipid mediocrity, susceptible only to feminine
foibles. One may presume that it was after this
miserable review of the Girondist volunteers, which to
her seemed only a demonstration of masculine coward
ice, that Charlotte finally determined upon her task
and resolved to commit some terrorist act. Her
naiveti allowed her to hope that the death of Marat
would put an end to the revolution of the canaille
and call a halt to the internal disorders. She watched
the gigantic historical struggle unfolding in France
through the eyes of her conventual preceptresses
or the officers quartered in Caen, through the eyes
of the society in which Madame de Bretteville moved.
The thunderous blows of the class conflict had welded
her with these people whom, in the presumptuous
self-deception of her erudition, she so much despised,
but who nevertheless had subjugated her to their own

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

traditions, interests, and habits of thought. They had
imbued her with enmity for the Mountain and a
blind frenzy against Marat; yielding to the sway of
their invincible class hypnotism, she set about the
realization of her terrible plan.

The handsome Barbaroux was a notorious lady-
killer. There was no end to his conquests, and the
presence of feminine visitors in the waiting room of
his office always provoked his companions into
jesting innuendoes. One day Charlotte, dressed, as
always, with scrupulous care, was sitting in Barbaroux s
ante-room, waiting to have an interview with him. She
had requested him to provide her with a letter of
recommendation to a member of the Convention in
Paris whom she was anxious to interest in a friend
fallen on evil days. Barbaroux had promised to give
her the letter, and the girl was waiting for it in
the ante-room with its crowd of futile busy-bodies.
Potion happened to notice Charlotte sitting there, and
as he passed he remarked with a touch of cynicism :

Here s another beautiful aristocrat paying court to
republicans/

Reddening with anger, Charlotte replied:

Citizen Potion, you judge without knowledge; but
you will very soon know who I am/

She hesitated no more: to blazon her name to all
the world, grandly to offer herself in sacrifice, had
become a pressing necessity.

Inventing some pretext for her departure, she coldly
bade good-bye to her unprotesting aunt, with theatrical
ostentation distributed her drawing-books to the

NINE WOMEN

neighbours children, and with a small trunk for
baggage took her seat in the shabby, dirty diligence for
Paris. The half-starved nags slowly dragged the jolting
carette along the dusty road beneath the burning
July sun. The perspiring passengers, struggling to
overcome their drowsiness, told vaunting stories of the
attacks to which they had been subjected on previous
journeys. The forests were swarming with guerillas
and robbers. During the furious gallops along the
forest roads the conversation flagged; the woodland
murmurs, and even the sound of a falling branch, evoked
a panic, screams from the women, tears from the chil
dren, and flustered exclamations from the men. Hardly
was the danger safely past when the travellers grew
again more animated, and acquaintances were struck
up. Charlotte attracted the particular attention of two
or three young men, and next day, towards the end of
the journey, one of them went so far as to make a pro
posal of marriage to her. She wrote an ironic description
of this journey to Paris in a letter to Barbaroux.

Arriving at the capital on July nth, Charlotte
stepped down from the diligence and made her way to
the Rue des Vieux-Augustins, to a certain Hdtel de la
Providence which had been recommended to her.
The hotel servant conducted her to room No. 7, and

there she spent the night.

# * *

It was the broiling noontide of July 1 2th, In a little,
poky dining-room a group of women were squabbling
in subdued tones. As usual, the subject at issue was
the method of curing Marat.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

Jean Paul s wife, the stately, dark-eyed and pleasant-
featured Evrard, glanced uneasily at the low door lead
ing to Marat s bath-closet, and authoritatively ordered
the over-noisy women to be silent: their clamour
threatened to disturb Marat. As she whispered she
continued to pound in a mortar the medicaments
which evoked the two other women s distrust. Marat
was beyond the help of medicines now. Marie Barbe
Oblain, the concierge s wife, snorted contemptuously
as she folded the fresh, sour-smelling pages of the
Ami du Peuple. She was a sickly woman with a single,
faded, yet piercing eye; under her heavy brow the
second eye, a crude glass imitation, gave a cadaverous
appearance to her mobile features. When talking she
continually turned her head in order to bring her
companions within her range of vision. Knowing all
the secrets of the house, she was remarkable for the
loquacity natural to a woman who spends much of her
life at the street door.

Marat s and Simonne Evrard s servant, the stocky
Jeanette Marshal, was dominated by mingled feelings
of fear, adoration and wonder for the Friend of the
People, and, like Barbe, she delighted in opportunities
to gossip with the neighbours in the superior tone of
one intimate with Marat. The glories of the past
few months, the triumphs achieved by Marat, had
endowed Jeanette with importance not only in her
own eyes, but in those of all the neighbourhood.

Despite excellent nursing and unremitting attention
Marat was incurably, agonizingly ill. Disease had
transformed this inspired and far-sighted leader of the

NINE WOMEN

masses into a helpless cripple: he could not take his
seat in the Convention, he was unable even to leave his
closet. Marat was dying, and in a feverish ecstasy was
pouring out valedictory articles one after another.

Simonne, hardly making a sound in her soft
slippers, went with the medicines into the little room
which had been transformed into a bath-closet and
study for the Friend of the People/ In her sadness
and anxiety she resembled a mother going to the
succour of a sick infant. Simonne Evrard was a
woman of fine character, and it was due to her exertions
that Marat s life was ordered so perfectly. No other
Jacobin leader of this period had such a faithful friend
and assistant, as well as one of equal intellectual capa
city, for wife.

In 1790 Simonne Evrard had given all her small
fortune to Marat to enable him to publish his Ami du
Peuple. The steadfast Jacobin woman hesitated before
no difficulties in her endeavours to assist Marat to
carry on his journalistic agitation. She undertook the
coarsest labour for the sake of the small income it
brought in, and in addition she acted as sub-editor and
publisher of the Ami du Peuple. Jean Paul had passed
his forty-sixth year when he married the twenty-six
year old Simonne. Theirs was a free union. Simonne
made no attempt to legalize it by civil registration.
This contempt for convention was afterwards to cost
her much suffering, for Marat s mistress came to
be subjected to cruel slander and abuse. Marat, as
though foreseeing this possibility, had voluntarily
written the following declaration:

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

The noble qualities of demoiselle Simonne Evrard
have won my heart, and she has accepted its devotion.
As a pledge of my fidelity, during the journey to
London which I have shortly to undertake I leave
with her this sacred obligation to marry her immedi
ately I return; if all my love should seem to her an
inadequate guarantee of my faithfulness, let the
betrayal of this promise cover me with infamy.

Jean Paul Marat.
"L Ami du Peuple."

Paris, ist January, 1791.

Simonne always steadfastly rejected legal marriage,
believing in the constancy of her own feelings and
Marat s.

Endeavouring to conceal her anxiety, Simonne went
in to Marat. A fitful, murky gleam stole through the
tiny window of the closet, lighting up its interior. On
one wall was a map of France, divided into departments
by freshly drawn lines. A white sheet was spread over
the bath in which Marat was sitting, hiding from view
his emaciated, ulcer-eaten body. The bath was of an
unusual shape, and resembled an enormous, polished
black shoe. The room was hot and stifling. The
boiling water containing the sulphur which afforded
the invalid a little relief quickly evaporated, and
the steam, mingling with the perspiration of his body,
saturated the sheet and floated through the room,
condensing in damp patches on the walls. Marat,
painfully gulping in the air, slobbering over his dry
lips, shuddering with the itch, was writing on a board

NINE WOMEN

laid across the bath and strewn with papers. He
wearily turned his perspiring face, puffy, sagging, and
pale as dough, towards his wife. His little black eyes,
looking as though painted on yellow enamel, glittered
with the fires of his suffering; short strands of black
hair straggled below the yellow towel which cooled
his fevered head, Simonne sat down on a chair at
his side. As always at this hour, he anxiously asked
for the proofs of his journal, inquired after the situ
ation at the front, the rise in the cost of living; and,
burning with painful indignation, he cursed the
Girondins and the counter-revolutionaries. The dis
ease-ridden Marat was especially alarmed by the
circumstance that the counter-revolution, as he
regarded it, was pursuing a new and dangerous
manoeuvre: it was now coming forward as a pseudo
Left. But Marat was not to be taken in by such a
trick. Jacques Roux, Varlet, Leclerc, and Claire
Lacombe, the leaders of the * Enraged/ were, in his
eyes, the suspect agents of the church and king. He
charged them with desiring to overthrow the tried
friends of the people by working on the misery and
impatience of the masses. In reality the Enraged 7
were voicing the agitation and protest of the most
depressed sections of Paris against the maintenance
and consolidation of economic power in the hands
of the rich merchants, the entrepreneurs , bankers, and
speculators who put their trust confidently in the
sacred right of property. For a long time Jacques
Roux carried the workers section of Gravilliers with
him, and Claire Lacombe, Leclerc s friend, was at the

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

head of the women s society of revolutionary republi
cans, for which bourgeois women had only slander
and abuse. Nevertheless the extremists attack on the
principle of private property was condemned as an
attempt on the revolution. The Jacobins were afraid
lest by their success the Enraged should turn the
artisans, peasants and small shopkeepers against the
revolution. Robespierre had declared a ruthless war
on the Enraged. Marat also had directed his attack
against these rebels/ and skilled and clever tactician
as he was, he was now summoning all true revolution
aries to the consolidation of the new order.

At this same hour of noon on July 1 2th, thoroughly
rested after her tiring journey. Charlotte Corday left
the H6tel de la Providence and went into the city of
which she had heard so much. The mistress of the
hotel, citizeness Grollier, stared inquisitively after the
young woman. Charlotte, who had passed her twenty-
fifth birthday, was short and thick-set. Her neat,
plain costume, her confident, rather heavy gait, and the
head flung proudly back gave her carriage a suggestion
of aggressiveness. The animated metropolis, seeming
enormous after sluggish Caen, came to meet her. At
the time of the revolution Paris was a city of some
seven hundred thousand inhabitants.

Nowhere in the streets could Charlotte find any
trace of blood or symptom of bestiality. The people
did not appear to be either terrorized or emaciated.
The terror had not yet arisen like a sombre spectre

NINE WOMEN

over France. But she remained distrustful and hostile;
in the tranquil faces around her she imagined she read
a prayer for salvation. Nevertheless, as she listened to
conversations she heard not a word of sympathy for
the Girondists anywhere; they seemed already to be
forgotten, although their trial had not yet begun,

Vergniaud and Brissot were in prison, the others
had either fled or gone into hiding; only a few of the
most devoted Girondists remained on the benches of
the Convention. Charlotte addressed herself to one of
those still free, to the deputy Lauze de Ferret, in the
hope of obtaining permission to attend a session of the
Convention. She was not aware that Marat was now
an invalid, and her ambition was to kill him publicly.

Lauze de Ferret was very attentive to this apparently
simple provincial woman, for Charlotte had brought
him a letter from Barbaroux. After listening to her
fictitious story of a friend in Switzerland, he promised
to do what he could. From him she learnt that Marat
never left his house. Thus her desire to kill the Friend
of the People in the Convention was rendered impos
sible of fulfilment. Although she did not initiate him
into her plan for opening the road to a counter
revolutionary attack on the Convention by getting rid
of Marat, as Charlotte took leave of de Ferret she could
not forbear the pathetic exclamation : Fly, fly before
to-morrow evening . . . Take my advice. You are
helpless in the Convention. Fly and join your friends
at Caen. But at the time he failed to understand the
true significance of her warning.

At dawn on the Saturday Charlotte again emerged

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

from the Hdtel de la Providence to make her way to
the Palais Royal. Distant Caen was in the habit of
rising at six o clock in the morning, but at this hour
Paris was still sleeping peacefully. The shops were
not yet open, and whilst waiting for the city to stir she
sat down on a stone bench under an arch. An hour
later she visited a cutlery shop and selected a kitchen
knife with a black handle, for which she paid forty sous.
Concealing the knife at her breast under her lace
blouse, she hired a coach to drive to Marat. The driver
noted the address she gave, and drove her to the
Rue des Cordeliers. The street was very narrow and
gloomy, and the house which sheltered Marat seemed
to be particularly poverty-stricken and dismal. En
deavouring to retain her self-possession, inflated with
self-admiration, Charlotte mounted the stairs to the
first floor and pulled the bell. Through a little window
opening on to the stairs the complex odours of a kitchen
made their way out to the landing.

The door was opened by Simonne Evrard, who
examined Charlotte distrustfully. In vain did the fair
visitor insist on the necessity of seeing Marat. Realiz
ing that no arguments would avail, she handed Simonne
a previously prepared, cunningly worded letter which
read: *I have come from Caen. You who are governed
by love for the people will undoubtedly consider it
desirable to have knowledge of the conspiracies there
being planned. I shall expect an answer/ In her
anxiety to gain access to Marat, Charlotte dissembled
brilliantly and played the role of his adherent with
inimitable sang-froid. Lying and craftiness appeared

D 49

NINE WOMEN

to come naturally to her, and she acted with an assurance
that disarmed all suspicion.

Postponing the assassination until evening, she
returned to her hotel. Locking herself into her tiny,
poorly furnished room she spent the day in writing
valedictory letters. In one of these epistles, entitled
An address to the French Friends of Law and Peace/
the monarchist Charlotte Corday expounded her feeble
political philosophy, and in the turgid rhetorical style
typical of the period reiterated the daily assertions of
the royalist and Girondist Press:

How long, O unhappy French, will you delight in
trouble and dissension? Long enough, and more than
enough have faction-mongers and scoundrels placed the
interest of their own ambitions above the general
interests. Why, O unfortunate victims of their frenzy,
why allow yourselves to be slaughtered and destroyed
in order to establish the edifice of their tyranny on the
ruins of desolated France?

Everywhere factions are breaking out; the Moun
tain triumphs by crime and oppression ; a few monsters
steeped in our blood carry on their abominable con
spiracies and are driving you along a thousand various
roads towards the precipice.

We are working for our own undoing with greater
energy than has ever been put to the conquest of liberty.
O French, but a little longer, and there will remain of
you only the memory of your existence!

Already the indignant departments are marching
on Paris ; already the fires of discord and civil war have
embraced the moitiS of this vast empire. There is still

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

a means of extinguishing them, but it must be promptly
applied. Already the most vile of all these scoundrels,
Marat, whose very name is a synonym for crime, in his
fall beneath a vengeful steel has shaken the Mountain,
bringing pallor to the cheeks of Danton and Robes
pierre, the other brigands who have seated themselves
on this bloody throne, surrounded with the thunder
which the avenging gods of humanity doubtless
withhold for the time being only to render their fall
the more resounding and to terrify all who might be
tempted to establish their own fortunes on the ruins of
misled peoples.

Frenchmen, you know your enemies ; arise ! March !
Let the destruction of the Mountain leave only
brothers and friends. I know not whether heaven has
destined us for a Republican Government, but only
in the excess of its vengeance can it give us a Mon-
tagnard for master. . . .

*O France, thy peace depends on the observance of
the law; I by no means violate it in killing Marat;
condemned by the universe, he is outside the law . . .
What tribunal will condemn me? If I be guilty, then
also was Alcides guilty when he destroyed the monsters ;
yet were they so repulsive? O friends of humanity, you
will not grieve over a wild beast who has grown fat on
your blood; and you, mournful aristocrats, whom the
revolution has by no means spared, you also will not
grieve for him, you have nothing in common with him.

O my country! Your misfortunes rend my heart,
and I can offer you nothing but my life, and I thank
heaven that I am free to dispose of it ; I desire only that

5 1

NINE WOMEN

my last breath may be to the service of my fellow
citizens, that my head, carried through Paris, may be a
rallying standard for all the friends of law, that
the tottering Mountain may read its doom written in
my blood, that I may be its last victim, and that a
world avenged may declare that I have merited well
of humanity. For that matter, if my conduct be judged
otherwise, I am troubled but little.

My parents and friends need not be disturbed:
no one knew of my plans. To this address I attach my
baptism certificate, in order to show what the feeblest
arm can do when guided by utter devotion. If I do
not succeed in my undertaking, O French, yet I shall
have shown you the road; you know your enemies;
arise, march, and strike P

When she had finished her letters she changed
her attire, concealed the knife at her breast under the
neckerchief fashionable at the time, and to provide
against the possibility that Marat might refuse a
second time to see her, she wrote the following note :

*I wrote to you this morning, Marat; have you
received my letter, may I hope for a moment s audience
if you have received it? I hope you will not refuse me,
in view of the interest of this question; my unhappiness
is sufficient claim to your protection/

In the evening a hired carette once more carried her
to the Rue des Cordeliers. Hearing an abrupt, ener
getic ring, Jeanette Marshal ran with a greasy spoon
in her hand to open the door. On the landing stood a
girl in an elegant brown dress and a high black hat.
Remembering her instructions not to allow the invalid

CHARLOTTE CORD AY

to be disturbed with purposeless visits, Jeanette barred
the way. Barbe Oblain ran to her support, but Char
lotte resolutely insisted on seeing Marat. Hearing the
sound of argument, Simonne Evrard came to the door,
and recognizing the visitor of the morning, asked her
to wait in the dining-room for Marat s reply. In
addition to the three women a commissionaire of the
Ami du Peuple, Laurent Bas, was also in the apartment,
having brought paper for the journal s printing press,
which was situated in the same building.

Simonne quickly returned with an affirmative answer
and conducted Charlotte in to Marat. Then she went
back into the other room, closing the closet door behind
her, but at once returned with a carafe of water for the
invalid. As she was going out the second time Simonne
asked her husband one or two unimportant questions
and removed a meat-tray from the window-sill. Marat
was left alone with Charlotte, who, giving no cause for
suspicion, sat down on the hard chair close to the bath.
She studied the invalid closely, nerving herself for the
task. . Marat was ill and weak, so much the easier to
kill him 1 In a trembling voice, with hypocritical tears
in her eyes, she began to tell of the counter-revolution
ary work being carried on by the eighteen Girondist
deputies in Calvados. Carried away by her own
extravagant imagination, she described for Marat the
mighty, militant divisions they had enrolled to march
on Paris and free the capital from the anarchists/
Marat s indignation grew swiftly, skilfully worked
upon by his visitor. Tell me the names of the con
spirators, he said, and took up a pen to write them in

NINE WOMEN

his note-book. Charlotte, content with her increasing
frenzy, began to specify persons already well known.
She waxed pathetically indignant, and with dissembled
hatred called down curses on the counter-revolution
aries.

Thinking to pacify her, Marat said: They will all
be guillotined.

At that same moment, abandoning her now un
necessary stratagems. Charlotte jumped to her feet,
dexterously drew out the knife and buried it in the
tribune s bare breast. The terrible blow penetrated
to the heart.

Help, my friend, help! 7 Marat screamed, choking
with the blood rising in his throat.

His eyes rolled and began to glaze with death.
The water in the bath was stained crimson. Almost
instinctively, without a backward look at her victim,
the murderess threw herself towards the door. Her
exit was barred for a moment by Simonnej running in
response to her husband s hoarse cry, and by Barbe
and Jeanette. At once realizing what had happened,
possessed by mingled dread and hope, they rushed
past Charlotte. The blood was pouring from the
wound: Marat s life was ebbing fast. Whilst the
three women were vainly trying to save him, Charlotte,
forgetting all her classic examples, took to flight and
had reached the entrance hall before Laurent Bas,
who had chanced to remain in the apartment, overtook
her, seized her and thrust her forcibly back into the
room. She lost her balance and fell to the floor. At
the same moment a crowd poured in from the stairs,

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

drawn by some mysterious intuition of the sudden
tragedy.

There was no more outstanding, more feared and
more worshipped man in Paris than Marat. He was
the vigilant eye of the revolution, the incarnation of
revolutionary steadfastness and struggle. The dwellers
in the cellars, the garrets and the faubourgs all turned
to him with their great and petty sorrows, their doubts,
and their just complaints.

The grief of the poor of Paris was unbounded.
Marat was deeply and whole-heartedly mourned by
the people who only recently had crowned their friend
with laurels and honoured him with a triumphal
procession. Within an hour of the murder a crowd
numbering thousands had gathered in front of Marat s
house.

The heart had ceased to beat, and the last drop of
blood had oozed from the wound to cling to the fine
hair on the dead man s chest, when Barbe Oblain,
too distraught to answer any questions, pushed the
doctor she had obtained into the bed-chamber whither
the body had been carried. Her sound eye was swollen
with tears, and the moist glass eye seemed animated
and gifted with sight.

Jeanette Marshal, speechless and broken, sat
staring numbly at the strangers who wandered from
room to room. Through all the apartment, usually
so clean and tidy, they carried the blood on their
boots. Men and women wiped away their tears with
their bloody hands, and in the flickering light of the
lamps and candles their features looked as horrible

NINE WOMEN

as the breast of the dead Friend of the People/ Out
side in the street the coachman who had driven Char
lotte Corday to the house could hardly withstand the
throng of inquisitive questioners. He had barely
glanced at his passenger, but now he had no difficulty
in describing her to the agitated crowd. All were
surprised that the murder had been committed by a
young woman ; there was an outburst of frenzy at the
suggestion that she was an aristocrat.

Night had fallen when the police commissary,
Guellard, arrived and opened an inquiry. It was no
easy matter to get the murderess to prison, for the
infuriated crowd wanted to lynch her. Seeing the
raging mob screaming curses against her, and pro
tected only with difficulty from their summary
vengeance, Charlotte, swelling with vainglorious pride,
remarked contemptuously: Miserable wretches, you
clamour for my death because I have saved you from a
monster/ Secretly she was hoping to hear exclamations
of sympathy and approval. But her hopes were not
realized, and her last resource was to ponder super
ciliously on the stupidity of the canaille^ and to exult
in her coming appreciation by history*

From the moment that Charlotte found herself inside
the Conciergerie she diligently studied her every word,
pose and gesture with an eye to the future which was
to glorify and extol her name.

To Barbaroux she wrote a magniloquent missive
which did not reach him, but which has been pre
served as a curious documentary key to the understand
ing of this woman. *A vivid imagination and a sensitive

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

heart augur too stormy a life/ she wrote. I pray
those who would grieve for me to reflect, and they will
rejoice to see me enjoying repose in the Champs
Elys6es with Brutus and other ancients. She observed
* patriotically! Heaven be thanked, he (Marat) was
not a Frenchman/ (Marat was born in Switzerland.)
The Friend of the People aroused her hatred even
when dead, and to her the consequences of her crime
seemed significant and decisive. He was a ferocious
beast which intended to devour all that was. left of
France for the purpose of civil war. Long live the
peace! She asked Barbaroux to look after her family,
and unequivocally remarked: I say nothing of my
dear aristocratic friends, I preserve their memory in
my heart.

Charlotte was troubled by the thought that history
might not hand down all the details of her deed to
posterity. She asked Barbaroux to obtain a copy of the
protocol of the inquiry, and gave instructions that if
any of her friends wished to see the contents of her
letter to him their request was to be granted. On my
arrest, she observed, I had with me an appeal to the
friends of peace. I shall demand its publication,

She also wrote to her father, still maintaining her
exaggerated sang-froid :

Forgive me, my dear papa, for disposing of my life
without your permission. I have avenged many inno
cent victims; I have averted many other disasters;
disabused, the people will one day rejoice to have been
delivered from a tyrant. When I tried to convince
you that I was going to England it was because I hoped

NINE WOMEN

to remain incognito, but I have realized the impossi
bility of that. I hope you will not be plagued; in any
case I believe you will find protectors in Caen ; I have
chosen Gustave Doulcet as my defending counsel, but
such a deed allows of no defence, and it is only a
form. Adieu, my dear papa, I pray you to forget, or
rather to rejoice in my fate its cause is beautiful.
I embrace my sister, whom I love with all my heart,
and also all my dear ones.

Do not forget Corneille s line :

"The crime is shameful, not the gallows."

*I am to be tried to-morrow at eight.

Corday.

Charlotte was brought before the Revolutionary
Tribunal on July iyth, 1793. She was wearing her
finest gown and an elegant, beribboned mob-cap,
which she had ordered specially for the trial and
execution. The defending counsel she had chosen,
the Montagnard Doulcet, was not present, as he had
not been informed of her arrest. Only when the trial
was about to begin did the judge appoint the Jacobin,
Chauveau de la Garde, who happened to be in the
hall, to act in Doulcefs stead. Defence was no easy
task : throughout the proceedings the roar of the crowd
outside demanding the death of the murderess was to
be heard in the court. In his death the Friend of the
People had become more popular than ever. Mourn
ing ribbons, brooches and fillets bearing his portrait
adorned many a breast in Paris that day. Newborn
infants were given the name of him who, contrary to

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

Charlotte s expectation, had been deemed worthy of
burial in the Pantheon. Day and night an endless
chain of people desiring to do homage to their dead
leader passed by his bier in a secluded, disused oratory.
From Marat s coffin the crowd surged towards the
tribunal building, demanding the head of the murderess.

Close to Charlotte, who sat staring self-confidently
around the hall, sat Chauveau de la Garde, thinking
over his speech for the defence. The trial began. The
first witness to be called was Simonne Evrard. Bowed
down with sorrow, she was greeted with general
sympathy. Choking down her tears, in an almost
inarticulate voice Marat s widow told the tribunal
the details of the crime. All her statements were so
incontrovertible that Charlotte failed to interrupt her
with any of those previously pondered phrases which
were to have dumbfounded their hearers and to have
been inscribed on the immortal tablets of history.

The public prosecutor turned to the prisoner and
sternly asked: What were the motives that induced
you to commit so horrible a deed?

The crimes of which he had been guilty, she loudly
replied.

All Charlotte s answers were equally noteworthy
for their artificial pathos. She was in perfect command
of herself, and might have been acting on a stage. An
extraordinary exertion of will-power, an hysterical
screwing up of her spirit, and a superlative capacity for
posing combined to deprive her of all weakness and
humanity. As though giving the cue in a Greek tragedy,
in reply to the public prosecutor s query whether the

NINE WOMEN

accused had previously rehearsed the infliction of blows
with a knife/ she exclaimed:

Oh, the monster, he regards me as a murderess 1

In the course of the trial Charlotte noticed that a
young soldier was drawing her portrait. Smiling, she
turned her head in his direction and adopted her most
charming expression. She grew noticeably more
animated during her defending counsel s speech. His
chief argument ran :

The accused cold-bloodedly admits that she had
long premeditated her crime, she confesses to the
most fearful circumstances, and makes no attempt to
justify herself. That, citizens of the jury, is her entire
defence. This imperturbable calm, this complete
self-abnegation, which indicate no remorse, even, so
to speak, in the presence of death this calm and this
abnegation are not natural. They are explainable only
by the exaltation of political fanaticism which put the
dagger into her hand. It is for you, citizen jurors, to
determine what weight this moral consideration should
have in the scales of justice.

Charlotte Corday appeared to be completely satisfied
with this decidedly flattering speech. The equanimity
which the accused displayed during the reading of the
death sentence made a strong impression on all who
were present. The sentence read :

The jury s verdict establishes: First, that on
July 1 3th of this year, between seven and eight o clock
in the evening, Jean Paul Marat, deputy of the National
Convention, was assassinated in his own house in his
bath, with the blow of a knife in the breast, death being

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

instantaneous; second, that Marie Anne Charlotte
Corday . . . was the author of this assassination;
third, that she did so of criminal and premeditated
intent.

The Tribunal condemns Marie Anne Charlotte
Corday to the sentence of death ... It orders that the
said Marie Anne Charlotte Corday shall be conducted
to the place of execution, attired in a red shirt ... it
orders furthermore that the property of the said
Corday . . . shall pass to the republic. It orders
furthermore that the present sentence shall, on the
requisition of the Public Prosecutor, be carried out on
the Square of the Revolution of this city/

After the sentence was declared Charlotte asked that
the artist who had begun her portrait during the trial
might be allowed to finish it in the prison. Citizen
Hauer, a trusted patriot, easily obtained permission
to complete his picture of Marat s murderess. Only
a few hours remained before the time fixed for the
execution, and Hauer spent them in the condemned
woman s cell. She posed for him quite calmly, glorying
in the murder she had committed.

After a two-hour sitting the picture was almost
finished, and Charlotte, who considered herself quite
a good artist,, stood pointing out details that required
modification or alteration. A knock at the door inter
rupted the animated conversation, and the executioner,
as unconcerned and methodical as ever, appeared on
the threshold. He was carrying the red shirt in which
murderers were executed, and a pair of scissors with
which to cut off the condemned woman s hair at the

NINE WOMEN

neck, Already? Charlotte whispered, but immediately
mastering her fear she took the scissors from the execu
tioner s hand and snipped off the strands of short hair
hanging over her shoulders. With a coquettish smile
she offered one strand to the artist as a token of grati
tude for his work, and she asked Hauer to make a
copy of the portrait and send it to her family at Caen.

As the rackety tumbrel rolled towards the place of
execution a heavy summer rain was falling. Despite
the shower the streets were thronged with an indignant
crowd who greeted the cart with imprecations. Marat s
murderess went to the guillotine accompanied by the
curses of an infuriated people.

The execution which the sans-culottes of France
acclaimed with satisfaction made of Charlotte Corday
a heroine in the eyes of the aristocrats and Girondins.
Indeed, one of the Girondist leaders, learning in
prison of Charlotte s self-sacrifice, exclaimed in
rapture and rage: *She has destroyed us, but she has
taught us how to die. When the news of Marat s
death reached Caen, Potion, Barbaroux, Buzot and
Salle eulogized Charlotte in their letters and speeches,
pretending that they had from the first discerned in
her the traits of a great avenger.

In due course the defeat of the revolution brought
Marat s assassin her longed-for, resounding glory.
The counter-revolutionary historians who vilified the
Mountain and Marat naturally extolled Charlotte
and exaggerated her political significance.

Bi^t in reality, when it pierced the heart of the dying
Marat on July 13th, the knife of the monarchist

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

terrorist inflicted no fatal blow on the party of the
Mountain : the place left vacant by the leader of the
popular masses was approached with firm step by
another, whose name was Robespierre.

MANON ROLAND

GATIEN PHLIPON was by no means an untalented
engraver, but his art failed to provide him with
any considerable income. As he wanted to be rich he
opened a jeweller s shop on the Quai de PHorloge, in
Paris, and engaged in the sale of precious stones, heavy
lockets, glittering buckles, rings, bracelets and snuff
boxes. Not without feelings of envy Gatien saw
friends of his, members like himself, of the third
estate and scorned by the aristocracy, skilfully gather
ing the property of the ruined nobility into their hands
through speculation and usury. But Gatien Phlipon,
who was addicted to drinking and card-playing, still
failed to amass riches, and he was forced to content
himself with the humble lot of a master jeweller. He
spent his time in the company of the poor and insig
nificant petty bourgeoisie and the unknown artists
who came to Paris in quest of fame, whom he cleverly
exploited in his engraver s workshop. Having accumu
lated a little capital, the jeweller bethought himself of
marriage. On consideration he decided that demoiselle
Marguerite Bimont would make him a very suitable
bride. She aped all the manners of an aristocratic
dame, yet she was retiring and dutiful. After their
marriage Marguerite Bimont displayed much gracious-
ness and tact in handling the capricious customers who
came in richly carved and gilded sedan chairs to the

NINE WOMEN

jeweller s shop on the Quai de 1 Horloge. It also
fell to her to supervise the work of her husband s
apprentices and journeymen, to keep the accounts, and
run the house. Of the seven children born to the
Phlipons, only one daughter, Marie Jeanne, born in
Paris in 1754, survived.

When at the age of two the little girl returned to the
jeweller s house from the village where she had been
living in the care of a peasant nurse, Gatien Phlipon
took to bragging of his daughter as if she had been
some intricate ornament which his cunning hand had
designed. Certainly, pretty little Manon was an
intelligent and clever child. She was not five years old
when she found some old mouldering yellow books
in trunks forgotten in the garret, and learned to read
them almost without assistance, so winning her
parents vociferous approval. Manon had no friends
of her own age. Her father s self-esteem and her
mother s unsociable nature combined to deprive her
of children s society, and her parents thought nobody
in the neighbourhood good enough to be a companion
to their daughter. Manon rarely left the old, badly
ventilated house by herself to wander along the street
that crawled picturesquely down to the silvery Seine.
She never went on showery summer days with a
crowd of the neighbours children, her long petticoats
lifted and her little bare feet slapping over the slippery,
warm meadows. She never climbed the old trees to
throw chestnuts down at the good-natured passers-by,
she never teased the homeless dogs, or laughed at the
foppish aristocrats mincing like herons with their

MANON ROLAND

silken-shod feet through the autumnal mire. From
early childhood Manon learnt to adopt a jeeringly
contemptuous attitude to the other children of her
district. The jeweller s daughter found herself irre
sistibly drawn towards the children of the nobility,
who were elegantly attired and frisured like herself.
But they openly disdained her. Nothing could bring
Manon into greater intimacy with them: neither her
amiability, nor the circumstance that at the age of
nine she had already read Plutarch, had been smitten
by his heroes, had wept over the genius of Tasso, was
the best pupil in the parish school in the responses to
the Song of Songs, and astonished all the neighbours
by quoting passages from Voltaire s Candide*
Manon s grandmother was only a servant in the
employ of a marquise, whilst her father was a shop
keeper; and these circumstances had pre-determined
her fate, causing her much secret fretting and un-
happiness.

In vain did Manon attempt to conceal her chagrin
when during their visits to the castle of Fontenay she
and her mother were accommodated in the tiny ser
vants closets, had to dine in the pantry, and on
festive occasions were allowed to watch the bonfires
and the variegated rain of the fireworks only through
the garden railings. But in the Quai de 1 Horloge the
ambitious girl felt that she was a princess who had been
attired as a Cinderella through some misunderstanding.
Standing in a niche of her room and gazing through
the narrow slit of window, Manon daily admired the
reflection of the sky in the waters of the Seine. She had

NINE WOMEN

a bookish love for nature, for she Imagined that this
was a necessary trait of outstanding character.
Gatien attempted to teach his daughter his own craft,
with a view to making her his assistant. But although
she quickly acquired proficiency in the fine art of
engraving, Manon refused to continue, for fear that
she might thus be condemning herself to a lifelong
fate as mistress of a jeweller s shop. Her self-esteem
increased as she grew older, and concurrently she
found it growingly difficult to help her mother in the
house, or, still more humiliating experience for her,
to go to the market for vegetables or meat. Manon
meekly submitted to her destiny, but when recalling
this period nearly thirty years later in her memoirs,
she could not refrain from complaining: This little
girl who read serious books, who could give an
excellent explanation of the movements of the heavenly
bodies, who could draw with pencil and ink, and who
at the age of eight was the best dancer in an assembly
of young girls older than herself . . . this little girl was
often called to the kitchen to make an omelette or to
prepare the vegetables.

When she was eleven Manon, by her own desire,
entered the convent of Neuve Sainte Etienne, in the
suburb of Saint Marcel. The convent, standing in the
midst of a park of serried, ancient trees, had a bene
ficial, tranquillizing effect on the girl Here, she tells
us, she gave herself over to meditations on God and
eternity. There were thirty-four other pupils in the
convent, but Manon found them so ordinary and
uninteresting that she had difficulty in finding a single

MANON ROLAND

friend. In her memoirs Madame Roland, who never
suffered from an excess of modesty, afterwards colour-
fully described how the child s good breeding, intelli
gence, and knowledge subjugated all her companions.
The two sisters Cannet, natives of Amiens, who by
way of exception were deemed worthy of Manon s
friendship, submitted to her -sway absolutely and
worshipped her all their lives.

Every Sunday the parents of the pupils used to
visit the convent. The fathers and mothers, put out
of countenance by the nuns stern features, would sit
awaiting their daughters in the white, simply furnished
reception-room. The fathers were mainly small
manufacturers, merchants, and prosperous tradesmen.
Gatien Phlipon, the proud parent of the best pupil in
the convent, signalized his daughter s appearance with
noisy ejaculations, clumsy embraces and kisses. Visiting
days were joyless affairs for Manon, for she could not
reconcile her conflicting feelings of tenderness to
wards her parents and mortification at their demo
cratic behaviour, speech, and worldly position. At
such times the world seemed extraordinarily cruel
and unjust.

Manon spent twelve months at the convent. The
leave-taking was very affecting: the pupils wept, her
friends wept, Manon herself wept. But the sisters
Cannet were the most sorrowful of all. During the
ensuing separation an extensive correspondence was
maintained between the friends. Their letters effu
sions sometimes mournful, occasionally humorous,
containing witty and malicious character sketches.

NINE WOMEN

exhortations, mutual confessions and unimportant
tittle-tattle, afterwards helped to supplement the story
told in the two volumes of Madame Roland s memoirs.

During her several years residence with her grand
mother, a paralysed old woman, and afterwards in her
parents 7 unpretentious house, mademoiselle Phlipon,
with the full encouragement of her family, was occupied
solely with herself. The conventual influences, which
had revived her primitive religious feelings, now had
to contend with the influence of Voltaire, Renaud, and
Mably, over whose pages she pondered once more,
and of Rousseau, whom she now read for the first time.
The educated girl found it difficult to believe in the
legends of hell s torments and the devil s transform
ation into a serpent, and she sought an answer to her
doubts in metaphysics and philosophy, and also
devoted herself to the study of history and moral
problems. Nevertheless she spent long hours before
her mirror, unable to tear herself away. Years later
the young petty bourgeois girl described her appear
ance in the following words, seeking to conceal her
foolish egotism beneath a pretence of impartiality:

In my features was nothing striking, beyond a great
freshness of complexion and much gentleness and
expression; if every feature be examined separately
one might well ask what beauty was really to be found
there; there is not a single regular feature, but all are
pleasing. My mouth is rather large, one may meet
with a thousand more pretty, but not one with a more
tender and captivating smile. The eyes on the other
hand are not very large, the pupils are a greyish brown,

MANON ROLAND

but they stand out with a gaze that is frank, free,
vivid and sweet : crowned with brown eyebrows finely
pencilled and of the same colour as the hair, they
change expression like the affectionate spirit whose
movements they reflect; serious and proud, sometimes
they astonish, but more frequently they caress, and
they are always alert. My nose causes me some pain :
I find it rather heavy at the tip, but taken as a whole,
especially in profile, it does not mar the rest of the
features. The broad, open brow, together with the
deep eye-sockets, between which the veins stand out
in a Grecian Y at the slightest agitation, are far from
having the insignificance which is found on so many
faces. As to the rather upturned chin, it has precisely
the character which physiognomists indicate as the
sign of voluptuousness. The tint of the skin is vivid
rather than white, and is frequently heightened tjy a
sudden rush of fervent blood, excited by highly
sensitive veins. A rounded arm, a hand pleasant
without being small, for the long, fine fingers indicate
dexterity and grace; healthy, regular teeth, the full
figure of perfect health such are the treasures with
which mother Nature endowed me/

As she listened to the sound of her own name Manon
could not refrain from telling posterity her opinion
on this important subject. Yes, Manon so they
have named me, I am sorry for the novel-lovers; it is
not a noble name, it is not in the least suited to a heroine
of high degree. But such as it is, it is mine, and it is
history I am writing. Besides, even the most fastidious
would be reconciled to the name if they had heard my

NINE WOMEN

mother pronouncing it, or could see the one who
bears it/

Thus, if we may believe her, in every respect
Manon was enchanting. And the other inhabitants
of the Quai de PHorloge did not remain indifferent to
her talents and beauty. Marriage proposals poured
in one after another, but a common merchant or
shopkeeper could hardly hope that the fascinatingly
graceful and intelligent Manon would consent to sit
behind his counter. Still less could the jeweller s
daughter condescend to espouse a repectable artisan
or purveyor who had never even heard of the subjects
in which she took delight. Manon steadily refused
all aspirants to her hand, so causing her father and
mother considerable mortification. A husband such
as her father, whom secretly she despised and who in
her estimation merely emphasized her own superiority,
was unthinkable. How noisily Gatien Phlipon snored
on his great fourposter, how cynically he jested and
cursed, emptying his glass at one gulp, hawking,
hiccuping, and turning red in the face!

As Manon was walking one day through the
market, carrying her old wattle basket as though it
were a bouquet of flowers, she halted before a heavily
laden meat-stall to select a piece of tender beef. The
butcher, a widower, and as crimson-faced as his blood
stained apron, stared at the handsome girl with un
concealed adoration. He had a capital of fifty thousand
livres, and the daughter of Gatien Phlipon, whose
business was none too flourishing, ought to regard
him as quite a good catch. So the butcher was thinking

MANON ROLAND

as Manon quite prosaically handled the slippery and
bloody meat. He gave her a fine cut of breast of veal
for a ridiculous price, and invited her to come every
day. This novel wooing did not continue for long,
and soon the impatient lover, his head powdered and a
gold watch-chain dangling across his chest, made his
appearance at Gatien Phlipon s house. On this occasion
he offered Manon a rose instead of a fine cut of meat,
and asked her to marry him. Like a Veal lady* Manon
restrained her indignation and sent the butcher an
exquisitely worded refusal by the hand of a barefoot
urchin.

Manon s fastidiousness was beginning to cause her
father considerable uneasiness, and one day after
dinner, dismissing his journeymen, he put her through
a blustering cross-examination. Manon did not mince
her words, and she informed him that she would
never marry a man from the common people : she
needed a husband with whom she could share her
feelings and thoughts. Gatien, who greatly respected
himself and his fellow-tradesmen, seriously observed
that merchants had no lack of good manners and
education. His daughter sarcastically replied that
the ability to bow and scrape and to ape wealthy
customers was hardly what she called good manners
and education. In that walk of life, she resolutely
declared, she would find nobody to her taste. Only
think that a merchant gets his profit by reselling
goods at higher prices! If her parents had been so
anxious to have a daughter who would assist her hus
band in his trade, they should not have brought such

NINE WOMEN

a one as she into the world. Gatien could find no answer
to this, but he could not overcome his sense of injury.

On hot summer days Manon often used to go to
Meudon, situated a few miles outside Paris. Through
the dense foliage Paris emerged in the distance, some
times, like a city of legend, half concealed in haze.
Manon was fond of seeking amid the serried mass of
the city for the towers of Notre Dame and the roofs
of the Tuileries palace, or following the course of the
sleepy, gleaming Seine until she found the Quai de
THorloge. She could always obtain a cheap and plenti
ful dinner at a little tavern in the forest, although the
innkeeper, as sturdy as one of Meudon s own forest
oaks, had a habit of making merry jests and coarse
jokes which brought blushes to her cheeks* Whilst
her parents or her aunt, a good-natured old maid,
rested on the grass, wholly occupied with digesting
their dinner, Manon roved through the forest to
gather flowers, not omitting to pose gracefully as
she stooped, or in a lonely glade, sitting like Narcissus
on the brink of a pool, she would study her reflection
in the translucent water. Meudon with its resemblance
to a neglected park aroused in her ambitious reveries.
In her memoirs Meudon is allotted a few rhapsodic
lines: Lovely Meudon, how often have I rested in
thy shade, blessing the author of my being whilst
yearning for that which some day would complete it,
yet with the charm of a yearning void of impatience,
a charm which merely, tints the shades of the future
with the rays of hope!

Imperceptibly, dumbly, Manon s mother faded out

MANON ROLAND

of existence. Her death brought a change for the
worse in the Phlipon s well-ordered life. Now that
he was a widower Gatien, who had not been wholly
unamenable to his wife s mournful entreaties, felt
liberated and rejuvenated. He swiftly brought himself
to the verge of ruin by losses at the card-tables.
Terrified at the prospect of imminent indigence,
Manon willy-nilly found herself compelled to take an
active interest in her father s workshop and business.
And her duties as a shopkeeper gradually brought her
into closer contact with the needs and interests of
her neighbours on the Quai de THorloge.

Struck by the injustice, the indescribable lawless
ness, the humiliations and circumscriptions to which
her class was subjected, Manon now for the first time
began to desire for France the republic of which she
had read in the classical writers. Undoubtedly, she
wrote of this period in her life, our situation has a
strong influence on our character and our opinions,
but it can be said that the education I had received
and the ideas I had acquired through study or through
contact with the world all united to inspire me with
a republican enthusiasm, by bringing me to condemn
the ridiculous and to feel the injustice of a host of
privileges and distinctions. Also, in my reading,
struggles against inequality made an especially strong
impression on me. . . . When I witnessed the kind
of spectacle which the capital often presented during
the arrival or departure of the queen or the princes, or
the thanksgiving services for the safe delivery of the
queen in child-birth, I felt painfully all the contrast

NINE WOMEN

between this Asiatic luxury, this insolent splendour,
and the poverty and degradation of the besotted
people, who hasten to watch the passing of the idols
created by their own hands, and who foolishly applaud
the brilliance for which they themselves have paid by
deprivation of their necessities.*

Manon was again and again troubled by the question
of her future, and when a certain observant gentleman
prophesied that she would be a writer, the flattered
and delighted girl at once clutched at this possibility.
But she soon renounced any such course. *3Vlen are
not fond of a woman writer, she thought, and
her own sex criticises her if her works are bad,
and justly so ; if they are good they ascribe them to
others/

But one day in December 1775? as the jeweller s
daughter was bustling about the kitchen assisting the
day-servant to cook some food for her father and the
journeymen, turning from this occupation only hurried
ly to pull off her apron and run to the shop, there to
smile charmingly at customers and to extol her wares,
an elderly man appeared on the threshold. Manon
was preparing to welcome him with the inevitable
customary inquiry which of her precious trinkets he
would like to buy; but she stopped short as she caught
sight of a letter which the stranger was awkwardly
holding out to her. It was from Manon s conventual
friend Sophie Cannet. In a round, flowing hand she
wrote: This letter will be presented to you by the
philosopher M. Roland de la Platiere, whom I have
often told you about. He is educated and of good

MANON ROLAND

birth; he can be reproached only with an excessive
devotion to the ancients to the detriment of the moderns
whom he holds in light esteem, and also he has a
foible of liking to talk about himself/ Manon at once
invited M. Roland de la Platiere, who had been
studying her attentively, into the cosy, well-furnished
dining room. Roland had long passed his fortieth
year. Everything about him the dark cloth of his
coat, the stout cotton stockings, the broad shoes
with their great bows, his lumbering walk, the contem
plative stare of the thinker, the gleaming hair brushed
smoothly back over his head but not concealing his
baldness all inspired a sober esteem and indicated
habits established once for all. He spoke slowly, much,
and tediously, never listening to the remarks of others;
he was given to lapsing into abstracted silences, and
possessed a loud and jovial laugh. Manon was not
slow to perceive his intellectual limitations, his un
common knowledge and his wearisome principles.
She was his equal perhaps only in her self-esteem,
but she had also the gift of seeing the follies and
failings of all except herself. Despite her democratic
views she suffered a feeling of disillusionment when
she learnt that the aristocratic de la Platiere did
not signify that Roland belonged to the nobility.
However, her new acquaintance possessed a remuner
ative estate, and held a good governmental position
as inspector of manufactures in a provincial industrial
town. Mademoiselle Phlipon secretly acknowledged
that M. Roland, a philosopher, a savant, and moreover
by no means a poor man, would make her a very

NINE WOMEN

suitable husband. But Roland was in no hurry to
reveal his intentions, although he visited the Phlipons
frequently and remained for hours, endlessly talking
of Germany, where he had already been, or of Italy,
where he was planning to go, keeping Manon fully
informed on his mental processes, the state of his health,
and his annoyance with people who failed to under
stand him.

Roland s ideas were extremely definite: very pedan
tic and fond of peace, he did not burden himself
with doubts. He demanded rights for the estate which
he served; he condemned Louis ministers, the
licentiousness of the court, the behaviour of the queen;
he extolled England, her legal system, and her Puri
tanism.

For some time Roland ceased calling at the Quai de
THorloge, as he was travelling in Italy; but on his
return to France the inspector of manufactures re
newed his regular visits to the jeweller s house and
his endless allocutions, exhausting old Gatien s patience,
for Phlipon could not endure Roland s loquacity*

Mademoiselle Phlipon s life flowed on monotonous
ly; in her free time she read a great deal, and liked to
stress the fact: books on astronomy, physics, mathe
matics, chemistry and history were always lying open
on her table.

Five years passed from the day of Roland s first
introduction to Manon before the old bachelor at last
risked a proposal, Manon, suddenly afraid of the
future, irresolutely rejected his suit, explaining her
refusal by her poverty and unwillingness to be a

MANON ROLAND

burden on her husband. The imperturbably courteous
and irritatingly indifferent Roland forsook the Quai de
1 Horloge without making any attempt to persist in his
wooing. In vain did Manon, immediately repenting
her precipitate conduct, wait for him to return.
Roland did not renew his solicitations, and apparently
he had passed out of her life for ever. Mortified by
the turn events had taken, Manon decided to spend a
few months in the convent where as a child she had
spent such tranquil hours. There she took delight in
developing control over her will, restricting her needs,
and condemning herself to deprivations and a semi-
starvation diet.

Only after a lapse of six months, when she had given
up expecting him, did Roland call on her at the convent.
Using his former expressions without even transposing
the words, the inspector of manufactures renewed his
proposal of marriage, and received a hurried acceptance.
In her justification Manon wrote: If marriage be,
as I think, a serious bond, an association in which the
woman customarily is charged with caring for the
happiness of two individuals, would it not be better to
devote my faculties and my courage to this honourable
task, than to the isolation in which I am living?

Joylessly, and under no illusions, Manon Phlipon
became the wife of Roland de la Platiere in 1780, at
the age of twenty-six.

Within twelve months Roland was transferred to
an office in Amiens, where Manon s friends Sophie
and Henriette Cannet were living. The Rolands
domestic life in Amiens was indescribably tedious:

F 81

NINE WOMEN

Manon s desire to be a virtuous and model wife was
achieved only with great difficulty. For several hours
each day Roland would dictate his new work on Italy
to her in a monotonous, soporific tone; in addition
Madame Roland undertook to transcribe his drafts
and correct the proofs. She had no objection to per
forming these tasks, as they enabled her not only to
revise, but even independently to add somewhat to
the manuscript. Confident of her skill with the pen,
Manon had no doubt of her superiority over Roland
in this respect, but she liked to play the retiring and
ignorant woman deferring to an exceptionally talented
husband. In reality she was observant of everything
that occurred around her* She knew that the price
of bread was rising and factory wages were falling, so
causing discontent among the workers. She was not
greatly interested in the workers; like Roland himself,
she considered that a strong hand needed to be kept
on them; but she also wanted to see a strong hand
kept on the queen, the royal court, and all the
aristocrats, who had surpassed all bounds in their
extravagance and arrogance. Whence can we hope
for a strong government; who will bring an end to
the just and growing discontent? Madame Roland
wondered. She knew that the king, a corpulent
glutton, had no comprehension of state affairs, and
was seriously interested only in hunting and playing
the locksmith in his sumptuously equipped palace
workshop. The all-powerful queen was delighted to
have a husband who amused himself with fashioning
keys, and made no attempt to interfere with her pleasures

MANON ROLAND

and profligacies. The dissolute Madame Polignac,
the syphilis-ridden princess Lamballe, worthless female
favourites, and rogues of the type of Lauzun,
Esterhazy, and Cardinal de Rohan shared power with
Marie Antoinette. Taxes and loans, whose incidence
fell most heavily on the third estate, were a cause of
continual indignation. The great bourgeiosie were
swiftly accumulating wealth and were not prepared
to remain any longer deprived of their rights. As she
noted all these symptoms Madame more than once came
to the conclusion that only people like Roland (which
signified people like herself, like the society in which
she moved) were capable of bringing order and pros
perity to France. Just how this was to be brought
about she did not consider, but she listened contentedly
to the gossip and rumours of growing dissatisfaction
in Paris, hoping that it would lead to the realization
of her cherished, secret dreams.

In Amiens Madame Roland gave birth to a daughter
Eudora; but she had her own views on a mother s
responsibility/ just as she had on wifely responsi
bilities/ being guided in these views not by feeling
but by intellectual considerations. Domestic duties,
motherhood, and the receptions which she was so fond
of giving swallowed up a great deal of time ; but when
recalling those days in her memoirs she added that
of course she managed to find time for botany and
natural science.

In 1789, on the eve of the revolution, Roland
occupied the position of general inspector of manu
factures and factories in Lyons. Content with her

NINE WOMEN

husband s rise in official status, Madame Roland
felt almost satisfied with her well-furnished apartments,
her servants, and an excellent cook like all rich people/
Nevertheless the revolution unsettled Roland and his
energetic spouse. Manon recalled to mind all the
alluring details of the classic revolutions: she again
read Plutarch, once more enthusiastically quoted
Voltaire and Rousseau, ordered her servants to call
one another citizens/ In the society of the intellectu
ally backward, albeit wealthy Lyonnese manufacturers,
merchants, and their wives, who in the majority of
cases were semi-illiterate and uncivilized, Madame
Roland caused great bewilderment at first by the
audacity of her speech. Roland also sought to expound
his quondam theories, but now he stepped across
England to America, whose laws and whose liberty
seemed to him worthy models for France to copy.
In this circle of the Lyons bourgeoisie, who had not
as yet consciously formulated their desires and demands,
his hazy arguments at first brought him no few ene
mies. Observing the hostility which they with their
liberalistic views were incurring, Madame Roland wrote
to one of her friends, the Parisian doctor Lanthenas :

*. . . . We are proscripts, against whom they have
unleashed an incredible fury. On the eve of his depar
ture, at the last session of the Council, Blot was extreme
ly anxious to change his seat so as to avoid being at the
side of M. de la Platiere. He had already departed,
leaving his wife to tell me that her husband was being
traduced because of his association with mine. . . .
For a moment I trembled with indignation, but I

MANON ROLAND

quickly smiled with pity. . . . They are reptiles;
who run at a shout, who are frightened by threats;
not content with hiding themselves, they must also
disavow the only man with character enough to
show himself. ... As for us, we shall not change our
course; their clamour does not reach me, they come
not within my sphere. Let them abandon my friend,
he will not be alone; for I remain with him, and I
count for something. . . /

Madame Roland s behaviour certainly caused con
siderable .exasperation among bourgeois circles in
Lyons. The men disliked her for her bathos and her
habitual air of superiority, the woman were filled with
resentment to find so lovely a woman taking such
pride in her appearance yet arrogantly claiming to
be a wiseacre/ Madame Roland was far too deficient
in tact, modesty and simplicity, even when she was
deliberately trying to appear democratic.

Even in Lyons their acquaintances made Roland
the butt for their ridicule, detecting his wife s views
in every speech he made. Not that Manon herself
ever boasted of her influence over her husband.

A few years later she committed her views on this
question to writing: Ah, my God, what a disservice
was done me by those who lifted the veil under which
I preferred to remain. For twelve years of my life I
worked with my husband as I ate with him, because the
one seemed as natural as the other. When someone
quoted a passage from his works in which they found
a greater charm of style, when they praised some
academic trifle which they were pleased to attribute

NINE WOMEN

to the learned societies of which he was a member, I
enjoyed his satisfaction without remarking more
particularly whether it was I who had written it, and
he often ended by persuading himself that he really
had been in a good vein when he wrote this passage
added by my pen. In the ministry,, when it was a question
of giving expression to great ? strong truths, I put all
my soul into the task; it was only natural that that
expression should prove better than if it had merely
come from a secretary. I loved my country; I was
enthusiastic for liberty, I knew no interests or passions
which could equal these; my speech was pure and
moving, for it was that of the heart and of the truth.
The importance of the subject so possessed me that I
forgot myself.

His advanced opinions and, even more, his services
to the business interests of the Lyonnese bourgeoisie
led inevitably to the inspector of manufactures
election as a member of the Constitutional Assembly.
Soon after his return from these duties in Paris the
Assembly passed a decree which included the complete
abolition of the office of general inspector, and Roland
found himself without employment. However, his
many years of service entitled him to a handsome
pension. The necessity to take definite steps to
secure the pension enabled Manon, who could not
brook the thought of Roland s retirement into peace
and quietness, to insist on their returning to Paris,
and she succeeded in obtaining an honorary commission
in the National Assembly for him. As he jolted in the
diligence over the road to the capital Roland sighed

MANON ROLAND

again and again for the tranquillity of his estate,
where he could have lived placidly to a ripe old age;
but Manon thought differently, and her energetic voice
interrupted her weary husband s doze and brought him
back to reality. During the journey she spent her time
animatedly instructing the old man and giving him
counsel and guidance. The revolution could help her
to realize her ambitious designs, could provide a vent
for her accumulated passion and energy; and as
Roland listened to her harangues he realized that she
would never forgive him any frustration of her hopes.
They arrived in Paris in the winter of 1 7 9 1 , and engaged
rooms in the Hotel Britannique. Manon at once set
to work to put her designs into effect. She had firmly
resolved to reside permanently in Paris, where only
was it possible, in her opinion, to take any part in high
politics, to intervene in the course of events and to
hand her name down to history. She paid close attention
to the political situation of the moment, noting with
satisfaction that one of the stars in the ascendant
was Brissot, with whom she had long corres
ponded, although she had not yet made his personal
acquaintance.

Attired with studied simplicity, Madame Roland
made her way to the hall of the National Assembly,
where she asked to be introduced to Brissot. Manon,
the wife of a friend and already known to Brissot by
her letters, some of which he had published as models
of patriotic expression in his journal La Patriote
FranfotS) made an excellent impression on this observant
and keen-witted politician. He at once accepted her

NINE WOMEN

diffident invitation to visit them, and, without stopping
to reflect, promised to bring his friends.

Manon did not aspire to the glory of some suspect
woman agitator from the Palais Royal/ Women like
Th&roigne de Mricourt, Claire Lacombe, or Olympe
de Gouges, the pride of plebeian Paris during those
years, aroused only her contempt. She condescendingly
admitted that Citizeness Th6roigne was not lacking
in eloquence, that Claire Lacombe was fighting
enthusiastically for the rights of women, and that
Olympe de Gouges was no mean publicist ; nevertheless
in her eyes these women could not wipe out their dis
honourable past ; Olympe de Gouges moreover was
an illegitimate child, and all Paris knew that owing to
her illiteracy she was obliged to dictate her inflammatory
articles to a secretary. Madame Roland had no desire
whatever to follow the path laid down by these "heroines
of the faubourgs ; she did not seek their laurels. She
would not compromise herself by taking part in the
women s clubs, which were becoming the allies of the
extreme left. Needless to say, the only examples she
would recognize were the noble Greek and Roman
matrons around whom had assembled the philosophers,
the sages and the governors of their times. Endowed
with all the talents of the beautiful Aspasia, the friend
and consort of Pericles, Madame Roland considered
that she possessed the Spartan woman s will and her
love of liberty also. The establishment of an influential
salon where all the most powerful revolutionaries
should forgather, such was the task Manon set
herself. Captivated by the grace and beauty of Roland s

MANON ROLAND

youthful spouse, Brissot assisted her to accomplish her
design. In any case the future Girondins had need of
a salon; it would facilitate their closer conspiracy,
and would enable them to concentrate their forces.

So Brissot willingly availed himself of Manon s
invitation to her apartments, which she had tastefully
adorned with flowers, books and exquisite knick-knacks.
With him he brought the stout, self-confident Petion,
the diffident, pallid Buzot, and the garrulous Vergniaud,
a discriminating connoisseur of feminine beauty and
of the histrionic art. The undistinguished Bosc, after
wards one of Madame Roland s most faithful friends,
came and took part; Claviere, Volfius, and Anthoine
also called from time to time.

All these men had hardworking wives who were
indifferent to politics and were fully occupied with
their children, domestic affairs and troubles; their
intellectual mediocrity was an affliction to their hus
bands, who naturally were attracted by the possibility
of spending an evening in Madame Roland s hospitable
salon. Although ostensibly their visits were made
solely for the sake of talking to Roland, Manon knew
perfectly well that she had only to cease gracing the
little reception room with her presence for some of
these loquacious politicians to be missing thence
forth from the Hdtel Britannique.

Manon sought long and persistently to cultivate an
acquaintance with Robespierre, but he was always
evasive, having no sympathy for Roland or confidence
in Brissot, Void of human feelings and indifferent to
women, Robespierre was not easily persuaded to call

NINE WOMEN

at the Hotel Britannique. But after a time he became
a frequent guest, being attracted by the possibility thus
afforded of keeping in touch with events. For at the
end of 1791 and the beginning of 1792 the Brissotins
wielded a considerable influence over the destinies of
France. The elections to the National Assembly
had given them a majority, and in addition Brissot s
and Roland s adherents occupied the highest positions
in all the more important departments and municipal
administrations. On November 4th, 1791, Potion,
a fervent admirer of Madame Roland, had been elected
mayor of Paris in succession to La Fayette, whose glory
had waned. Even in the Jacobin Club the Girondins
felt that they were the masters.

Manon spent the autumn of 1791 on the Rolands
estate at Clos, and thence she sent Maximilian Robes
pierre a letter couched throughout in the adulatory
strain of the following passages:

In the heart of the capital, home of so many passions,
where your patriotism is entering upon a career as
difficult as honourable, you, sir, will not without a
certain interest receive a letter addressed from this
profound solitude, written by a free hand and expressing
the feelings of esteem and pleasure which people of
honour feel in corresponding with one another. And
even if I had followed the course of the revolution
and the steps of the Legislative Corps only from the
public journals, I should still have been able to dis
tinguish a few courageous men always faithful to
principles, and among even these men, him whose
energy has never ceased to exert the greatest resistance

MANON ROLAND

to the pretensions, to the machinations of despotism
and intrigue. . . .

In my retreat I shall learn with joy of your continued
success; and so I call you to the triumph of justice;
for the publication of the verities which concern
social well-being is always a success for the good
cause. If I had stopped to consider what I should
write to you, I should have abstained from writing.
But, without having anything to communicate to you,
I have had faith in the interest with which you will
receive news of two beings whose soul is made to feel
for you, and who delight in expressing to you the
esteem which they accord only to a few, an attachment
which they devote only to those who, above all glory,
choose to be just, and who prefer the happiness of
being sensitive/

On her return to Paris Manon found her friends in
an untroubled intoxication with power: even the cau
tious Brissot considered that they had won their
political game. Under the influence of this mood
Madame Roland went ecstatically forward to meet the
future. Soon, she was thinking, not only the Quai de
THorloge, but all Paris would be talking about the wife
and the woman who was the friend of the most cele
brated men in the country. She has left us a detailed
description of those who participated in her receptions
at the Hotel Britannique during this period:

I was splendidly accommodated in a pleasant
district ... it was agreed that the deputies who were
in the habit of meeting together for common counsel
should come to our rooms four times a week after the

NINE WOMEN

Assembly session and before the session of the Jacobin
Club . . . Seated by a window before a little table on
which were books, matters for study, or handiwork,
I worked or wrote whilst they discussed. I preferred to
write, because that made me appear more detached
from their discussions, yet left me there almost as
well. I can do more than one thing at once, and the
habit of writing allows me to attend to correspondence
whilst listening to something quite different from
what I am writing. I think I am three persons. I can
divide my attention into two parts as if it were a
material thing, and I consider and direct the employ
ment of those two parts as if I were yet a third person.
I remember that one day the gentlemen had a disagree
ment of opinion and were making quite a hubbub.
Observing how fast I was writing, Clavi&re remarked
humorously that only a woman s head could be so
content but he was astonished nevertheless. "But
what would you say," I asked him with a smile, "if I
were to repeat word for word all the arguments you
have just put forward?" Apart from the customary
civilities on their arrival and departure I never allowed
myself to utter one word, although I frequently had
to bite my lips in order to refrain. If anyone addressed
a remark to me it was after the circle was broken and
all deliberation ended. A carafe of water and sugar
were the only refreshment anyone had in my rooms,
, . . Robespierre s conduct at these conferences was
remarkable; he talked little, laughed often, would let
fall a few sarcasms but he never expressed his own
opinion/

MANON ROLAND

The long awaited the happiest day in Manon s
life arrived on March 2ist, 1792. Towards evening
there was a vigorous ring at the door, and Dumouriez
and Brissot presented themselves to Roland and his
wife.

* You -have been appointed a minister/ Dumouriez
muttered hurriedly. Expecting some expression of
gratitude, Brissot stood smiling and pulling at his
broad-brimmed hat. But Roland, although he had
known of the coming preferment, and had already
signified his acceptance, looked helplessly and interro
gatively at his wife, who was obviously exerting all
her will-power in order to restrain a cry of exultation.
To Manon at that moment Dumouriez, who was a
hypocrite and a traitor in the pay of the court, seemed
her best friend : was he not the bearer of the good news?
For that matter not only Madame Roland, but Brissot
and all the Girondist press were at that time extolling
Dumouriez, who had been appointed a minister of the
crown a few days before Roland, Claviere, and
Duranthon.

Manon s delight was Roland s doom: he did not
dare to refuse the appointment, although in his heart
of hearts he had been longing to do so.

In Madame Roland s memoirs is a diverting
description of her husband s first visit to court. When
Roland made his first appearance at the court in his
ordinary philosopher s attire, long worn for comfort s
sake, with his scanty hairs combed simply back over
his venerable head, wearing a round hat, his shoes
tied with ribbons, the court valets, who attached the

NINE WOMEN

greatest importance to the etiquette on which their
very existence depended, stared at him scandalized,
and with even a kind of affright. One of them went to
Dumouriez and with frowning brows whispered
something into his ear, whilst indicating with his eyes
the cause of his consternation. "Sir, no buckles to his
shoes! 7 Dumouriez, always quick at repartee,
assumed a comically serious air, and exclaimed: "Sir,
all is lost." These words were immediately spread
abroad, and forced a laugh even from those who were
least of all disposed to laughter/ Even Louis XVI,
despite the new minister s exterior (so completely
contrary to etiquette), received Roland cordially.

Ere long Manon was occupied with removing to
the sumptuous and magnificent palace of the Ministry
for Home Affairs, where the minister was expected
to reside. Elated with happy pride, she ascended the
marble steps of the staircases and passed through the
vast, empty and echoing halls : throwing back her head,
she studied the frescoes and the stucco Cupids on the
ceilings and walls; she touched and stroked the chilly
columns; she admired herself in the gold-framed
mirrors, and listened to the tinkle of the crystal
fringes to the Venetian chandeliers, which by candle
light sparkled a myriad different colours. In her
memoirs she has left no description either of the
beautiful palace or of the satisfaction which she,
despite her democratic leanings, experienced when
she went to live in it. She had sufficient sense to avoid
making herself a laughing-stock, especially as the
^uai de THorloge was not so very far away, and playing

MANON ROLAND

the illustrious lady only led to ridicule and persecution,
In the ministerial palace Madame Roland sought to
remain the same noble consort of the virtuous Roland/
the indefatigable champion of a republican system.
After the king s flight in 1791 Brissot in Le Patriote
Franfois had been the first to give powerful expression
to the demand for a republic, and Manon, who read
Brissot s journal regularly, hastened in her salon to
propose a sentimental toast to the friends of the
republic. Under her influence Roland agreed to join
Condorcet in issuing the journal Le Refublicain^
ou le Defenseur du Gouvernement Representatif^ which
agitated for the proclamation of a republic. In her
memoirs, written just before her execution, Manon
vaunts her republicanism, and accuses Robespierre of
not desiring the overthrow of the monarchy, declaring
that after the king s flight to Varennes he jestingly
asked Potion and Brissot: A republic what is that?
Madame Roland fails to mention that even at the time
Brissot surmised that Robespierre was declaring himself
against a republic only for secret motives. In 1791
the consolidation of power in the hands of the great
bourgeoisie, of whom the Girondins were the repre
sentatives, suggested serious apprehensions to Robes
pierre, who was afraid that the republic established
by them would ensure the bourgeoisie too great a
domination in the country. Then the departments
would gain their independence, and the Senate, the old
dream of the Americanophile Brissot, would become
the bulwark of the struggle against the true democrats
and the extreme revolutionaries. Robespierre con-

NINE WOMEN

sidered that the time for the proclamation of a republic
had not yet arrived. Nor was he mistaken in his
diagnosis of the real desires concealed beneath the
Girondins phrase-mongering and demagogy. The
Brissotins soon revealed their hand: realizing that a
republic might prove of service to others beside them
selves, they abated their insistent demands for the
elimination of the king.

It became a custom for guests to be invited twice a
week to Minister Roland s dining table. Only
occasionally did Manon allow women to be present at
these functions, and at such times Madame Potion,
with her habit of making inept remarks, and expansive
Madame Brissot, the energetic mother of innumerable
children, would always be invited. It was these two
ladies with their more sensitive feminine intuition who
first detected that Madame Roland was especially
partial to the outstanding Girondist deputy, Buzot.
Nervous and mobile in temperament, sentimental and
demagogic in character, Buzot attracted her by virtue
of his complete contrast to Roland. His autobiography
contains a revealing passage in which he seeks to
justify his attitude to life:

Born with an independence of character and a pride
which bowed to nobody s command, how could I
reconcile myself to the idea of an hereditary master
and a man arrogating infallibility to himself? My mind
and heart were filled with the history of Greece and
Rome and of those famous men who in these ancient
republics honoured humanity above all else, I pro
fessed their maxims from earliest childhood, I was

MANON ROLAND

nourished on the study of their virtues . . . Profligacy
never stained my soul with its unclean breath; de
bauchery always inspired me with loathing, and even
to my present mature age licentious speech has never
sullied my lips . . . With what rapture do I still recall
that happy, irrevocable period of my life when I
wandered in silence over the hills and through the
forests of the town where I was born, delightedly
reading the works of Plutarch or Rousseau or calling
to mind the most precious aspects of their morals or
their philosophy ... It was with such a character and
such inclinations that, changed by the shock of human
passions during the course of the revolution, I went to
the Constitutional Assembly.

That which I saw there had no power to alter
me : the nobility, the clergy, the most dissolute court
in Europe. I there proved myself a friend of the people,
an intrepid champion of the rights of humanity. My
opinion was considered at Versailles and I was sought
after everywhere; but I was not slow to perceive that
not everybody possessed a kindred soul, a soul equally
free of all personal views and personal interest. Then
I returned to obscurity, and only towards the end did
I again emerge, at the moment when I believed I saw
that the number of true patriots had been greatly
diminished, and that I could no longer remain silent
without reducing the number still more. Especially
after the flight of the king was my detestation of royalty
unreservedly manifested . . . When the sessions of the
Constitutional Assembly came to an end I refused the
post offered me in Paris and returned to my little town

G 97

NINE WOMEN

(Evreux) where I did everything that lay in my power/
A belated first love, Manon s love for Buzot, now
troubled the Rolands well ordered life, bringing
embitterment and torture to all three. Madame
Roland s long pondered, involved principles and the
great demands she made on herself did not allow her to
consent to common adultery. A sister of the Gracchi/
the wife of a hero could not follow in the steps of
those whom she herself so venomously ridiculed. To
make cuckolds of their husbands was only what was
to be expected from the women of the old regime, from
a Marie Antoinette and her favourites for instance; but
such conduct was not a worthy course for the * Queen
of the Gironde, as Roland s wife was coming more and
more to be called.

After a diligent study and analysis of her feelings
Manon had consecrated herself to Roland, and now her
husband, growingly indulgent with the passing of the
years, was humbly playing the statesman, with no
desires other than those of his wife. Manon s confession
dumbfounded Roland, who hitherto had been so sure
of her devotion. Buzot was young, he loved her, and
his love was returned. Divorce could easily be obtained,
and so there was no obstacle to their union. But
Manon would not accept any easy road for herself;
she remained with her husband, promising him that her
love for Buzot would be pure. But she continued to
meet and correspond with Buzot, and through him
she found it possible to follow the Convention s
activities and influence its decisions. Submitting to
Manon s indomitable will, the indolent Buzot began

MANON ROLAND

to take a more active part in the labours of the Con
vention, especially in winning converts for the Brisso-
tins ; and his hysterical fervour was transformed into a
valuable weapon in the political struggle. Like Roland
himself, Buzot was devoted and entirely subservient
to Manon ; and she recompensed him with a Platonic,
prudent affection and with felicitous praise in her
salon. At the back of his portrait she wrote the follow
ing description of his character:

Nature had endowed him with a lovable soul, a
proud spirit and a noble character. His sensitiveness
led him to cherish peace and the pleasures of an obscure
life and private virtues. The chagrin of his heart
intensified the melancholy to which he was already
predisposed. Circumstances precipitated him into a
political career; he brought to it the ardour of a burning
courage, and the inflexibility of an austere probity.

Born for the glorious days of Rome, he vainly
hoped to prepare similar times for a nation apparently
born for liberty; but the corrupted French are un
worthy of it.

Madame Roland s intervention in her husband s
and Buzot s affairs and her frequently baneful influence
were not to be concealed from the Parisians. So long
as the party struggle was not acute she provoked merely
derision, but when the internal dissensions grew more
acrimonious Manon s name was more and more
coupled with abuse and slander, just as had been the
names of aristocratic women of the old regime. Too
often had women exerted a detrimental influence over
the state affairs of France; the cruel Pompadour, the

NINE WOMEN

profligate daughter of the people* Du Barry, the
Austrian woman and her friends were still too painful
a memory.

Never openly defending her opinions, hardly ever
seen in public, yet weaving a poisoned web of backstairs
intrigue, Madame Roland became the enemy of the
revolutionary faubourgs, and more hated than old
Roland himself.

The opening of the campaign of slander against
the cuckold Roland s wife naturally coincided with
an outburst of frenzy against the Girondins, who in
the Jacobin Club were advocating war. A magnificent
speech by Robespierre tore down the veil concealing
the involved political strategems resorted to by the
Girondins, who were wanting war in order to
strengthen their power, to draw the poorer sections
of the people away from the extreme revolutionaries, to
reduce the numbers enrolled in the army of unem
ployed, and to extend the country s commercial and
political influence. In his first speech on the war in
1792 Robespierre declared:

I also demand war, but on a condition which
undoubtedly will find general agreement, for I do not
think that the advocates of war desire to deceive us.
I demand such a war as they have described to us,
such a war as the spirit of liberty would declare,
such a war as the French people itself knows how to
wage, and not such a war as is desired by the intriguers
or such as the ministers and generals will make. . . .
But where shall we find the general who, imperturb
able defender of the people s rights, eternal enemy of

IOO

MANON ROLAND

tyrants, will never breathe the poisoned atmosphere of
the courts? . . . Yet are we to delay with the overthrow
of the thrones of Europe s despots, have we to await
the orders of the Ministry for War? For this noble
enterprise have we to consult the spirit of Liberty or
the spirit of the court? Have we to be guided by those
same patricians, those everlasting favourites, in the war
declared all around us between the nobility and the
people? No. March we ourselves to Leopold, take we
counsel only of ourselves! But all the orators of
war interrupt my speech. M. Brissot tells us that the
whole affair must be directed by M. le Comte de
Narbonne, and that we must march under the command
of the Marquess de la Fayette, that to the executive
power belongs the right to lead the nation to victory and
liberty. . , .

To preach confidence in the intentions of the execu
tive power, to justify its agents, to appeal for further
favour to its generals, to represent distrust as a horrible
attitude, or as a means of troubling the concert of
the two authorities and the public order, is to deprive
liberty of its last resource: the vigilance and energy of
the nation/

The Brissotins were victorious in the war debates,
and Manon welcomed the Girondist government s
declaration of hostilities on April 2oth, 1792, as a
personal triumph.

Thus began the war with Austria : a war which was
to have the effect of intensifying the struggle between
the classes, the antagonism of the parties, the cost of
living, and the discontent of the poverty-stricken

101

NINE WOMEN

masses to the utmost extreme. Finding themselves
in a minority, Collot D Herbois, Chabot and Robes
pierre denounced the Girondins as intriguers, and
warned them that there would be a settling of accounts
with them ere long. The journal Pere Duchene did
not hesitate to resort to exaggeration and slander in its
attacks on the Girondins, and the Rolands were by
no means spared in its denunciations. One issue was
entirely devoted to them :

A few days ago a deputation ... of half a dozen
sans-culottes went to interview this old ruin (the
cuckold Roland) ; unfortunately they arrived at dinner
time. "What do you want?" the porter asked, stopping
them at the door. "We wish to speak to the virtuous
Roland." "There are no virtuous ones here," was
the reply of the corpulent, well-fed and clean
shaven porter, as he stretched out his palm to be
oiled. . . .

Our sans-culottes passed along a corridor and entered
the virtuous Roland s ante-chamber. They could not
make their way through the press of servantry with
which it was crowded. Twenty cooks, laden with the
finest of fricassees, were bawling at the top of their
voices : "Let us pass, let us pass, make way for us; these
are entries for the virtuous Roland"; others were
shouting : "Road for the roast for the virtuous Roland" ;
still others: "Room for the hors-d oeuvres for the
virtuous Roland ; and yet others : * Here come the sweets
for the virtuous Roland" . . . "What do you want?"
the virtuous Roland s valet asked the deputation: "We
want to have a talk with the virtuous Roland." "He

IO2

MANON ROLAND

is not to be seen at present/ "Tell him he ought always
to be accessible to the people s magistrates."

The valet went to communicate this very latest
news to the virtuous Roland, who made his appearance
with scowling face, his mouth full, his serviette under
his arm. "The republic must surely be in danger," he
said, "since you disturb me during dinner." "Aye,
more than you think. But first conduct us to a spot
more fitted for receiving us; if the nation is going
to grant you a residence fit for a prince, if you are to
have magnificent salons, you must be just as ready to
receive the woollen bonnets in them as the fine spirits
who come to say sweet nothings to the virtuous
Roland s spouse" . . . Roland conducted us into his
room; we had to go through the dining-room, where
more than thirty plate-lickers were assembled. In the
place of honour, to the right of the virtuous Roland s
spouse, sat a Brissotin; to the left, the denouncer
of Robespierre, the little whipper-snapper Louvet,
with his papier mach features and sunken eyes, was
leering lecherously at the virtuous Roland s wife
.... Unhappily, the deputation had to pass through
an unlighted ante-chamber .... And one of them
sent the virtuous Roland s dessert flying ... In her
rage the virtuous Roland s wife tore her false hair from
her head.

What did Manon think of such of the Parisian
rabble s malevolent comments as came to her ears?
The Rolands faithful servant more than once burst
into tears on her return from the market, where she
had heard the traders poking fun at her master and

103

NINE WOMEN

mistress. But as she listened to the gossip Manon
merely compressed her dry, ill-boding lips and
pondered contemptuously on the ignorant canaille
who did not deserve their liberty. Madame Roland
was especially struck by the obtuseness of those who
condemned her soirees, at which the hostess would
pluck a rose from her corsage and drop the petals
into the guests wineglasses with a gesture worthy of
the wife of a Roman patrician or a sage hettera of
Athens.

Manon assisted her husband in his ministerial
labours, and during the summer of 1792 she realized
from the conduct of the king and the court that Roland
was in danger of dismissal from office. Anxious to
avert such a blow, or at the least to ensure that he was
dismissed with honour/ she drew up a detailed report
in which she demanded various reforms. But this
letter, sent to the king in the name of Roland as Minis
ter for Home Affairs, did not reach the royal hands,
and in June Louis XVI dismissed his three Girondist
ministers.

After this setback Manon grew rather more caustic
in her references to * bulldog Dumouriez, who had
been responsible for the Girondist ministers fall from
favour, forgetting how only recently she had regarded
a visit from him as an honour. But although he had
vacated his position as king s minister Roland was not
out of affairs for long. Events steadily pursued their
historical course. On August loth, 1793, the mon
archy itself was dismissed, and the next day the Legis
lative Assembly appointed a ministry which included

104

MANON ROLAND

Roland, Danton, Monge, Claviere, Servan andLebrun.
Her second advent to power did not bring Manon
Roland any renewal of her previous delight. Roland
was now continually being made the butt of attacks
from the left. Manon wept impotently when she
learnt that Danton had said of her: Trance needs
ministers who will not see everything through their
wives eyes. Nothing could have affronted her more.
Were there then so many such enthusiastic, such
observant, such intelligent eyes in France? Of course
these haughty gentlemen were incapable of under
standing her. Manon consoled herself by reflecting
on the pettiness of those around her. Mediocrity,
she exclaimed contemptuously, surpasses all that one
could have imagined, and that in all grades of society,
from the clerks ... to the ministers in charge of the
government, the officers who have command of the
armies, the ambassador made to negotiate. Only
three men: her husband, the beloved Buzot, and
Brissot, whose opinions Manon repeated in the belief
that they were her own, enjoyed her respect. But these
three were unable to save her from ridicule, from
despicable attacks, and, urged on by the desire for
place and power, Madame Roland resolved on action.
She no longer wanted, indeed she thought it criminal
to remain silent, occupying herself with women s
matters behind her little table while the men were
arguing; henceforth she resolutely intervened in the
conversation, deliberately inflamed party passions, de
manded that her friends should exert an effectual energy,
followed the Convention s every step, suggested the

105

NINE WOMEN

themes for Buzot s speeches and assisted him to
rehearse them, provided formulae to Brissot for use in
the Patriote Franfois* With all her strength Madame
Roland struggled to assure influence and power to the
Girondins. She still maintained a hostile attitude to the
monarchists.

The September of 1792 saw the massacres in the
prisons, but those sanguinary days appear to have
made no direct impression whatever on Manon,
although she afterwards asserted that the contrary
was the case. Her position was entirely at one with
that adopted by the Girondist Press of the time, and
that Press betrayed no sign of indignation at the
carnage of which the nobility and the spirituality,
allies of the advancing armies of the monarchist
coalition, were the victims.

On September 3rd, even while the gaolers of the
monastery Saint Germain des Pr6s were sighing or
cursing as they wiped the traces of blood from the
floors, and gathered the last remaining corpses to
throw them morosely into the tumbrels, Manon was
taking a final glance at her toilet in a great pier-glass.
With studied negligence she pinned a kerchief over
her gorgeous gown , fluffed a curl above her ear,
adjusted her farthingale, lightly powdered her chin
and brow, and tinted her cheeks with the slightest
touch of rouge. She was now thirty-eight years old,
but the years had not yet set their imprint on her
features nor marred her rather buxom yet supple
figure. After considering herself from all possible
angles Madame Roland went, humming a snatch of

1 06

MANON ROLAND

song, to her daughter Eudora s room. She gently
stroked the child s hair, taking care not to bend lest she
should spoil the line of her corsage, gave the embar
rassed governess some instructions, and then, enjoy-
ably sniffing the scent of her perfume, she passed
swiftly into the great dining-room, where the table
had been laid modestly but elegantly. To-day the
Rolands were giving a great banquet. Later in the
evening, when the guests had departed, as she slowly
disrobed Manon was contentedly to recall the success
of her reception, the animated conversation, jests,
and laughter such as had not been known for many days
during this increasingly anxious period. Possibly
during the evening she made some casual reference to
the manner in which the people had settled accounts
with the aristocrats the evening before, and remarked
in the words of her friends that the blood of scoundrels
had been shed. Only afterwards did the Girondins
utilize the September massacres as a weapon to be
turned against the Mountain.

The hatred for the king which Madame Roland
had been so fond of stressing had weakened consider
ably by the day of his execution, and Louis XVTs
death even caused the Violent republican woman
mortification. At the beginning of 1793 a friend in
Switzerland, the counter-revolutionary Lavater, sent
Manon a letter which was wholly in accord with her
own mood:

My good Roland, I have only just received your
letter, also your portrait and several of your published
articles, which I shall read as soon as possible. I

107

NINE WOMEN

hasten to inform you that all men of honour are lost in
admiration of your glorious husband and abhor the
intrigues and plots against him. My spirit is inexpres
sibly embittered by the death of the king. I dare not and
I cannot tell you my grief and my apprehensions. O
my dear friend, the freedom which you desire to achieve
by means of the most callous and artificial of despotism
is slipping out of your grasp, and misfortune a
hundredfold will come on the heads of those who thus
abuse both the prejudices and the license of the people.

Come to us if France, which is unworthy of you,
rejects you/

In the January of the same mournful 1793 Roland
resigned his minister s portfolio. The struggle in the
Convention between the Gironde and the Mountain
was rising irresistibly to its height, the sessions
were becoming alarmingly stormy. Everything of
which the Brissotins had long been culpable in the
eyes of France s poorer classes was cast up against
them mercilessly. They were charged with cowardice
during the shootings on the Champ de Mars, with
carrying on equivocal negotiations with the palace,
with participation in the king s intrigues, with the
treachery of the generals who had been the Girondins
candidates, with vacillating during the trial of Louis
XVI. Nor were they tardy with their counter-accu
sations: they replied with slander and abuse of the
Mountain, and carried on a furious agitation in the
Press and the clubs.

Everywhere in Paris in the sections, the fau
bourgs, the Convention the unpopularity of the

108

MANON ROLAND

Girondins was only too evident. Fruitlessly did the
pedantic Roland appeal eight times in four months for
consideration of his report: each time he was refused
a hearing.

Leaving the pleasant ministerial palace, Manon
once more established their home in a modest apart
ment recalling that of the Hotel Britannique. But how
different was all her present environment from the
recent untroubled past ! Madame Roland was without
illusions, and seeing how far the dissensions had gone,
she realized how menacing and decisive a struggle
confronted her party. Her salon, no longer crowded,
was converted into the Girondist staff headquarters.
Only when the contours of the imminent defeat were
clearly defined and destruction was upon them did
she take steps to organize retreat and retirement under
ground. Indefatigably she exerted herself to ensure
her friends a refuge if the need should arise, and to
obtain permission for her husband and daughter to
retire to their estate. Her preparations were inter
rupted by an unfortunate set-back in the form of an
unexpected illness.

In the spring of 1793 the party struggle in the
Convention was on the eve of a crisis. By their rejec
tion of the proposal for a progressive income-tax
the Girondins provoked a storm of indignation and
fury among the petty bourgeoisie and the workers;
but, paying no heed to the expressed will of the masses,
they continued to fight even against the maximum
the establishment of limit-prices for bread, which the
hungry Parisians led by the Mountain were demand-

109

NINE WOMEN

ing. The worker, the creator of the revolution, the
prime force of the bloody insurrections, who had
given his children for the war against Austria and
Prussia, but who had received no benefit whatever
from the political system which he had brought into
being, was relegated by the Girondins, with their
advocacy of free trade, to starvation. The people s
patience was exhausted; the name of Brissotin became
synonymous with traitor/ But regardless of the
murmuring among the populace and their own
growing unpopularity, on May 2nd, 1793, the Giron
dins, hoping for the support of the provinces,
attempted once more to override the Convention,
which by a majority had accepted proposals involving
a compulsory loan for the struggle against the counter
revolution in the Vend6e, the payment of allowances
to soldiers dependents, and the establishment of
reserve stocks of flour. The loan was to be distributed
among Paris inhabitants having an income of over one
thousand livres, a scheme which irritated the Girondins
greatly, for they deemed it to be an act of injustice
to the more affluent sections of the population. This
final error, namely their fidelity to the class which
they served, was the immediate cause of the Girondins
downfall. On the eve of the schism Manon was
vigilantly watching events from a sick-bed. She had but
few visitors, among them being Buzot, increasingly
intimate and beloved. Despite her agitation and her
oppressing presentiments of the approaching cata
strophe, she was possessed by an irresistible paroxysm
of love for him who might have been her paramour.

MANON ROLAND

It would be pleasant/ she wrote, abstracting herself
from the harsh reality, if such an inclination coincided
with one s duty not to allow those who still remain to
perish fruitlessly. With every day it becomes more
difficult to master my heart, and I have to make
vigorous efforts in order to defend my mature years
from the storms of passion. Her fears for her weakness
of will and the compliance of her thirty-eight years
were unnecessary. The period in which she was
living took charge of her life and determined her
future. On May 3ist, 1793, the Girondins made their
exit from the historical scene, and with them went
their queen. That date brought separation from Buzot
and appointed a term to Madame Roland s own
existence.

On the day which saw the revolt of the poor of
Paris against the Brissotins Madame Roland awoke
in the morning feeling better in health than she had for
many days. Her chief care was to arrange for her
family s retirement into the obscurity which, by con
trast, seemed a little promised land holding out the
prospect of peace and happiness. But hardly had she
dressed, drunk her coffee, and arranged the papers and
ornaments in the bed-chamber and the reception room,
when a servant ran in to warn her against the street
crowds and the open threats which were being
directed with particular emphasis against cuckold
Roland and the Brissotins. Thenceforth events
developed with irrevocable rapidity. Somewhere in
the distance a drum rolled, then there was the sound
of signal-guns. All the great and bloody holidays

NINE WOMEN

of the Revolution, in which Manon also had taken
enthusiastic part, had begun in the same manner.
Gathering up her skirts with both hands as though
setting to a minuet, she ran to the window, foreknowing
that in a moment she would see the people pouring
torrentially out of the houses, the shops, and the gates,
and streaming in a picturesque ribbon along the narrow
street. The street-sellers and fruit-women would be
raising their arms and brandishing their baskets,
incoherently shrieking out curses; men, women, and
children, upsetting the dustbins, the benches, the
onlookers, would be running to their sections, to the
Paris Commune, to the Convention, clenching their
fists, infecting one another with the thirst for ven
geance, ready immediately for the struggle against the
enemies. Trembling, and still striving to suppress
her terrible -conjecture, Manon listened to the crowd s
menacing cries. As she caught the names of her
friends she sickened and turned from the window,
deprived of her last hopeful uncertainty. The people
were calling the Girondins to account.

At five o clock the next day a patrol, jingling with
sabres and muskets, furnished with the Revolutionary
Committee s order for Roland s arrest, arrived at their
apartment. After reading the order Roland declared
that it had not been issued by any legally constituted
authority, and refused to go with them to prison. Not
having permission to use force, the armed sans-cu/ottes
returned to the Commune Council for further in
structions. Hardly had the sound of their steps died
away when Manon, counting on her still remaining

112

MANON ROLAND

connections, resolved to go herself to the Convention,
hoping that publicity would save Roland from arrest.
The Tuileries palace was crowded with armed men.
As she stood in the narrow corridor a howl of voices
like the menacing roar of an ocean flood reached her
from the session hall. By trickery and falsehood she
managed to call Vergniaud out to her, but this recently
self-confident, irresistible Girondist orator would not
undertake to read a letter announcing Roland s arrest
to the Convention, arguing that they would not listen
to him. Seeing no other way of salvation, Manon fled
back to aid her husband to escape.

When, late the same evening, the deputation from
the Commune Council again arrived to arrest Roland,
he was no longer in the house. This time they arrested
Manon. From midnight till seven in the morning the
exhausting procedure of searching through and
sealing up everything went on. The city had long been
astir when, taking farewell of her daughter and the
servants, Madame Roland left the house under escort.
Armed sectionaries stretched in two ranks from the
gate to the hired carette, keeping back the few in
quisitive onlookers. One or two women recognized
the prisoner, and speeded the departing carette with
the shout: To the guillotine P

There were no cells immediately available in the
Abbaye prison to which Manon was conveyed, and
the courteous gaoler allowed her to spend the day in
one of the rooms of his apartment. His wife, a kindly
and energetic woman, asked the new prisoner what she
would like to have for breakfast. The State provided

H 113

NINE WOMEN

prisoners with only a portion of beans and two hundred
grammes of bread per diem, but they were allowed
to have meals at their own expense, and so their diet
was in strict conformity with their fortune and habits.
On the first day of her stay in prison the exhausted
and apprehensive woman asked only for a little sweet
ened water.

At nightfall the gaoler conducted her into a little
cell with a tiny window, beneath which sentries were
posted who disturbed her sleep all night with the time-
honoured qui vive. These challenges were made
more frequently and the guards were strengthened
during the intensely anxious nights when the Govern
ment were afraid of popular demonstrations.

The gloom and chill of the prison depressed Manon,
and in her desire to fortify her resolution she endea
voured to transform the cell into some semblance of
her living room at home. Great colourful bouquets
of flowers adorned the dreary, ice-cold walls; on the
table with its old table-cloth, on the stool, on the
window-sill she strewed books, ornaments and toilet
necessities. Owing to the kindness of the gaoler and
his wife she received frequent visits from her friends
outside, and she was able to correspond with her
family. The greatest sympathy of all was shown by
her faithful friend Bosc, who had arranged for her
daughter Eudora to be looked after by a family devoted
to the Rolands. From the newspapers she learnt
that twenty-two Girondins had been arrested; in her
utter despair she exclaimed: My country is lost. Only
her surety that Roland, Buzot and the other Girondins

114

MANON ROLAND

who had fled from Paris were out of danger restored her
resolution. At first she did not trouble for her own
fate and tried to maintain the challenging tranquillity
of innocence. 7 Confident of speedy release, she wrote
to the Ministry of Justice demanding the application
of the law/ and in reply, on June I2th she was at last
examined by a police commissary. He listened
abstractedly to Manon s indignant arguments and
wordy objections, but afforded her no explanation
of the reasons for her arrest. During the subsequent
examination a boorish commissary who had had
enough of this woman s babble demanded that she
should answer only yes or no/ telling her that they
were not in the Ministry for Home Affairs, ^here
she could display her intellectual brilliance/ The
examination, which continued for several hours, was
conducted in so severe a tone that Manon abruptly
realized the sentence menacing her. As she left the
room she angrily said: How sorry I am for you . . .
I forgive you even your rudeness . . . You can send
me to the scaffold, but you cannot deprive me of the
joy which is born of a clean conscience and the con
viction that posterity will exact vengeance for Roland
and for me, and will destine our persecutors to infamy.
It was in this Abbaye prison that Manon began to
write her memoirs, which afterwards filled the two
volumes published immediately after Thermidor by
those of her friends who had escaped unscathed. In
her memoirs she left character sketches of those
leaders of the revolution who had visited her salon,
and also put on record the events of former years.

NINE WOMEN

Impartiality was not to be expected of the prisoner
who only recently had been, to use her own phrase, on
the throne. Exasperated by her persecutions, she
rancorously condemned the Montagnards and exalted
her own party associates.

Some three weeks after her arrest, on June 2yth,
she was suddenly released; but two days later she was
again arrested and sent to the prison of Sainte Plagie.
Her life in her new place of confinement was very
similar to that in the Abbaye. In addition to writing
her memoirs and conducting an extensive corre
spondence with Buzot and her other friends, she occu
pied herself with drawing and reading. As of old,
Plutarch s Noble Greeks and Romans was always
lying on her table. The greatest mortification of
Virtuous Roland s wife during her stay in Sainte
P61agie was her enforced association with prostitutes,
thieves and coiners. When the cell doors were opened
in the morning and the guard allowed the whining or
cynically cursing women into the common corridor,
whither the male prisoners also came, Manon huddled
into a corner of her cell, affronted at having such
society for company and shocked by the unladylike
language which she heard all around her. On more
than one occasion she considered the possibility of
committing suicide, but relinquished the idea, not
wishing to give her husband s traducers a new weapon
to their hands. In her diary she wrote: *I shall exalt
his glory if only they decide to summon me before the
Revolutionary Tribunal. Gradually her despised
companions began to have a less painful effect upon

116

MANON ROLAND

her. She even began to find some satisfaction in
carrying on instructive conversations with them, evok
ing their astonishment and involuntary respect for this
learned woman.

Her devoted friends Bosc, Grandpre, and Cham-
pagneux continued to bring her flowers from the
Botanical Garden, also letters and newspapers. The
gaoler s good wife, with whom, as before in the Abbaye,
she quickly established friendly relations, frequently
invited her during the daytime into her well-lighted
apartment, where on an old harpischord the prisoner
was allowed to play the simple melodies she had learnt
in the monastery.

On the day of Brissot s execution, the most painful
day in Madame Roland s life, when hope died for her
also, she was transferred to the Conciergerie, which
had the terrible reputation of being the ante-chamber
of death. In the Conciergerie her cell was evil-
smelling and as dark as the tomb. Death was at hand,
and everywhere Manon felt its oppressing presence.
There was no longer any purpose to be served by
restraining her copious and bitter tears of misery and
apprehension. Every evening the gaoler, the witness
of her mortal convulsions and despair, phlegmatically
shot back the bolt of the solitary cell in which the
exhausted Woman wept for days on end. The summons
to the Revolutionary Tribunal was imminent, the
cross-examinations grew more numerous. Madame
Roland was accused of having relations with the refugee
Girondist deputies, who had been outlawed. Summon
ing up her last remaining resolution, she tried to

117

NINE WOMEN

maintain a semblance of strength before her inquisitors.
From her letters to her daughter and friends it is
clear that she learnt only painfully and with difficulty
to meet her death bravely, not looking for mercy.
She was lifted out of her grief and the physical fear
of extinction only by her anxiety to make an intelligent
and eloquent defence at her trial. To the last second
of her life this woman appraised the finely turned
phrase and an expressive pose more than anything
else. The following passages are extracted from the
speech she prepared for her trial :

The charge made against me rests entirely on an
alleged complicity with the men you call conspirators.
My friendly relations with a few of them were formed
long previously to the political circumstances owing
to which they are now considered blameworthy.

I pass no judgment on the measures to which the
proscribed resorted; I have no knowledge of them;
but I cannot in the least believe in the vile intentions of
those whose probity, civic honour, and generous
devotion to their country have been demonstrated to
my eyes. If they have erred, it was in good faith; they
succumbed without being disgraced; in my eyes they
are unfortunate without being blameworthy. If in
offering prayers for their safety I am myself blame
worthy, I declare myself such to all the world. I am
not troubled for their glory, and I willingly consent to
share with them the glory of being oppressed by their
enemies. I have known these men, who are accused of
having conspired against their country, convinced but
humane republicans, persuaded that it was necessary

118

MANON ROLAND

by good laws to inspire esteem for the republic even
among those who doubted its ability to stand; and that,
truly, is more difficult than it is to kill them.. The
history of all the ages has shown that great talent is
needed to lead the people to virtue by good laws,
whereas only force is necessary in order to oppress
them by terror or to annihilate them by death. I have
heard them maintain that abundance, like happiness,
can result only from an equitable, tutelary, and bene
ficent regime: that the omnipotence of the bayonet
produces much fear, but no bread. I have seen them,
inspired with the most burning enthusiasm for the
good of the people, disdain to flatter them, resolved to
perish victims to their blindness rather than delude
them. I admit that these principles and this conduct
seemed to me entirely different from those of the tyran
nous and ambitious who seek to please the people in
order to subjugate them.

As a friend of liberty, of which my reflections have
taught me to judge the worth, I enthusiastically
welcomed the revolution, convinced that it heralded
the epoch of the overthrow of the arbitrary rule which
I hate, an epoch of reform of the abuses over which,
moved by the fate of the unfortunate class, I had so
often sighed. I followed the progress of the revolution
with interest, I warmly discussed public affairs, but I
never exceeded the bounds which are imposed by my
sex. Some talents perhaps, some philosophy, a rarer
courage, which made it possible for me to avoid sapping
my husband s in times of danger; that is probably
what was indiscreetly lauded by those who know me,

119

NINE WOMEN

and what has made me enemies among those who
know me not. . . .

I know that in a revolution the law, like justice, is
frequently forgotten ; of which the fact that I am here
is proof. I owe my trial only to the prejudices, the
burning hatreds, which develop during great move
ments, and which are customarily directed against
those who have been in the public eye, or who are
admittedly possessed of character. With my courage
it would have been easy to escape the judgment which
I foresaw, but I considered it more seemly to submit
myself to it; I considered it my duty to give my country
this example ; I believed that if I were to be condemned
the tyrants should be allowed to consummate so odious
a deed as the sacrifice of a woman whose sole crime was
to possess certain talents (which she had never over
estimated) a great zeal for the good of humanity,
the courage to avow her unfortunate friends, and to
render homage to virtue at the risk of her life. Souls
possessing a certain grandeur are able to forget
themselves; they feel that their obligation is to all hu
manity,,- and they see themselves only in posterity. . . .

Just heaven, enlighten this unhappy people, for
whom I have desired liberty . . . Liberty . . . She
is for those proud spirits who despise death and are
ready betimes to meet it. She is not for those weaklings
who temporize with crime, hiding their egotism and
their cowardice under the name of prudence. She is
not for those corrupted men who leave the bed of
debauchery or the filth of misery in order to bathe
in the blood streaming from the scaffolds. She is for

120

MANON ROLAND

the wise people who cherish humanity, who practise
justice, and who respect the verities; so long as you are
not such a people, O my fellow citizens, in vain will
you talk of liberty; you will have only licence, to which
each of you will fall victim in his turn; you will ask for
bread, and it will give you corpses, and you will end
by being enslaved.

Shortly before her trial and execution Manon wrote
to Buzot:

Remain still in this world, if there be any refuge for
honour; remain in order to convict the injustice which
has exiled yo\i. But if persistent misfortune attaches
some enemy to your steps, suffer not that mercenary
hands should be lifted against you; die free, as you
have lived, and let that generous courage which is my
justification achieve it for you by your last act.

On Brumaire the eighteenth of the Second Year of
the Republic (November 8th, 1793) the morning
being sunless and chilly, the prisoners in the Con-
ciergerie were crowded behind the grille, in stony
silence awaiting the announcement of their fate. The
official who daily summoned the prisoners to their
trial hoarsely shouted: Citizeness Roland. Manon
had been warned to expect her summons, and she was
standing at the grille unnaturally tense and rigid.
Her new white muslin gown was as elegant as any she
had worn for the ministerial banquets. Her hair,
curling lightly over her temples and falling around her
shoulders, gave her features a girlish look. The little
mob cap fashionable in the Second Year of the Republic
completed her attire.

121

NINE WOMEN

On hearing her name she bowed slightly, caught up
her train, and loudly said a few kindly words to the
prisoners surrounding her. They threw themselves
towards her, possessed by boundless fear, yet hardly
able to conceal their joy that their lives had been
prolonged for one further day. She passed smiling
out through the prison gate. With her in the tumbrel
as she rode to the Revolutionary Tribunal was La-
marque, half dead with terror. He had engaged in
the forging of assignats and was now accused of treason.
He and Manon were sentenced to the guillotine
together.

A few hours later Manon was condemned to death.
She was not allowed to take any part in the deliber
ations of the court, and the speech she had prepared
remained unspoken. The Revolutionary Tribunal
knew that before them stood an implacable and danger
ous enemy, and it showed no mercy to this talented
woman who had so intelligently directed the political
struggle of the moderate bourgeoisie. Without
waiting for the announcement of the death sentence
Madame Roland exclaimed: You deem me worthy
to share the fate of the great men whom you have
already killed. I thank you and at the same time I
assure you that on my way to the scaffold I shall
endeavour to display the same courage as did they/
She was referring to the equanimity of the twenty-two
Girondins who had died with the Marseillaise on their
lips.

At five o clock the executioner s tumbrel carried
her to the Place de la Revolution; Lamarque was

122

MANON ROLAND

again at her side. He trembled, raved, and wept,
evoking the laughter of the phlegmatic executioner,
who, nevertheless, had only recently shed tears as he
released the knife for the neck of Louis XVI. Manon
had sufficient strength to turn to Lamarque with words
of comfort and encouragement. Only once along the
road to the guillotine did she suddenly lapse into
silence in the middle of a word : shaking and rattling,
the tumbrel was passing over a bridge across the Seine;
in the distance she saw the Quai de THorloge and the
house with the tiny embrasure window. Memories,
regrets, the shades of childhood crowded through
Manon s mind for but a moment: the Place de la
Revolution and the guillotine, hidden by the stucco
statue of Liberty, were close at hand.

Along the Rue Saint Honore a few curious onlookers
straggled behind the tumbrel. The public interest in
these spectacles had waned. The passers-by listened
indifferently to the names of those condemned.
Manon sought among the crowd for the persistently
following Bosc, who fixed his wet, ecstatic eyes on her
as though she were a saint going to her Golgotha. Bosc
had forsaken the hut close to Paris where he had lain
in hiding, and risking the danger of detection, had
come into the city to witness Manon s execution.

Under the guillotine platform the executioner halted
the horse and assisted the two condemned prisoners
to alight. Still endeavouring to fortify Lamarque,
Manon said anxiously to him : You go first, you will
not have the strength to suffer the sight of my execu
tion/ Whilst awaiting her turn she asked for pen and

123

NINE WOMEN

paper: true to herself, she wanted to preserve her last
sensations for the benefit of posterity. Her request was
refused. Saying not a word, she ascended the scaffold.
Only afterwards did legend ascribe to her the words
which she was said to have addressed to the white
statue of Liberty, at whose feet the guillotine stood
like a sacrificial altar: *O Liberty, what crimes are
committed in thy name/

Hardly was the sentence carried out when the square
emptied. The same night, along the rutted road
leading from Paris to the Forest of Montmorency,
Bosc, soaked through with the autumnal rain, trudged
with bowed shoulders. He was hastening back to the
little forest cottage where he was in safety. His love of
botany and zoology enabled him to find satisfaction
in the society of the trees, the flowers, the birds, squir
rels, and tiny beasts. As he passed along one of the
forest paths he concealed Madame Roland s manu
script in the fissure of a rock.

Roland also had hidden foir two weeks in Bosc s
cottage, and had then fled to Rouen, where he found a
refuge with an aged couple, old friends of his. And
there, in Rouen, Roland learnt of his wife s death
sentence, and awakening from his long torpor to a full
realization of what had occurred, he resolved to die.
In vain did the terrified old couple attempt to persuade
their friend not to act on his decision. Roland did not
vacillate. During the autumn night the three dis
cussed together how he should carry out his resolve.
Decrepit, and weary of life, Roland wished to die on
the scaffold, as Manon had died. To this end he

124

MANON ROLAND

would have to return to Paris, would go to the Con
vention, and taking advantage of the confusion that
his appearance would provoke, would declare the
whole truth/ One of his two aged friends rejected
this plan, since it would lead to the confiscation of his
property to the detriment of his daughter Eudora.
Finally they chose a different method. On November
1 5th the former minister turned his back on his two
weeping friends, walked four kilometres along the
road to Paris, and then turned into an avenue leading
to a rich estate. There, under a tree, he stabbed him
self with a sword which he had carried concealed in a
walking stick.

In the dead man s pocket was found the following
note:

Whoever you may be who finds me here, respect
my remains ; they are those of a man who died as he
had lived, virtuous and honest.

The day will come and it is not far distant when
you will have a terrible judgment to pass; await that
day, then you will act with full knowledge of the
matter, and you will understand even the reason for
this advice.

Let my country at last abjure so many crimes and
return to humane and social sentiments.

On the other side was written :

Not fear, but indignation. . . .

I left my hiding-place the moment I learnt that
they were intending to kill my wife; and I have no
desire to live longer on an earth so stained with crimes/

Buzot took refuge in Brittany. Worn out with

125

NINE WOMEN

deprivations, he shifted from place to place, terrible
by reason of the danger to which he exposed all who
gave him shelter. Falling in with Petion, he came
at last with the latter to the house of Madame Bouquey,
an intrepid and fanatical Girondin who had left
Paris in order to assist the fugitives.

In her little house at Saint Emilion close to Bordeaux
Madame Bouquey harboured seven of the proscribed
deputies: Salle, Louvet, Guadet, Barbaroux, Valady,
Petion and Buzot. They were all concealed in a well
like a cave, where they were half stifled by the damp
ness and lack of air. Madame Bouquey brought them
food and wine from her cellar at night. She gave them
very little to eat, in order to avoid arousing her
neighbours suspicions by purchasing unusually large
quantities of provisions. Moreover the importation of
reserve supplies into the town was steadily declining.
After some four weeks Madame Bouquey warned
them that a search was impending, and the Girondins
had to abandon their lair on her estate. She managed
to accommodate three of them Barbaroux, P6tion
and Buzot, in the garret of a local hairdresser, Tro-
quart, a sworn enemy of the revolution. Buzot lived
beneath the hairdresser s roof for months, never
leaving his refuge. Jaundiced and impotent, he found
consolation in promising himself an unbelievably
ruthless settlement with the Mountain when his
supporters should return to power. But, subject to
swift changes of mood, Buzot frequently lost heart
and wept like a guilty child over the past, his failures,
and Manon.

126

MANON ROLAND

Not without prospect of success Madame Bouquey
endeavoured to arrange for the fugitive Girondins to
be transported across the frontier into Switzerland,
and the plan was on the verge of accomplishment when
a search which revealed her connections with the
Girondins otherwise decided the fate of the refugees
and of Madame Bouquey herself. She was arrested
on June I7th, 1794? and shortly afterwards was
guillotined at Bordeaux.

Learning of Madame Bouquey s end, Barbaroux,
Potion and Buzot left Troquart s far from safe garret
and fled to the valley of Castillon. In their presenti
ment of death. Potion and Buzot Wrote the following
testament: Now that it has been demonstrated that
liberty has been lost irrevocably, that the principles
of morality and of justice have been trampled under
foot ... we have resolved to leave this life, and not to
be witnesses of the enslavement which is desolating
our unhappy country/

On June i8th, 1794, the refugees were in a field
close to Saint Emilion when they happened to attract
the attention of a passing detachment of soldiers.
Barbaroux attempted to shoot himself, but failed, and
was captured and sent to Bordeaux, where he was
tried and executed. Buzot and Petion fled from the
soldiers pursuit into a pine forest which bordered the
field. Having no hope of escape, they took poison.
Their bodies were found on June igth, 1794, only
a few days before the date which marked the
turning point of the French Revolution : the Ninth of
Thermidor.

127

NINE WOMEN

The days of Thermidor were, in a sense, a requital
for the defeat of the Girondins. In the Convention
which sent the implacable leader of the Revolution,
Robespierre, to the guillotine, among the ranks of the
Marsh, were numerous supporters of the Gironde.
They had abjured Brissot and his friends as soon as
they realized the inevitability of their defeat, but they
could not abjure themselves. When the dissident
Montagnards, the organizers of Thermidor, proposed
a Hoc to the Marsh, the hour of their action and ven
geance arrived. It was they who decided Robespierre s
fate in the Convention.

The Terror which had removed the leaders of the
Gironde and made a tragic end of Roland, Manon and
Buzot, could not suppress the mass forces of reaction
which stood behind them. The revolutionary dictator
ship of the Jacobins was broken, a hypocritical liberal
phrase concealed the real purpose of the incipient
restoration.

The Girondist Louvet, who had hidden for months
with Buzot, returned safely to Paris, and, jointly with
Bosc, soon after Thermidor published the first edition
of Madame Roland s memoirs under the title: An
Appeal to Impartial Posterity, by Citizeness Roland:
a collection of all the writings penned by her during
her imprisonment in the prisons of the Abbaye and
Sainte P&agie. The book was published for the
benefit of her only daughter, deprived of the estate
of her father and mother, whose property is under
sequestration for ever.

128

MADAME DU BARRY

E first year of the Revolutionary Tribunal s
activities was drawing to its close. Already the
heads of several women had rolled from the guillotine
The names of Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday
and Manon Roland were now inscribed in the records
of revolutionary judgment and retribution. Following
in their steps, in Frumeur (December), 1793, a woman
appeared before the Tribunal with whom the Revo
lution had special scores to settle.

Apparently forgotten, wholly belonging to a former
age, once more the accused abruptly arrested the
attention of all Paris. The Tribunal had resurrected
her past it was enough to justify the death sentence,
and death, like a shuttle,. enduringly wove the thread
of Du Barry s life into the tapestry of the revolu
tionary chronicle.

At this time she was some fifty years of age. A
black gown draped the still shapely figure and set off
the somewhat deranged and dishevelled grey peruke.
Her face was bare of cosmetics, and it seemed flabby
and stained with the excesses attendant on its former
glories. The double chin and the puffy eyes, senseless
with elemental fear, gave her face an expression akin
to the look of a cow before slaughter, when Death has
already raised his short sharp knife above its head.

The President of the Tribunal loudly inquired:

NINE WOMEN

Citizeness, do you admit that you are the former
Countess Du Barry? Citizeness Du Barry s answer
was lost amid the howl which arose from behind
the barrier where grizzled knitting-women, coquettish
girls from the faubourgs, and sans-culottes were seated.
Death to her! Death! To the guillotine with the
tyrant s concubine! the elderly women, regular visitors
to the Tribunal, screamed hysterically as they stretched
their fists across the low barrier, infecting everyone
with their hatred.

The trial began, and incident after incident of this
woman s entangled, incredible life was brought to light.
It was as though a hidden obscene ulcer had burst.
In the evidence all the reign of the late Louis XV was
resurrected.

The family of Jean Du Barry, swindler, speculator,
and founder of the defendant s career, lived in
Toulouse. His mother had no outstanding qualities,
she was not even wicked by nature; she was merely
unintelligent. When her husband died he left the
family a load of debts and a family coat of arms.
By the time fortune came the family s way, Jean s
two undowered sisters had long passed the age when
they could hope for an advantageous marriage. For
the nobility s daughters of those days spinsterhood
was a calamity, and the brightest future they could
hope for was retirement to a convent. Besides his
sisters, Jean had a brother the inept, boorish and
simple-minded Guillaume. The head of the family,
Jean Du Barry himself, was a typical specimen of
Louis XV s courtiers. He cheated at cards (but that

132

MADAME DU BARRY

provided only a small income), he filched, was coarse
and cruel, a voluptuary who stood at nothing in his
pursuit of wealth. He was engaged in a profitable
business which brought prosperity to more than one
French aristocrat during the time of the Bourbons:
he undertook the task of supplying the king with
women.

For many years the reins of government had been in
the hands of the king s powerful favourite, Madame
Pompadour; she it was who decided all appointments
and dismissals at the court and directed all the internal
and external affairs of France. But Madame Pompadour
was nearly forty years old, she was putting on flesh, and
her fortune slipped from her hands. Louis XV was
growing tired of her. Pompadour was a discerning
and calculating woman, and she resorted to every
possible strategem in order to avert dismissal. As during
the reign of Le Rot de Soleil&gt; Louis XIV, young girls
chosen according to Pompadour s instructions were
housed in the royal park, and there she organized an
institution according to all the rules of aristocratic
female educational establishments for the purpose of
training, attiring and educating the girls to the
requirements of the king s taste. In order to ensure
that she had no rival Pompadour made a practice of
getting rid of fruits once savoured, and they either
disappeared without a trace or were dispatched to
convents. Only rarely did they return to their families.
With the aid of this organization Madame Pompadour
managed to maintain herself in power for a few years
longer. But her influence steadily declined; in antici-

133

NINE WOMEN

pation of the favourite s coming dethronement the
court began to disregard her. When one raw autumn
morning she died and her coffin was carried past the
window of the king s chamber, Louis pensively
observed : Ah madame, what a wretched day you have
chosen for so long a. walk!

Remembering Pompadour s aggrandisement, many
of the courtiers sought to succeed to her authority
and to the control of the exchequer by putting forward
candidates for the post of king s favourite. But the
depraved and satiated Louis changed his women
like shoe-buckles. The commodity was always un
satisfactory.

During these years, on the outskirts of Paris was a
little tavern, where frequently a very mixed company
would be found seated over tankards of its famous
beer, or around the dice. The aristocrat seeking
stimulation to his jaded appetites, the professional
criminal, the generous and simple provincial, the
petitioner vainly importuning officials, the monk, the
artisan all these and many other types assembled
under the low beams of the tavern ceiling. Here a
spy found it easy to wheedle out a confession, and
sincere speech and earnest conversation were to be
heard in close proximity to oaths and vainglorious
bragging. Entertainment was provided by a few girls
passing from knee to knee and retiring to an inner
room in exchange for a few sous to buy gaudy ribbons.
One of them, Jeanne B6cu&gt; nicknamed the Angel,
a good-natured, rosy-cheeked and rather dull-witted
wench, was outstanding because of her beauty. The

MADAME DU BARRY

child of an inn-servant s liaison with a monk, all her
waking and sleeping life had been spent in the environ
ment of wine, drunkards and intoxicating fumes:
Her mother had apprenticed her to a fashionable
dressmaker, but her temperament and frivolous nature
hardly conduced to her learning a trade. After a number
of romantic adventures she had made this tavern her
headquarters. And here Jean Du Barry saw and fell
to her charms. Clothed in silks and decked out with
jewels, Jeanne became a decoy for the card-players
who used to frequent Du Barry s house. How Jean
came to think of the plan to make Jeanne B6cu, a
tavern prostitute, Marquise de Pompadour s successor,
history does not reveal. He set to work to accomplish
this task with great ardour, realizing the advantages
that would accrue to him. Jeanne s obscure origin
was an obstacle, but the unscrupulous Jean Du Barry
knew how titles were made, and valued them only as
means of advancement. He simply renamed Jeanne
Becu, Jeanne Du Barry. He could not marry her, as
he already had a wife and numerous children, and, for
a Catholic, divorce was scandalous and out of the
question.

In 1789, Jeanne was cleverly brought to the king s
notice. She captivated Louis with her coarse simplicity,
boorishness, and cynical frankness. Nothing in life
astonished her, nobody inspired her with the least
feeling of respect. From early childhood she had
fully realized what was required of her, and, not being
cursed with superfluous intelligence, her approach to
life was simple and calculating. The circumstance

NINE WOMEN

that she treated the king like any customer of the inner
room in the tavern intrigued his majesty. Jeanne
proved to be a pungent and novel kind of titbit for
Louis. Before a month had passed she had acquired
great influence over him, and consequently over the
destinies of France. But, annoyed at his success in
pleasing Louis, Jean Du Barry s rivals and enemies
spread piquant stories of Mademoiselle Jeanne the
Angel s past life. It was imperatively necessary to
provide her with an origin suitable to the position of
first favourite. The King promised millions to the
man who was ready to conceal Jeanne s scandalous
past under his name. Jean Du Barry did not spend
much time pondering how to retain his grip on the
golden fleece of the royal exchequer: a way out of the
difficulty easily presented itself. With his neglected
family in quiet, green Toulouse lived his noodle
brother Guillaume, still, fortunately for Jean, a
bachelor. Du Barry hurried in his gilded carette over
the dusty roads from Paris to Toulouse, astonishing
his god-fearing mother, his ancient maiden sisters
and his grinning half-wit brother by his abrupt arrival.
The house was bare and the coffers were empty, but
their fortunes could be mended and life acquire a
golden tinge in the twinkling of an eye. * Mamma Du
Barry was concerned for public opinion, but Jean
assured her that steps would betaken to stop the mouths
of anyone who dared to talk. The plan was adopted.
Goaded on by the lust for wealth the brothers hurried
back to Paris. The marriage ceremony between
Guillaume and Jeanne B6cu, at which the bride and

136

MADAME DU BARRY

bridegroom, came together for almost the only time
in their lives, was solemnized without delay. The
bridegroom, laden with gifts, richer by hundreds of
thousands of louis d ors, but without his wife, was
sent back immediately to his native town, whilst his
wife,* saved by the aristocratic name of Du Barry,
drove to Versailles. For the sake of decency and in
order to have her under supervision she was accom
panied by her husband s withered sisters. In the
marriage deed Jean allotted his brother the title of
count, and so Jeanne Du Barry was raised to the rank
of countess. Thenceforth the prosperity of the Du
Barrys was amply assured ; Jean gave banquets worthy
of Lucullus and built himself an extravagantly sump
tuous palace. He was now a man to be feared and
flattered. His prodigalities went uncondemned; no
one dared to cross him. He lived a life of utter de
pravity and vice, senselessly squandering enormous
sums drawn from the exchequer of a country groaning
with misery. His brother Guillaume, the royal
favourite s husband, amazed Toulouse by his sudden
rise to fortune, his new house, and luxurious mode of
living on the estate he had been given close to the town.
None of the members of the Du Barry family took any
steps to restrain the others crazy conduct and their
spoliation of the country. Three and a half million
louis d ors Jeanne Du Barry cost France, and the palaces
which the king had built for her were worth as much
again. Even the red-nosed and corpulent monk who
could boast of being the royal concubine s father
reappeared and put forward his parental claim to the

137

NINE WOMEN

king s grace. The sinecure he requested was that of
confessor to his majesty.

Countess Jeanne Du Barry excelled all her pre
decessors in prodigality. She was all-powerful. She
punished and pardoned, imprisoned in the Bastille,
appointed the court dignitaries, exiled, ruined and
enriched according to her humour, her dreams, and
her divinations. She remained as superstitious and
boorish as before, although her education was under
taken by the foremost luminaries of science.

One day, among the king s presents of costly
necklaces and handkerchiefs, instead of the frisky
dog, monkey or cat he had previously given her for
pets, she found a little negro lad. The countess was
delighted with her new toy. She decided that the
seven-year-old child, who was so shy and hid himself
in the corners of her luxurious bed-chamber, must be
christened. She had him arrayed in a rose-coloured
silk costume and decked out with jewels, and Jeanne
and one of the Bourbons acted as his godparents.

The child was reared in an environment of unnatural
luxury and depravity, but he was always yearning for
his distant, subjugated country. Zamor, the countess s
negro valet de chambre, early developed feelings of
hatred and contempt for the monarchy.

Success now seemed to dance attendance on Jeanne.
But fortune is a fickle jade, especially to a favourite.
Unexpectedly, during one of the entertainments which
in those days were an incessant feature of palace life,
the king was taken ill, and was carried to his bed
chamber in a feverish and semi-conscious state. His

138

MADAME DU BARRY

ailment was quickly diagnosed, and it was one to
inspire with terror. He had caught smallpox. All
who could, fled from the palace, for at that time small
pox was as invincible as the plague. At the moment
when, in anticipation of Louis XV s death, the palace
domestics were fawning on his heir, the capricious, hard
hearted favourite Countess Du Barry became again
Jeanne Becu, a simple girl in whom still burned a
spark of gratitude. She realized, too, that the future
could bring no continuance of her present life: the
death of her protector would mean an end to her power
and authority. Jeanne alone remained at the side of
the king tossing in delirium over the enormous bed.
Heedless of herself, this woman tended him as though
he were her own child. The old profligate king of a
France glittering with meretricious splendour and now
swiftly approaching the brink of revolution, died in
the arms of the prostitute on whom he had capriciously
conferred such enormous authority. Jeanne Du Barry
mourned the king, not long, truly, but sincerely, and
with every justification.

Louis XV was dead, and in 1 774 the sixteenth Louis
inherited the long-awaited throne. The swiftly decom
posing body had hardly been laid in the coffin and carried
with theatrical pomp out of the bed-chamber when
Du Barry s five-year reign was terminated. She was
given unequivocal orders to take herself off.

Du Barry, who at the moment of the king s death
was thirty-one years of age, was not seen in the capital
for two years. Then once more establishing herself in
Paris, the covetous, dissolute and hardhearted countess

139

NINE WOMEN

renewed her previous mode of life, committing
excesses and changing her paramours one after another.
So she continued until 1789, the year which shook
France to its foundations. The revolution, of which
Jeanne Du Barry had never heard mention before, was
the heaviest blow in her life; she lost her lands and her
palaces; but retaining her gold, in 1792 she succeeded
in emigrating to England.

But an unconquerable avidity drove her back to
France, where she had left certain jewels and other
treasures well concealed. Unexpected by anyone,
already forgotten, Du Barry returned to her Paris
house, where her gardener and servants gave her a
surly welcome. The arrival of the countess a violent
counter-revolutionary who had openly assisted the
monarchists with money aroused the servants sus
picions. Her failings had been too manifest for Du
Barry to inspire them with the least spark of sympathy
or compassion.

The gardener conveyed the news of her return to
Zamor, the negro who had spent his childhood in
lace-lined baskets together with the countess s favourite
dog. Long before the revolution, during the orgies
taking place in the adjacent rooms, Zamor had hidden
himself in the countess s deserted library and read avidly.
Between handsome, gold-embossed covers he had come
upon Voltaire s wise sarcasms and Rousseau s burning
conceptions. The library was one of the palace appur
tenances, an ornament fashionable among aristocrats
at that period. Countess Du Barry had never wasted
her time on books, but she had not forbidden Zamor

MADAME DU BARRY

to read. An educated valet de chambre was even
something to be proud of, just as was a skilful chef or
a well trained parrot.

Zamor was better acquainted than most with the
unnatural life lived by the aristocrats, and when the
revolution broke out he at once devoted all his powers
enthusiastically to its service, worshipping Marat
and Robespierre with a fanatical fervour. After leaving
Du Barry s palace he had lived a life of extreme poverty
and degradation. Coming into close touch with the
sans-culottes of his district, he became a member of the
Jacobin Club.

Learning that Du Barry was again in France, and
having every reason to distrust her, Zamor passed on
the information to the Revolutionary Tribunal. There
was ample evidence to confirm the charge of relations
with the Bourbons, and now Du Barry was standing
before judgment. Page after page the Tribunal turned
over in the book of her ridiculous life, in which nothing
could be found to justify the least compassion. The
crowd surrounding the Tribunal gave voice to a roar
of delight as it heard the death sentence pronounced
on the hated countess. By the light of a fine morning
the executioner s tumbrel carried Jeanne Du Barry to
the Place des Greves, where the guillotine was awaiting
her. In her death this prostitute who had been born
of the poor, but who had forgotten and betrayed them,
lost all her arrogance of the past years. Turning to
Sanson, she caught at his shroud-like smock and cried:
Let me live one more little minute, executioner F
Pitiable as she was and insensate with fear of her

141

NINE WOMEN

approaching death, nevertheless her bellowing pro
voked not a murmur of commiseration so great
was the people s contempt for her.

The negro Zamor survived not only the defeat of
the Revolution but even the meteoric existence of the
transient Napoleonic empire. He died in 1820,, after
the restoration of the Bourbons, in poverty and
oblivion. After his death his total possessions were
found to be three francs, the works of Rousseau, and
the portraits of Marat and Robespierre, which he had
piously preserved.

142

CLAIRE LACOMBE

ask, sire, that under no -pretext should men
be able to practise the crafts which belong of right to
women,

Leave us at least our needle and spindle, that
we may have a means of existence S

(From a Petition of Women of the
Third Estate to the King in 1789)

ONE of the noteworthy features of the French
Revolution was the important role played in it
by women. They forced their way into politics ; they
rose to the leadership of clubs; they organized their
own salons ; they made speeches at the bars of repre
sentative assemblies; they were outstanding by their
literary talent, their oratorical gifts, and their historical
and philosophical knowledge.

From the democratic slogans of the day the women
participating in the revolutionary movement immedi
ately drew the natural deduction that political equality
connoted political rights for women; and they called
upon the men to recognize this principle. The ensuing
feminist movement quickly became popular among
the women belonging to the affluent bourgeois and
burgher classes. Not only in Paris but even in the
provinces women s organizations sprang up and
developed.

NINE WOMEN

The Dutch Etta Palm cT Adders, a woman of doubt
ful past, but who from 1789 became an active patriot,
had the reputation of being almost as intelligent as a
man/ Her lectures to the Society of Friends of Truth,
on the activities of the external and internal enemies
of France, or on the cost of living and the necessity
of overcoming ignorance* were always highly successful.
She was popular in the provinces also, where the
society had affiliated branches.

But not all the patriot women were steadfast and
assured in their sympathies for the feminist elements.
Manon Roland, whose supple, prescient mind brought
her especially to the forefront, did not regard equal rights
with men as indispensable. Realizing the role women
had played in all previous insurrections, she preferred
to protect them from the dangerous delusions of dema
gogy/ Through her compliant husband she had charge
of the Ministry for Home Affairs, through Buzot she
was able to influence the decisions of the Convention ;
and this Minister s wife could afford to flatter men by
declaring: You govern the world ... we women
desire to reign only in your hearts. In order to save
her beautiful head from the guillotine Th&rsia Cabar-
rus, formerly Marquise de Fontenay, cleverly played
the role of ardent Jacobin. But she also considered
that the female friend should not become the man s
rival/ Both these ladies were the objects of masculine
devotion, and preferred to hold sway over men s
hearts in the good old pre-revolutionary fashion,

In a petition presented to the National Assembly
one group of bourgeois ladies audaciously demanded :

146

CLAIRE LACOMBE

You are about to abolish all privileges, abolish also
the privileges of the male sex. . . . Thirteen million
slaves are shamefully dragging the chains of thirteen
million despots/ But the democratic fervour of the
wealthy women quickly spent itself. Olympe de
Gouges, who during the early years of the Revolution
was an active revolutionary feminist 5 ended by bitterly
attacking Robespierre and declaring herself opposed
to the execution of Louis XVI. She even demanded
to be allowed to act as the king s defending counsel
at his trial. Certain historians have endeavoured to
explain the suddenness of this volte-face as due to her
psychological abnormality. In reality her conduct was not
at all inexplicable. In her revolt against the subjection
of women she was at first prepared to overthrow the
entire social system; but being a woman of the bour
geois class she paused when she saw that the destructive
work was going too far. A few clumsy gestures, a few
hesitant steps, and Olympe de Gouges, a talented
dramatist as well as democratic orator and pamphleteer,
perished on the scaffold.

But there were other women who had a word to say
in the Revolution the women of the urban poor, the
women of the labouring and artisan classes, the ser
vants and the semi-declassed female vagrants. They
hated not only the royal court, but the wealthy bour
geoisie and the speculators who were profiteering out
of war and starvation. The movement begun by these
women developed far beyond the bounds of feminism.
When the necessity arose to offer resistance to the
counter-revolution the women of revolutionary Paris

NINE WOMEN

and the provinces immediately declared their readiness
to arm for the struggle against the enemies. Through
out the country Amazons battalions were organized.
During the daytime the Jacobin women would be
found in the gardens or on the waste lands outside
the towns, learning to shoot, to use the bayonet, the
pike, and the dagger. In the evenings people passing
the low windows of little houses in the faubourgs would
notice women bowed over their task of making uni
forms for the volunteers. Whilst the young patriot
girl was learning to bandage wounds she would force
her friends to tell her stories of the war. The boys
in the streets played patriotically at soldiers and the
girls joined in the game as camp-followers. In Dijon
a club was organized by children ranging from eight
to sixteen years of age, and one of the girls, Henriette
Ecureux, hardly taller than the chair she used as
rostrum, complained because she was so young that
she could not help to defend the country. Instead, she
promised to make laurel wreaths for the good patriots
against the day of their triumphal return from the
struggle at the front.

In their stuffy little rooms on the outskirts of Paris
thousands of women spent their spare time preparing
lint, making military jackets, cleaning pikes, singing
revolutionary songs and reading proclamations. For
revolutionary France the year 1793 opened with
disasters which spread gloom over the country. Hunger
was creeping down on Paris, and at the front the armies,
fleeced by swindling contractors, were ragged, bare
foot, and half starving. The compromising tactics of

148

CLAIRE LACOMBE

the cultured Girondins, the treachery of the military
commanders, the currency inflation which was enriching
the speculators, were crushing France beneath terrible
burdens. The fourth year of the Revolution did not
seem likely to bring any perceptible improvement in
conditions for the poor of the city s faubourgs.

At the break of dawn the emaciated housewife of
the journeyman, artisan, or labourer had to run to
take her place in the queue for bread, soap, sugar and
salt. In the neglected house the children howled
despairingly, and the mother waiting at the door of
the strongly guarded baker s shop was tormented by
the knowledge of their hunger. One fine day in June
a group of women, some leaning against the wall,
others seated on the grey kerbstones and the narrow
pavement, were waiting outside a baker s shop in the
hope of receiving a pitifully small supply of bread.
Through the dingy shop-window they could see the
cheerily whistling baker in his grey apron and rumpled
peruke, and their pent-up feelings found vent in
vehement expressions of hatred for him and his class.

This accursed baker is getting richer and richer;
his wife has bought some more land for their farm
outside the town, one of the women, exasperated with
her long vigil outside the bakery, remarked with
undisguised animosity in her voice.

Roux said some true things yesterday in the Con
vention, another observed.

We were better off when we had a king, came
spitefully from farther along the queue.

Hold your tongue ! several voices cried indignantly.

149

NINE WOMEN

Go and fetch us the plates of the aristocrats to lick/
The hungry women laughed harshly.

The speech by Jacques Roux to which the woman
had referred had been made a day or two previously,
on June 23rd, 1793. In supporting a petition to the
Convention this talented leader of the extreme left
had declared:

Liberty is only an empty delusion when one class
of people can with impunity starve another class.
Equality is only an empty delusion when the rich by
their monopoly exercise the right of life and death
over their fellow creatures. A republic is only an empty
delusion when from day to day the counter-revolution
finds support in prices for commodities which three-
fourths of the citizens cannot manage without tears. . . .
Nevertheless it is only by stopping the brigandage of
the middle-man which has to be distinguished from
commerce/ it is only by putting commodities
within the reach of the sans-culottes that you will attach
them to the Revolution and rally them around the
constitutional laws/

Not long before this speech the women of the
faubourgs, among whom the Enraged under Roux s
leadership were rapidly extending their influence, had
organized a meeting of protest against the speculators
and monopolists who were sucking the people s blood/
The citizen laundresses had sent a deputation to the
Convention, declaring that the prices for soap, lye,
starch and blue had risen to such heights that they were
unable to earn a living. Crimson with anger, a sprightly
female petitioner in a stiff white mobcap had entertained

150

CLAIRE LACOMBE

the Convention to a description of the miserable plight
of the laundresses, and had demanded the death penalty
for all speculators. Her red, rough and knotted hands
had clutched the rail of the bar as though she thought
it the neck of one of the accursed speculators and allies
of the aristocrats.

Soon the poorest class will not be able to obtain
clean linen, without which they simply cannot manage/
the laundress had declared. It is not that there is a
shortage of the necessary commodities they are
plentiful; but it is the cornering and the speculating
which is making them dearer/

In April of the same year the former actress, Claire
Lacombe, and the laundress, Pauline L6on, one of
the advocates of Amazons battalions, had set to
work to organize a club for plebeian women. The task
was not difficult, for, following the example of the
richer women, the female citizens of the poorer
districts were already spontaneously struggling to
organize in order to realize their position, to over
throw the enemies, and to help the friends of the
people/

On May xoth, 17 93, the Moniteur informed the world:

Several citizenesses have presented themselves at
the secretariat of the municipal administration, and,
in order to conform with the law on municipal police,
have declared that they intend to come together to
form a society of which membership will be open only
to women. The object of this society is to consider
the means of thwarting the designs of the enemies of
the Republic. It will be known as the Republican

151

NINE WOMEN

Revolutionary Society/ and will meet in the Jacobin
library in the Rue Saint Honor.

The constitution of the new society included the
following clause:

The Society, considering that it cannot deny any
member the right of speech, and that young citizenesses
may, with the best of intentions, compromise the society
by making thoughtless proposals, fixes the age of
eighteen as the minimum for membership/

The Republican Revolutionary Society had a
very solemn inauguration. Several hundreds of the
new members of the club tailoresses, dish-washers,
laundresses, rag-pickers, the wives and mothers of
home craftsmen, artisans, and labourers were pre
sent, accompanied by their husbands, brothers and
fathers, who, excited and curious, sought to hide
their smiles of ridicule, and even at this late day still
reviled the destroyer of the country, the old woman
Pompadour. Among the crowd there were even a few
children who could not be left in anyone s charge at
home.

The assembled women enthusiastically sang a
number of revolutionary songs, somewhat mutilating
the melody of Rouget de Lisle s inspired composition
the Marseillaise, which had recently taken Paris by
storm. As chairman of the club they elected Pauline
Lon, and as secretary Claire Lacombe, whom the
women of the faubourgs knew by her nickname of Red
Rosa. With the skill of an experienced speaker the
secretary read out the lengthy constitution, laying
especial stress on the passage which declared that the

152

CLAIRE LACOMBE

violation of decency and virtue would involve immedi
ate exclusion from the society. Depravity they regarded
as a vice of the aristocrats. Towards the end of the even
ing several elderly and highly respected women citizens
presented the club with a banner and a symbolic
device portraying the unsleeping eye of Liberty.

Many women s associations existed in Paris in 1793,
but this was the first society organized by the women
of the people themselves, and the circumstance gave
cause for anxiety to all who had any reason to fear
the popular anger. The Girondins were the first to
take alarm. Influenced by his young and educated
wife, the learned liberal Condorcet regarded himself
as the champion of women s rights. He considered
that Madame Condorcet and Madame Roland had
all the qualities entitling them to be recognised as
equals of their husbands, and ancient history had
linked the name of the sage Aspasia with that of Peri
cles, the lord of Athens. But the common people
illiterate, smelling of smoky broth, of sweaty sheets,
of grimy poverty simply had no place in his scheme
of things.

The Republican Revolutionary Society/ which ere
long closely associated itself with the Enraged, who
were concentrating all their agitation upon the food
difficulties, was an unexpected and disagreeable enemy
for the right-wing Girondist deputies. That was fully
realized by Buzot, Madame Roland s nerveless
beloved. * Believe me, he told Manon Roland, they
are abandoned women, gathered out of the street,
abominable hussies. Their very appearance is horrible/

NINE WOMEN

The Royalists and the Girondins both endeavoured
to discredit the organized women sans-culottes. All
the women Revolutionary Republicans are so ugly as
to put you to fright/ they wrote. The Jacobins hardly
realize what they are doing by allowing such hideous
women to participate in the defence of the Revolution/

Washing clothes in the Seine in rain, snow, and
broiling heat, cooking food over a great smoking
hearth, making lace by the meagre light of a tallow
candle, washing floors and dishes, collecting refuse in
the early dawn, and all the other burdens of a poverty-
stricken existence do not contribute to the preservation
of a woman s beauty, yet not all the revolutionary
citizenesses were the monsters and hideous hags
depicted by the hostile journals and pamphlets. On
the contrary, Lacombe was noted for her beauty, and
Pauline Leon possessed lovely features.

Claire Lacombe had the melancholy face of a native
of the south. Her black hair, eyes and lashes, her bold,
well-moulded nose, the large mouth of an actress, her
good-natured and gentle chin, her well-proportioned
figure, and the theatrical elegance of her movements,
compelled even the most bitter enemies of the gren
adiers in greasy skirts to acknowledge the beauty of
the leader of the women s revolutionary club. Claire
first came into the public eye at the bar of the Legis
lative Assembly one burning July day in 1792. The
president, Vienot de Vaublanc, called upon an unknown
petitioner to speak; and with a deliberately vibrating
voice, and a gesture betraying the professional actress,
she cried: Legislators! As she uttered the word the

CLAIRE LACOMBE

petitioner threw back her head and gazed resolutely
around the hall. Although by this time a woman at
the historic bar was no novel sight, the young Amazon
succeeded in commanding a hearing. The radical
peroration to her speech was unusually striking:

Legislators! A Frenchwoman, an actress at the
moment without a part : such am I ; that which should
have caused me to despair fills my soul with the purest
of joy. As I cannot come to the assistance of my country,
which you have declared to be in danger, with monetary
sacrifices, I desire to offer it the devotion of my person.
Born with the courage of a Roman matron and with
hatred for tyrants, I shall consider myself happy to
contribute to their destruction. . . . Perish all despots
to the last man! . . . Never forget that without the
virtues of Veturie, Rome would have been deprived
of the noble Coriolanus. Legislators! You have
declared that the country is in danger, but that is not
enough ; deprive of their power those who alone have
engendered that danger and who have vowed the
destruction of France. . . . Appoint leaders in whom
we can trust; say one word, a single word, and the
enemies will disappear. . . .

Claire Lacombe was born on August 4th, 1765, in
the little provincial town of Pamiers. In her early
youth she had become a tragic actress, and immediately
prior to the Revolution had been appearing in the
comparatively large provincial theatres of Marseilles
and Lyons. There she had played the leading roles
in Racine s and Corneille s tragedies, but she had not
achieved any outstanding success. Her life as an

NINE WOMEN

actress was neither happy nor interesting. She was a
member of a repertory company which wandered from
town to town. Sometimes the company would be
invited to the castles and country houses of the pro
vincial aristocracy. Here the alluring Claire was
always popular, and she had to endure the cynical,
unequivocally unwelcome attentions of blase gentlemen ;
but she was quite able to take care of herself on such
occasions. Hardly was the repertoire exhausted and
local interest in the theatre on the wane, when the
touring company was unceremoniously turned out on
to the road to continue its wanderings. In industrial
towns like Lyons the theatre was patronized by the
unpolished, self-satisfied, upstart bourgeoisie.

During its wanderings through the provinces

Claire Lacombe s company used to put up for the night

at a low-class hotel, or one of the wayside taverns.

Outside, a swinging lantern would shed an uncertain

light on a faded sign bearing some such naive, medieval

title as Friends under the Golden Oak/ the Black

Bull Inn/ or Knights Errant of the Holy Virgin/

Claire spent all her early life in such crowded taverns

with their great gaping fireplaces, their low, beamed

ceilings and grimy windows. And here she came

closely in contact with the unenviable, hungry existence

lived by the French commonalty an existence

which vividly recalled the difficult days of her own

childhood.

By the eighties of the eighteenth century the Bour
bons and the nobility had completely lost their authority
over the people. In the taverns Claire learnt to poke

156

CLAIRE LACOMBE

fun at and to despise the abject Austrian, the foolish
Louis, and the knavish dukes. But the discontent,
the burden of taxation, the miseries of the people
were increasing, and the popular jests were trans
formed into threats. The events of 1789 came as a
natural sequel to the national drama of the previous
years. Claire greeted the arrival of the Revolution as
the opening act of an unprecedented tragedy, more
heroic and beautiful than any she had dreamed of
hitherto. In her imagination France became a gigantic
stage upon which she also was called to declaim a
tempestuous improvisation. In 1792 she abandoned
her miserable tinsel and spangle booth to appear
before the footlights of history. Taking leave of her
half-starved professional colleagues, she hastened to
Paris. Her long experience in the theatrical world had
set its ineffaceable imprint upon her, but beneath the
studied gesture and the bombastic phrase it was
impossible not to recognize the good nature, audacity,
and obstinacy of this provincial townswoman.

In the revolutionary metropolis she had neither
immediate asylum nor ready-made acquaintances,
Not was the little embroidered wallet carefully con
cealed beneath her waistbelt too well filled with louis
d ors. But Claire Lacombe did not achieve the
reputation of being a fighting woman without
justification. Her vagabond life had been a good
school. Several semi-illiterate letters of recommenda
tion from friends directed Claire to the outskirts of
Paris. At one of these addresses in the suburbs
she rented a little room, threw her hand baggage under

NINE WOMEN

the bed without stopping to unpack it, and sped to
the city to take a breath of liberty. In the squares
carpenters were erecting platforms which girls were
decorating with garlands of oakleaves. The plaster
statue of Liberty on the Place de la Revolution was
as white and clean as the patriot women s mobcaps.
The city was excited and gay: the anniversary of
July 1 4th was at hand. On her very first evening in
Paris Claire found her way to the Convention and to
the Jacobin Club ; and on her return to her room that
night she cut a tri-coloured cockade out of her old
striped petticoat, whilst from the taffeta gown she had
worn when acting the part of a medieval dame she
fashioned an Amazon s costume.

On July 1 4th, Claire was to be found dancing
patriotic dances on the gaily decorated waste land
where the royal bugaboo, the Bastille, had stood some
three years before. But the day of her revolutionary
baptism was August loth. On the Champ de Mars
close to the palace, the vivid vermilion costume worn
by Citizeness Lacombe was seen wherever there was
most danger. During the storming of the Tuileries a
shot passed through her arm, but she fought on, heed
less of the wound.

The next day the district where the Heroine of
August Tenth lived was all agog with talk of her
courage. She was now beginning to extend the circle
of her acquaintances and finding friends. The coarse
simplicity, vivacity, and eloquence of the former
actress won the hearts of the women, who began to
turn to her whenever they needed advice, Claire

158

CLAIRE LACOMBE

was unexcelled at argument with an obstreperous
husband or father of some timorous housewife; the
patriots grew to fear her stinging tongue, and the
women regarded her as their defender.

On August 1 2th Citizeness Lacombe presented the
Legislative Assembly with the civic crown which she
had received for her activities two days previously.
In explanation of her gift she declared:

Gentlemen! The Federatives of eighty-three
departments have honoured me this morning with a
civic crown, a national sash, and a certificate declaring
that on August xoth I left nothing undone to ensure
the triumph of Liberty and Equality. I shall keep the
sash and the certificate of honour; I come to offer the
National Assembly the homage of the civic crown,
which it has so fully deserved by the courage, wisdom
and patriotism it has shown during these great perils.
I am happy to be the first to fulfil a debt which every
good Frenchman, lover of his country, owes to his
legislators.

Although continuing to live a hand-to-mouth exist
ence in the suburbs, Claire was becoming more and
more absorbed in wider social activities, which for the
women of that epoch were necessarily largely restricted
to work among their own sex. In 1793 s ^e attached
herself to the extreme left group, whose political and
social outlook made an especial appeal to her. The
Enraged of Paris were composed not only of petty
artisans, workers generally, and intelligentsia, but also
of representatives of Bohemia: artists, hungry poets,
and tragic actors. All this beggarly crew spent a sorry

NINE WOMEN

existence. Work came intermittently on days of
revolutionary celebrations, and then it was very
poorly paid. The people of Paris had no time for the
Muses and the arts. Occasionally a volunteer just off
to the front would order his portrait, which he wanted
to leave with his wife or parents, or a perfervid patriot
would buy a symbolic picture representing a big-
breasted Liberty crushing a hydra-headed Tyranny.
The poets made the Revolution the theme of their
burning, miserably paid rhymes; the actors were
largely compelled to supplement their income by
accepting temporary employment in a revolutionary
institution or with a shopkeeper. In the summer-time
they would organize patriotic performances in the
gardens, on the market squares, and at street corners.
The majority of this type were fiery Jacobins whose
sympathies were with the extreme left.

It was among these groups of * Enraged that Claire
met the twenty-two-year-old Jean Th^ophile Leclerc,
a young journalist, a Lyons deputy to the Convention,
and a fanatical revolutionary. Despite his youth Leclerc
had seen and experienced a great deal, and his interest
ing stories entranced and delighted her. He told her
of the tropical beauty of Guadeloupe and Martinique,
which he had visited after the 1789 revolution. In
Martinique he had participated in the rising of the
coloured slaves and had organized their emancipation
movement. Sometimes he would tell her of the life in
the colonies, the martyrdom of the slaves working on
the French sugar plantations, the harshness and in
justice of the slave-owners. Citizeness Lacombe s new

1 60

CLAIRE LACOMBE

friend had also served in the revolutionary Alpine
army during its location in Lyons, the town of weavers.
There Th6ophile had spent some little time in hospital,
ill with the scabies a disease very common in those
days. Picturesque Lyons was one of the largest
industrial centres in France, a pleasurable metropolis of
the great bourgeoisie, but also a miserable refuge of
highly exploited workers. To the French revolution
this manufacturing, town contributed not only the
right-wing Girondins but the extreme left Enraged.
Roland and Brissot were friends and faithful servants
of the Lyonnese bourgeoisie. Leclerc on the other
hand was well acquainted with the byways around the
factories, with the life of the workers warrens and the
artisans tiny cottages; and his experience in Lyons
had played a large part in moulding his political views.

When Claire met Leclerc in 1793 she found him
politically mature. Their friendship quickly developed
into a more intimate relationship, and in the spring of
X 793 they began to live together. He helped her to
organize the Republican Revolutionary Society, wrote
sympathetic articles on the women s movement, and
spoke from the platform of the women s club. Varlet,
Jacques Roux, and others also took a friendly interest
in Claire Lacombe, Pauline L6on and their club.

On those rare occasions when the mistress was at
home, Claire s room, bare of all knick-knacks and
womanish gewgaws, was a rendezvous not only for
Leclerc, but for the elderly, unfrocked priest, Jacques
Roux, and the mobile, talkative youngster Jean Varlet.
Claire s three friends were of sharply contrasted

L 161

NINE WOMEN

characters. The egotistical Varlet amused her by his
irascibility. Jacques Roux on the other hand aroused
feelings of humility and respect; he would sit silent
for long intervals, observing the others from under
his brows; when he spoke he was curt and harsh in his
utterance; he had the face of a Puritan; he was am
bitious, fanatical, direct, yet remarkably free from
intellectual limitations. During his travels, the cul
tured Leclerc had acquired a deliberate coarseness,
power of observation and self-confidence. The similar
ity of their political outlook strengthened Claire s
feeling of friendship for these three men.

At the session of the Jacobin Club held on April
3rd, 1793, Lacombe spoke in favour of the arrest of
the aristocrats and their families. The women s club
which she had organized was simultaneously carrying
on a violently anti-Girondist campaign among the
masses. When the revolt against the Girondins came
to a head the revolutionary citizenesses spent all
night on the steps of the Convention. They had armed
themselves with daggers, and they could hardly be
restrained from killing the hated Brissotins whom they
held responsible for their hunger and the disasters at
the front, Lacombe s grenadiers listened tensely to
the shouts and roar of voices which came from the hall
in which the Convention was sitting.

At last the traitors will have to answer to the people ;
to-day we shall save the revolution/ said one to
another.

Look, there s prating Vergniaud. Let him pass, the
time to slit his fat paunch hasn t come yet.

162

CLAIRE LACOMBE

Vergniaud came running up the steps. The women
overwhelmed him with imprecations and refused to
open a road for him.

In addition to taking part in the revolutionary
campaigns the women organized debates in their
club and discussed all the measures before the Con
vention. On one occasion the subject chosen for
consideration was The Value and the Duties of
Women under a Republican System. Claire was in
the chair. The lecturer, a sempstress, reinforcing her
argument with references to historical examples,
ardently declared that if women are capable of fighting,
they are just as capable of governing the State/ But
this desire found only verbal expression: all Claire s
attempts to win for women the right to participate in
the counsels of the Revolutionary Committee received
a most unceremonious rebuff from the men. In those
days women had no real rights whatever beyond those
of assembling in their club, visiting and sometimes
speaking to petitions or fraternal greetings in the
Convention, and the inalienable right to fight in the
streets and to die for the revolution. Naturally,
narrowly feministic speeches and attacks on the men
were not infrequently made from the platform of the
women s club. The speakers would appeal to the dis
tant times of matriarchal governments and to the
legends of such active women as Joan of Arc, Delilah,
and Judith.

The intensification of the internal party struggle
necessarily brought discord into the ranks of the
revolutionary citizenesses also. Not all of them were

163

NINE WOMEN

sympathetic to the Enraged ; many were under the
spell of Robespierre, or blindly believed in Marat,
who not long before his death had written articles in
the Ami du Peuple calling for an attack on the Enraged/
his recent allies against the Girondins. On the
morning of July 4th, Claire Lacombe paced up and
down her little room in a towering rage as she read the
article in which Marat had accused the extremists of
being falsely exalted patriots who were more dangerous
than the counter-revolutionaries. Varlet, Marat had
written, is possibly only a brainless intriguer, but the
little Leclerc appears to be a very clever rogue; Jacques
Roux is desirous of making a noise in the world.
In the same month of July Claire s friend Roux,
who was carrying on a desperate campaign against
speculators, was attacked inside the club itself by one
of the revolutionary citizenesses, who accused him
of being a careerist and hypocrite.

Charlotte Corday s assassination of Marat on July
1 3th evoked a genuine feeling of despair in the out
skirts of the city, and despite the Ami du Peuptis
diatribes against them just before his death the
Enraged considered it sound policy to react sympa
thetically to the people s sorrow and to mourn the great
tribune. They proclaimed themselves his successors
had they not struggled jointly with him against the
attempts of the rich to create a new aristocracy of
wealth? The revolutionary citizenesses were the first
to propose that a memorial should be raised to the
people s fallen leader. The Commune procrastinated,
and the women held a stormy meeting in the church of

164

CLAIRE LACOMBE

Saint Eustache, which was now the club headquarters.
In the twilit Gothic hall a plain, narrow table was
set on a platform opposite the entrance door; behind
the table sat Lacombe, now president of the club, and
the secretary. The church was full to overflowing;
behind the barrier the space allotted to guests
was crowded. The hall was stiflingly hot, the audience
restless ; outside in the avenues of the cemetery women
sans-culottes were pacing up and down, violently
arguing, snorting, gesticulating. Claire Lacombe rose
to her feet, adjusted her crimson Phrygian bonnet
with a gesture worthy of Phedre, and declared the
meeting open. The hall lapsed into silence, the belated
club members endeavoured to reach their seats without
disturbing the others, and, already in a state of trepida
tion, everybody prepared to listen. The secretary
read out a protest against the Commune s dilatoriness
in showing respect to the memory of the Friend of the
People. No one can prevent our raising the obelisk
... we do not ask for any assistance. It was the
sans-culottes whom Marat supported above all others;
it is the sans-culottes who wish to celebrate his glory.
Having approved their address to the Commune, the
revolutionary citizenesses at once accepted a proposal
to subscribe to the memorial such miserable farthings
as they happened to have with them in the capacious
pockets of their ragged pleated skirts. On the day
the temporary wooden obelisk was unveiled the club-
members marched from the cemetery of Saint Eustache
to the Place du Carrousel in an imposing procession.
Their weather-beaten faces reflected their intense

165

NINE WOMEN

satisfaction; proud hands carried hurdles on which
were placed the chair, table, pen, inkpot and paper
stained with Marat s blood.

Nevertheless, the club of the women Republican
Revolutionaries was in a very precarious position,
for not without reason the moderates regarded Claire s
society as one of the strongholds of the Enraged/
In August 1793, Robespierre was irritatedly declaring
that this society of true sans-culottes will not be able
to carry on much longer, for it lays itself open to
ridicule and mischievous talk. On the other hand
Leclerc, in the journal claiming to be the continuation
of Marat s Ami du Peufle^ endeavoured to encourage
the revolutionary women. * Generous women, he
wrote and truly above all praise for your courage and
energy, since mean interests have not stifled the natural
feelings in your souls rekindle the republican energy
with your speech. It is for you to sound the tocsin of
Liberty.

In the autumn of 1793 Theophile Leclerc abandoned
Claire and married Pauline Leon. Claire bore this
blow bravely. Under Leclerc s influence she had read,
worked, and made considerable intellectual develop
ment, nevertheless the break with him did not change
the course of her activity. About this time Desmoulins
was fulminating against the Enraged, 7 although he
did not specify them by name. As for Robespierre,
his hostility was manifest: from the tribune of the
Jacobin Club he criticized Roux again and again.
When the Enraged Lacombe sought to force her
way to the bar of the Convention, Maximilian made

166

CLAIRE LACOMBE

an impatient sign to the president to prevent her from
speaking. He fruitlessly tried to conceal his alarm and
dissatisfaction with the women s club beneath a grimace
of venomous ridicule. The Enraged agitation to
establish fixed prices for the foodstuffs indispensable
to the poor, and to burden the bourgoisie and the shop
keepers with taxation in order to prevent them accumu
lating capital and screwing up prices, received exten
sive support from the poor of Paris. But the Jacobins
regarded these extremists as dangerous, and feared
that the women s club might well discredit the Moun
tain with the masses on whom it depended for its
influence.

Finally Claire obtained permission to speak to the
Convention, and began to read a petition demanding
the realization of the Constitution and the application
of terroristic measures against the aristocrats. We
come to demand the execution of the constitutional
laws, she read. Trove by the dismissal of all nobles
that they have no protectors among you. By your deeds
show to all France that the delegates of a great people
have not been sent here at great expense from all
the corners of the republic simply in order to enact a
pathetic scene on the Champ de Mars . . . It is not
enough to tell the people that its happiness is imminent,
it is necessary that the people should feel its effects
. . . They note with indignation that men who have
stuffed themselves with their gold and are growing
fat on their purest blood are preaching to them
restraint and patience. . . .

We no longer believe in the virtue of these persons

167

NINE WOMEN

who are reduced to praising themselves. To-day
words alone are not enough for us. ... Be not afraid of
disorganizing the army; the more talented the general,
the more urgent the need to replace him if he be evil-
intentioned. . . . You have decreed the arrest of all
suspects, but is that law not ridiculous when it is the
suspects themselves who are entrusted with its
application? . . . You must set up extraordinary
tribunals in sufficient numbers to ensure that the
patriots now departing for the front can say: "We are
untroubled for the fate of our wives and our children ;
we have seen all the internal conspirators perish under
the sword of the law".

Hardly had Lacombe finished reading the last line
of her petition when a long protracted, angry howl
arose in the hall of the Convention. Because of its
connection with the Enraged the women s Repub
lican Revolutionary Society was now hopelessly
compromised in the eyes of the moderate Jacobins.
Soon after this incident Jacques Roux was thrown into
prison. The Gravilliers Section hastened to protest
against the arrest of its leader. On the other hand,
when they learnt that Roux had been imprisoned the
petty bourgeoisie and the speculating profiteers, who
were sympathetic to the moderates and were secretly
mourning the Girondins or the king, celebrated the
event and scribbled denunciations against him. They
ascribed every possible vice to their ruthless enemy:
theft, profligacy, counter-revolutionary designs, venality,
embezzlement, even gluttony. The Jacobin Club
passed a majority vote of censure on him, but in

168

CLAIRE LACOMBE

view of the total absence of any incriminating evidence
the prisoner was soon at liberty again. Anxious to
assist Roux, in her capacity as president of the Repub
lican Revolutionary Club Claire offered the Convention
her services in revising the list of prisoners with a view
to releasing the innocent and punishing the guilty/
This demand, inspired by the Enraged, had the
effect of making the Convention still more antagonistic
to her.

In the middle of September Jacques Roux was
declared a suspect, and concurrently the Women s
Republican Revolutionary Society was rent with
schism. Gobin, a quarrelsome, evil-tongued and hyster
ical club member whose husband was a moderate
Jacobin, attempted to make a speech savagely criticiz
ing Leclerc. The zealous partisans of the extremists
replied by expelling the traitress from membership
of the society. Citizeness Gobin decorated herself
with a sumptuous tricoloured cockade and hurried
to the Jacobin Club to lodge a complaint. Any accu
sation against the suspect girl Lacombe received a
sympathetic hearing from the moderates, and on
September i6th one of the secretaries of the Club
in St. Jacob s Monastery criticized the Republican
Revolutionary Society for having taken a false path.
But on that day all the speakers appeared to be in a
conspiracy to demonstrate how extensive were the
possibilities of slander and denunciation. Corpulent
Chabot, a former monk, was the first to speak, grinning
and chuckling after every sentence. It is time/ he
cried, to tell all the truth concerning these self-styled

169

NINE WOMEN

republican women. I shall unmask their intrigues,
and you will be astounded/ He proceeded to make an
indefinite charge against Lacombe of having a passion
for male aristocrats. Despite their double-dyed scurri
lity his cynical insinuations were received with obvious
satisfaction by his audience.

The next day/ he continued, Madame Lacombe,
(for she is not a citizeness) again called on me and
admitted that it was not Monsieur Rey, but his nephew
who had touched her heart. I am accused of being
susceptible to women s influence/ I told her then, but
I shall never do what men want to make you do, and
all the women in the world will not compel me to act
otherwise than as I desire to act for the public good.
. . . Then Madame Lacombe called me the most
gutter-journalistic names. . . . These revolutionary
women have dared to attack Robespierre and to call
him Monsieur Robespierre. I demand that you take
vigorous measures against them; I demand that
they purge themselves of all the intriguers among them
and that we invite them in writing to do so/

Chabot descended from the tribune to the accom
paniment of ringing applause. He was followed by the
decrepit and jaundiced Basire, who ended his colourless
speech with the following proposal, chiefly affecting
Claire Lacombe, Pauline Lon and others of the
Enraged.

I believe that the Society of Women Republican
Revolutionaries is pure, but that it is conducted by
intriguers; I recommend that we invite these citizen-
esses to undertake a purging scrutiny in order to free

170

CLAIRE LACOMBE

themselves of all those women whose spirit has been
detrimental to the society.

The speakers who followed also singled out Claire
Lacombe as the chief target of their unjust attacks.
She was especially condemned for concealing the
persecuted petty thief Leclerc. The last to ascend the
tribune was Taschereau ; whilst he was speaking Claire
made her way into the hall.

Lacombe pushes her way in everywhere; at first
she demanded the Constitution, all the Constitution
(and in passing you will observe this hypocritical and
journalistic language). Then she wanted to undermine
the Constitution and to undermine all constituted
authorities/ he declared.

After listening to Taschereau Claire demanded the
right to speak. She was greeted with an indescribable
uproar. Thereupon several of her friends, the so-called
Lacombe s dragoons* burst into the hall and advanced
with clenched fists upon the disconcerted Jacobins,
who replied with incoherent curses. From the choir-
stalls and beyond the barrier penning in the visitors
arose the shouts of women hostile to the Enraged :
Down with the new Corday, down with the intriguers !
The president of the session, Bourdon, attempted to
call the Club to order, but it was useless; losing all
patience, he demonstratively put on his hat to indicate
that he had closed the meeting. Peace Was not restored
for a long time. When at last Bourdon managed to make
himself heard, he turned harshly to Claire and pointed
out that the disorder ensuing upon the appearance
of the revolutionary citizenesses confirmed the accu-

171

NINE WOMEN

racy of the accusations, since it was a real crime against
patriotism to cause trouble in an assembly which
needs to deliberate coldly on the interests of the people,
Hardly had Lacombe left the Jacobin Club when
demands for her arrest were heard. But the proposal
was not adopted, and the meeting contented itself
with passing a resolution which involved a serious
menace to the Enraged :

*i That the "revolutionary citizenesses" be written
to, instructing them to undertake a purging scrutiny
in order to rid themselves of their suspect women
leaders.

*2 That a request be made to the Committee for
Public Safety to arrest Leclerc and the suspect women,
and that it be instructed to watch the woman Lacombe,
who is occupied with intrigues on behalf of the aristo
cracy/

The following day a search was made in Lacombe s
room, and gossiping rumours of her arrest spread
through the city. The Gazette de France^ always avid
for sensational stories, and the delighted moderate
Feuille du Salut Public hastened to inform their
readers that the woman or girl Lacombe is at last in
prison and unable to do any further harm. This
revolutionary Bacchante is now drinking only water.
It is well known that she was very fond of wine;
that she was not less fond of good living and men s
company her intimate friendship with Jacques Roux,
Leclerc and Company bears witness.

172

CLAIRE LACOMBE

On reading this cunningly formulated libel Claire,
beside herself with rage, wrote the following contra
diction of the report:

I shall prove to you that my hands are as free as
is my body, for they will have the great pleasure of
administering you a good thrashing if you do not
retract your statement; and I am a woman of my word.

But all kinds of scurrilous fictions, the tried and
tested weapons of political struggle, continued to
provide Paris with entertainment. Just as formerly
the aristocrats and Girondins had slandered the women
revolutionaries, so now the moderates denounced and
ridiculed the Enraged and their club in the church
of Saint Eustache. Following sound precedents,
doubts were cast first and foremost on the morals of
the club members. One of the lampoons contained the
following choice verse:

The frightful females
Whose inexhaustible paps
Like street taps
Offer drink to all passers.

In their anxiety to counteract the stinking slanders
which were being circulated against them, on Septem
ber 1 8th the diminishing army of revolutionary
citizenesses sent the Convention a demand for the
confinement of all dissolute or aristocratic women in
prison, in order to restore them to good morals by
useful labour and patriotic readings.

It is not surprising that only Roux remained a

NINE WOMEN

constant friend to his women supporters. He wrote
from his prison to the revolutionary citizenesses ,
extolling their society as the sentinel of Liberty, the
terror of the newly risen tyrants, and the bulwark
of the Revolution/ He recalled their invaluable services
in the days of the advance on Versailles, when they had
made the tyrant s satellites eat the dust and had braved
all dangers in order to overthrow the throne/ But
Roux s praises and the club s popularity among the
discontented Sections of the Commune and the working
people were only its further condemnation. Anxious
to avoid exasperating the faubourgs on the eve of the
trials of the Brissotins and the queen, Robespierre
postponed further repressive measures against the
club and those of the Enraged still left at liberty,
whilst slowly preparing for their elimination. Those
were oppressive, dreary days for Claire, Roux,
Leclerc, and Varlet were threatened with the scaffold;
various members of the Republican Revolutionary
Society were betraying or forsaking the club and
spreading all kinds of legends concerning the proceed
ings in the church of Saint Eustache. Impetuous,
passionate Rosa sought relief in violent attacks on
Robespierre, whom she held responsible for Roux s
arrest. I cannot understand, she angrily said one day
when the Incorruptible was being discussed, why you
exalt him beyond all reason; the truth is he is a very
ordinary sort of man/ This depreciation of Robes
pierre was afterwards to be adduced as one of the
charges against her.

At the beginning of October the Society of Men of

CLAIRE LACOMBE

the Tenth of August, which was notorious for its anti-
feminism, protested to the Convention against the
anti-civic activities of several women, self-styled
revolutionaries. Once more their charges were
directed chiefly against citizeness Lacombe, and were
followed by a demand for the dissolution of the women s
club,

On the instruction of the club these denunciations
were answered by Lacombe herself. Yesterday/ said
she who was really the accused, an attempt was made
to deceive you. . . . Intriguers have dared to liken us
to Medicis, to Antoinettes, and to one Charlotte
Corday. Ah, it is true Nature has produced one
monster who robbed us of the Friend of the People/
but was Corday a member of our society? . . . Our
sex has produced only one monster, whereas during
the past four years we have been betrayed and assassin
ated by innumerable monsters of the male sex. . . .
Our rights are those of the people, and if we are
oppressed we shall find ways of resisting oppression.

A few days later Claire won the Jacobins applause
as, in reply to shouts threatening her with the guillotine,
she proudly declared: I have always professed the
principles of Marat. If you desire to immortalize me
as he has been strike; you have an excellent oppor
tunity. I prefer to perish at the hand of a patriot rather
than to enter into accommodations with robbers and
traitors. But by the end of October the enemies of the
women s revolutionary organizations had won a
considerable majority not only in the Jacobin Club
and the Convention, but even in the Sections of the

NINE WOMEN

Commune. The Republican Revolutionary Society
was in its death-throes. An incident insignificant in
itself afforded a pretext for the Dantonist, Fabre
d Eglantine, half blackguard and half poet, to secure
the suppression of the club held in Saint Eustache.

The traders of the Saints Innocents market had
never attempted to conceal their dissatisfaction with
the revolution, which had inflicted considerable losses
on small trading. The uneducated, frequently drunken
costermongers and fishwives hated the left and espec
ially those zealous champions of liberty, the revolu
tionary citizenesses. Sighing and cursing, the market
stall-holders would talk regretfully of the good old days
when the servants of the aristocrats true epicures they !
used to carry away loads of the leathery and cactus-
like artichokes, clean, pale-green asparagus, and
the democratic carrots, peas and potatoes. In those
days the traders had been surrounded by crowds of
purchasers ; and the fruit-sellers retailing various sorts
of apples, juicy pears, bananas, pine-apples and the
Paris grape always had empty baskets to take home.

Exasperated by their bitter memories, the women
traders would observe darkly: Our men have instituted
a republic, but we shall know how to make a counter
revolution. The days which saw the execution of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were occasions of
deep mourning in the Saints Innocents market; the
tiny, salad-green frogs bodies, the black mussels and
expiring crabs spread out on the stalls, and the pails
of well-diluted milk, were watered with grimy tears.

On the days when the revolutionary razor was at

176

CLAIRE LACOMBE

work the women traders were forced as members of
the Section du Contrat Social to march to the distant,
dreary Place des Greves and the spacious, grass-grown
Place de la Revolution. Some with great paunches and
faces wreathed in fat, others as gaunt as rakes, hook
nosed, frequently bearded, and all of them as tenacious
as bull-dogs, they would follow behind Sanson s
tumbrel, cracking cynical jokes at the expense of the
condemned whenever these happened to be former
prominent revolutionaries. Let these devilish patriots
devour one another as fast as they like, the beldams
chuckled. These furies were among the crowd that
spat in Robespierre s face on the morning of Thermidor
the Tenth.

There was a long-standing feud between the revolu
tionary citizenesses and the market women. And on
October 28th the most indefatigable of the club
members assembled to set forth on a crusade: armed
with menacing but harmless pistolets, attired in bell-
shaped pantaloons and scarlet Phrygian bonnets, they
marched off to sansculottize the citizenesses of the
Saints Innocents Market in other words, to compel
them to wear the customary tricoloured cockade
which the Convention, on the initiative of the revolu
tionary women, had about a month previously declared
to be compulsory under penalty of a week s imprison
ment.

But the market had been warned betimes of the
impending attack of the sans-cuhttesj and at dawn the
women were astir making preparations to give their
ancient enemies a warm reception. Rotten potatoes,

M 177

NINE WOMEN

turnips as hard as cobble-stones, addled eggs, maggoty
plums and the women s mutton-fists were all ready.
Only let those stinkers, those brainless apes, those
street scum, those empty-bellied cows show their
faces! the women stormed. In due course the long
expected detachment was seen approaching in the
distance. Giving the revolutionary citizenesses not
a chance to open their mouths, the market women made
a sortie and charged upon them. A highly variegated
rain of shells burst amid the ranks of the disconcerted
agitators, the rotten fruit and vegetables being
followed by stones, sticks, and a whirlwind of fists.
A disorderly mob of market women and zealous,
enraptured children imitating their mothers, attacked
the retiring revolutionary women from the rear.
Their retreat was cut off. Hearing the women s
curses and howls the men came running from the
neighbouring streets, seizing their long-awaited oppor
tunity to settle scores with the revolutionary hags.
Unfortunately the club women found very few
defenders. The battered revolutionaries, who after
the first moment of petrifaction defended themselves
valiantly, lost not only their cockades and bonnets but
even their elegant pantaloons, themselves enough to
send the moderates into a frantic rage. The half-
undressed red-bonnets were mercilessly beaten off,
and their leader was flogged and plastered with mud
to the acclamation of an immense crowd.

This serious reverse proved to be merely one in a
long succession of mortifications. At noon of the same
day Claire was anxiously realizing that there was an

178

CLAIRE LACOMBE

unprecedented influx of outsiders into the church
of St. Eustache, whence the club members were
proposing to march to the unveiling of the monument
to Marat, Nevertheless, neither Lacombe nor her
agents among the women strolling up and down
the avenues or sitting in the choir-stalls could discover
anything to justify their suspicions. The general
mood seemed to be one of geniality and placidity; no
reference could be heard to the morning s incident,
and only the scratched faces and bandaged arms of
certain of the women bore testimony to the recent
affray. Suddenly someone started the provocative
rumour that a hoard of flour had been discovered in
the sewers of Mont-Martre. It s all these accursed
profiteers; how long will the Convention continue to
stand on ceremony with the traitors? screamed one
haggard and emaciated woman. Don t give the
Convention an excuse for coming down on us, you
fool! her neighbour whispered. But, exhausted with
insufficient food, with standing in queues, with depriva
tions, the women worked themselves into a frenzy,
Monsieur Robespierre is allowing the shopkeepers to
drink our blood, a feeble voice whined from a corner.
Down with the Jacobin women, Beat up the red
bonnets ! came a reply from the choir-stalls. Others
joined in, and soon a serious struggle had developed
in the hall. The women stewards rushed to separate
the combatants, only themselves to fall to blows in the
attempt. Curses mingled with groans, to be drowned
by the noise of overturning benches, desperate screech
ing, and the jingle of broken glass.

179

NINE WOMEN

Women citizens, in the name of the law, silence!
sounded a powerful bass voice. Strange to relate, the
masculine tones brought the mob of angrily struggling
and scuffling women to their senses. The judge Lindet
and six citizens who had hurried to the scene were able
to restore some degree of order and peace. Still casting
furious glances at one another, the enemies began to
tidy their dishevelled hair, their torn clothes and
kerchiefs. But the armistice was not of long duration.
Discovering that they had considerable reinforcements
outside the club, the women who had arrived from the
Place des Saints Innocents and had been sent by the
moderate Jacobin Sections deliberately to cause a
disturbance began to renew their provocation. Down
with the red bonnets 1* arose the shout once more. The
judge Lindet, who was himself unfriendly to the
revolutionary citizenesses, demanded that the vice-
president should take off her bonnet. Hoping to
disarm the hostility, Victoire Capitaine complied with
the order, her action being greeted with hysterical
howls, entreaties not to give way, and exultant applause.
But even this proved inadequate, and the battle was
reopened. This time Lindet and the six citizens he
had brought with him could only remain impotent
bystanders. Seeing herself surrounded, the club s
standard-bearer thrust her banner into the hands of
one of the men, pantingly admonishing him: Look
after the banner . . . otherwise you ll pay for it with
your head/ and then, arming herself with a stool,
plunged into the fray. Only when the cannoneers of
the Section were summoned were the women separated

1 80

CLAIRE LACOMBE

with great difficulty, and order was restored. After the
fight a number of wounded and disabled club members
were left on the field of battle. The protocol describ
ing this unhappy incident, signed by Claire s close
friend Victoire Capitaine, one of the most talented and
eloquent of the society s leaders, informs us : Prefer-
ring to fall a victim to the deluded people, caring no
longer for her own person, but anxious that the picture
of Liberty represented on the banner should not be
desecrated, one of the members exclaimed: "Kill us if
you wish, but have respect at least for the emblem of
French unity."

After this deliberately provoked riot the days of the
society were numbered. Instead of condemning the
authorities for their inactivity during the attack on
the club, the Commune expressed its gratitude to
them for the measures adopted to prevent the club
meeting. Not content with breaking up the club
gatherings in the church of Saint Eustache, the female
antagonists of the revolutionary citizenesses lodged a
formal complaint with the Convention. Fabre d Eglan
tine and other deputies resolved to avail themselves
of this denunciation in order to obtain the suppression
of the noxious club which caused them so much
exasperation. The nimble-witted Dantonist brought all
his gifts for insinuation and duplicity to bear on the
extreme left women. Soon, he declared, stroking his
powdered peruke as he spoke, they will be demand
ing pistolets . . . and ere long you will see troops of
women going for bread as though they were storming
the trenches. This argument carried conviction

181

NINE WOMEN

to the minds of the deputies, who were afraid of any
form of popular revolt. I have observed/ he continued,
that these societies are composed not of mothers of
families, daughters of families, or sisters occupied
with their younger brothers and sisters, but of various
types of women adventurers, ladies errant, emanci
pated girls, female grenadiers/ Fabre d Eglantine s
speech was interrupted again and again by applause.
One of the petitioners was the next to ascend the
tribune. Citizens, she cried, we demand the abolition
of all women s societies organized as clubs, because
it was a woman (Charlotte Corday) who brought
misery on France.* Finally the Convention decided
to refer the question of the Republican Revolutionary
Society to the Committee for Public Safety, and on
Brumaire the Ninth in an emphatically reactionary
speech citizen Amar reported the results of the
Committee s investigations. Does modesty permit
women to speak in public and to struggle against men?
... In general women are little capable of exalted
conceptions or of serious reflection. . . . Thus we
believe that women ought not to abandon their families
to interfere in government affairs. ... It is necessary
to abolish these pretended popular women s societies/
Amar ended, he was followed by Charlier, who,
heedless of the murmurs of the meeting, sought to
defend the women s right to organize clubs. At least,
he urged, if you do not deny that women are part of
the human family, can you deprive them of the right
common to all thinking beings? He proposed that
the club should be purged of all suspects, but that it

182

CLAIRE LACOMBE

should not be completely suppressed. After listening
to the report of the Committee for Public Safety the
Convention adopted the following historic decree:
Article i. Women s clubs and popular societies,
under whatever designation they may exist, are pro
hibited. Article 2. All sessions of popular societies
must be public.

The dissolution of the revolutionary women s club
coincided with the beginning of a general persecution
of all secret suspect assemblies. The Convention was
anxious to forestall any attempt to organize the dis
content with which Paris was seething that autumn.

The club resolved to make a stand for woman s
right to organize, which was one of the most consider
able achievements she had won during the revolution.
On November 5th, 1793, one of the revolutionary
citizenesses managed to make her way to the bar of the
Convention. Greeted with whooping, howling, whist
ling and laughter, she was able to utter only a few words
in defence of her club. The women s Republican
Revolutionary Society, which is composed mainly of
married women, no longer exists. A law passed under a
misapprehension as the result of a lying report forbids
us to call ourselves rev. . . . Hardly had she begun
the last word when the majority of the deputies
jumped to their feet and shouted the petitioner down.
The president immediately instructed the attendants to
remove the women s deputation. Thus refused a
hearing by the Convention, some seven days later the
so-called revolutionary women, with Claire at their
head, broke forcibly into a session of the Paris Com-

183

NINE WOMEN

mime and endeavoured to voice a complaint against the
decree closing the clubs. But the welcome they received
was no less stormily antagonistic than that of the Con
vention. With only a few exceptions the members of
the Commune roared Down with the red-bonnets P
completely outshouting the partisans of the women s
movement. One influential member of the Commune,
the Public Prosecutor Chaumette, an ally of Hebert
and later one of those who continued the agitation
begun by the Enraged/ was an implacable opponent
of looseness of morals/ which he considered would
follow inevitably if women were granted superfluous
rights. Hebert himself, the editor of the venomous
and daring Pere Duchene^ was a dandy, epicure and
bacchanalian, and was almost indifferent to the woman
question ; but the stocky Commune Public Prosecutor,
who dressed anyhow, went hungry, and preached
asceticism and restraint, demanded that women should
confine themselves to ministering to their families
and caring for the interests of the household. In his
speech Chaumette pathetically exclaimed: Nature
has said to woman be a woman ; the tender care of
your children, domestic details, the sweet anxieties of
motherhood these are your labours. . . . For your
recompense you will be the divinity of the domestic
sanctuary. He was sincerely upset by the shameless
female who donned man s attire . . . making a dis
gusting exchange of the charms conferred on her by
nature for the pike and the red bonnet. Moreover
the inveterate atheist Chaumette despised women for
their obscurantist hankering after clericalism.

184

CLAIRE LACOMBE

In the Commune Claire was welcomed with coarse
ridicule and mockery. The Jacobin party Press also
expressed its entire approval of the Convention decree.
On the day the extremists and the women s club were
suppressed the Moniteur printed the following senten
tious and simultaneously threatening article :

*A short time ago the Revolutionary Tribunal gave
women a good example which undoubtedly will not
be lost on them . . , Marie Antoinette . . . Olympe
de Gouges, born with an exalted imagination, took her
delirium for the inspiration of nature and ended by
adopting the plans of the traitors. . . . The woman
Roland, a fine mind with great projects, a philosopher
in small change . . . she was a mother, but she had
sacrificed her nature in her anxiety to raise herself
above it; the desire to be a savant led her to forget her
sex, and that forgetfulness, always dangerous, ended
at last by bringing her to her death on the scaffold. . . .

Women, you wish to be republicans? Love, obey,
and teach the laws which call your husbands and your
children to the exercise of their rights . . . Never
go to popular assemblies with the desire to speak
there, but occasionally let your presence encourage
your children ; then the country will bless you, because
you will truly have done all that it has the right to
expect of you.

The death of Jacques Roux, who committed suicide
at his trial in January, 1794; the persecution of her
friends, and the constant surveillance of spies, drove
Claire completely out of revolutionary activity. She
began to believe that the true revolution had perished

185

NINE WOMEN

together with the Enraged. After Roux s death she
thought of Robespierre, Couthon and Saint Just only
as tyrants and executioners of the friends of the people.
The raging Terror horrified Claire; nevertheless she
was forced to retreat and abandon her revolutionary
post for ever not from any cowardly fear of the scaffold,
but because of her total disillusionment.

At the beginning of 1794 the former president of

the club at Saint Eustache attempted to return to her

long-abandoned profession of actress. The provincial

theatre, the wandering existence, the carnival tinsel

and glitter of the stage, the possibility of a blissful

reincarnation as this or that ancient heroine began

again to allure the chastened revolutionary. In March

1794 she managed to obtain an engagement in the

distant town of Dunkirk. At last, she was rejoicing,

unhappy Paris would be left behind for ever; the two

past turbulent years would be relegated to the archives

of memory, and the future who knows? would

bring success and glory. Such are the hopes of even

the most ungifted of the theatre s children. Victoire

Capitaine, Claire s associate in her former triumphs,

hastened to equip her friend for the road. In one of

the rooms of a tumble-down house in the Rue Neuve-

des-Petits-Champs the two women set to work to pack

Red Rosa s modest wardrobe. The shabby, coloured

cretonne rag which had once been the costume of the

mythical, impassioned Iphigenia was folded at the

bottom of the basket; next it they put the tricoloured

sash which the French people had presented to the

heroine of August ioth. This relic turned the two

186

CLAIRE LACOMBE

friends* thoughts back to bygone, happy days, and
they wept as they recalled Jacques Roux and his
prophecies. In accordance with the traditions of
their narrow-minded existence the newly established
bourgeoisie had squeezed woman out of political life
and relegated her to the position of domestic drudge.
The victory of the principles held by the Enraged*
might have afforded her other prospects, but the
broken wave of their movement had been dispersed
in superficial foam.

All Lacombe s plans were brought to naught by her
unexpected arrest on April 2nd, the very eve of her
departure for Dunkirk, and by her ensuing long
imprisonment. For over sixteen months she was
confined in one prison after another. Fruitlessly did
Victoire Capitaine work for her friend s release; even
the appeal of the Section de la Halle-aux-bles, who
had known and once had loved Rosa/ was unavailing,
although it pointed out that she had shown great
patriotism . . . and had no other income save that
of her profession/ At first she was confined in the
poorly furnished Port Libre, then in Plessis, in Sainte
Pelagic contemporaneously with Robespierre s bride*
and Philip Lebas wife, and finally in the Luxembourg,
where Leclerc was also (he and Leon had been arrested
together. In prison Claire learned of the triumph
of the Thermidorians and witnessed the release of the
surviving aristocrats, Girondins and Dantonists, who
embraced one another for joy that the tyrant had
fallen. But to Claire s petitions no reply was vouch
safed. The Directory remembered the days of Red

187

NINE WOMEN

Rosa s political triumphs, and were afraid of this
Amazon woman s intrepidity and influence with the
masses.

On the 24th of Thermidor Claire, signing herself
Lacombe, a free woman/ again appealed for release,
declaring: My conduct has always been that of an
honest woman and worthy of the liberty which I have
always defended. I have sacrificed three years of my
life to my country; having neither husband nor child
to offer, I shall regard it as happiness to serve my
country in person.

After the coup of Thermidor the emptied prisons
were hurriedly refilled with the supporters of Robes
pierre, members of the Paris Commune, and members
of the Sections. Once more Claire heard the rumble
of the tumbrels at the prison gates, as they daily carried
ever new groups of revolutionaries to the scaffold.

Time passed on. The Directory raged, danced,
stormed and degenerated. Claire Lacombe was still
in the Luxembourg prison, where she was allowed
comparative freedom. Within the walls of the Luxem
bourg existed a little world apart, in which the prisoners
were allowed to trade and to practise their professions.
As she was one of the oldest and most experienced of
its inhabitants, and had the requisite connections with
the prison staff, Lacombe undertook to render various
services to those prisoners less accustomed to the life,
supplying them with candles, haberdashery, and writing
materials. On her discharge from prison did she turn
to shopkeeping for her future livelihood? Or did she
return to the stage? So far history has yielded no infor-

188

CLAIRE LACOMBE

mation whatever of her activities after her release.
When for the last time she passed through the gates of
the Luxembourg in the autumn of 1795, she mingled
with the crowd outside and vanished into obscurity.

189

LUCILE DESMOULINS

IN one of the low-ceilinged, well-lighted halls of
the Paris museum devoted to the Great French
Revolution hangs the portrait of a young lady. She is
elegantly dressed in the fashion prevalent towards the
end of the eighteenth century. Time has greatly
dimmed the oil-colours on her dreamy doll-face. It is
Lucile Desmoulins, the wife of the ambitious tribune
of the First Republic: gentle Lucile/ who has been
rhapsodically extolled by poets and historians, al
though she rendered no service whatever to the Revolu
tion in whose turbulent and mournful period she
lived, and was without talents other than that of being
*no common wife/

The Luxembourg Gardens, situated in the heart of
old Paris, were as popular during the reign of Louis
XVI as they are to-day. The spacious, carefully swept
square, with its great basin in which little paper boats
floated, a prey to every sudden gust of wind, was
always crowded with children playing at ball or flying
colourful, rustling kites. Gaily dressed governesses,
servant-girls, conceited young tutors and flirtatious
mothers watched over, called after and admonished
their daughters dressed in tight-laced corsets and ex-
haustingly heavy, long and ample gowns, or their
sons with stiff, frizzled curls, broad-brimmed hats
and lace and velvet suits. The shady avenues, lined

N 193

NINE WOMEN

with the sculptured, haughtily staring queens of France,
were a frequent rendezvous for exquisites in pictur
esque taffeta costumes and wealthy ladies in rustling,
flowered skirts, concealing their faces behind their fans.

Lucile Duplessis, the daughter of a rich official in
the Ministry of Finances, was a regular visitor to the
Luxembourg Gardens, which were situated close to
her father s house. She used to go there with her
mother, a beauty who was struggling with some
success to resist the ravages of time, and who was still
susceptible to affections of the heart. The mother
and daughter were on very frank and friendly terms
with each other, especially as Madame Duplessis
needed a confidante when she had trouble with her
heart. Lucile, who was in her mother s confidence,
and who from childhood had witnessed her parents
quarrels, early lost all interest in common love affairs,
and longed to have a great, all-absorbing passion for a
kind and faithful husband. Mademoiselle Duplessis,
having a dowry of one hundred thousand francs,
naturally distrusted her many calculating devotees, and
was always dreaming of the arrival of a disinterested
Trince Charming* on whom she could bestow her
hand, heart and fortune.

During her visits to her parents small estate at
Bourg La Reine, on nights when the moon was
shining Lucile would not retire to bed till dawn.
The moonbeams made the uneven garden with its
innumerable mounds and its flower-beds look like a
cemetery, and gave the white statues of fauns and
nymphs the semblance of monuments and tombstones ;

194

LUCILE DESMOULINS

but Lucile failed to notice the similarity, and her mind
was untroubled by thoughts of death; the tears which
started to her eyes were bitter with an intolerable long
ing for life and happiness. She herself thought she was
weeping out of compassion for the little grey bird
huddled lifelessly on the terrace below, or for the fading
flower with a broken stalk; but in reality she was
weeping because she yearned to love someone, because
her mother s passionate confidences had awakened
dormant emotions. It is difficult for a sentimental
girl of seventeen to realize the cause of her nocturnal
tears.

Whilst still in her teens Lucile frequently saw a
student in the Luxembourg Gardens who caused her
much embarrassment by his ugliness and queer
behaviour. His face was pockmarked, and he had
an enormous, swollen mouth and a crooked nose
resembling a camel s hump. She noticed that, when he
thought he was unobserved, this gawky stranger
would begin to talk to himself, to laugh, shake his
locks, strut importantly and carry his head high
in the air; but as soon as he became conscious of
anyone s presence he at once shrank and lapsed into a
timorous silence, as though mortified. It was very
obvious that he was oppressed by his ugliness and his
untidy dress. Without knowing why, Mademoiselle
Duplessis always felt sorry for the young man, and
when t&gt;ne day he agitatedly came and spoke to her she
listened to him attentively and trustfully. Not long
after this first acquaintance the student, who told her
he was from the sleepy little town of Guise and was

NINE WOMEN

named Camille Desmoulins, confessed that he was in
love with her; and his love was accepted. Lucile
introduced Camille to her parents. Her mother,
always indulgent to young people, and now informed
of the state of her daughter s feelings, welcomed the
guest with great kindliness; but the official of the
Ministry of Finance contemptuously turned his back
as soon as Camille Desmoulins began stammeringly to
tell his life-story. Lucille s dowry of a hundred thou
sand francs was an insuperable obstacle to her union
with Camille. When Desmoulins plucked up courage
to ask M. Duplessis for his daughter s hand, he received
so curt and decided a refusal that the only course
open to him was to cease calling at Lucile s home, and
the young lovers renewed their trysts in the Luxem
bourg Gardens.

The youthful and inexhaustibly loquacious lawyer
now suggested all kinds of expedients to his grieving
betrothed, even proposing that they should be married
secretly, although he had no home of his own and
his income was insufficient even to keep himself. His
stiff-necked father had refused to send him any more
money, and had demanded that his son should return
home and practise his profession in Guise, like his
schoolfellow, the young Maximilian Robespierre
who had done so well for himself in his native town of
Arras. But Camille preferred his half-starved existence
in Paris, where, he did not doubt for a moment, a
brilliant future awaited him. Camille s confidence in
his coming success put new heart into Lucile : she
firmly believed that genius, could not remain long

196

LUCILE DESMOULINS

unnoticed and in misery. For these two lovers the
revolution of 1 78 9 came as a fairy godmother who made
it possible for them to marry. Lucile, who read but
little and had received no more education than was
requisite to a young lady with a dowry, rejoiced in the
arrival of the revolution because it enabled them to
build their domestic nest. Camille rejoiced because
it brought him the fame which he prized above all
else.

Hardly had Necker, who was regarded as the
people s candidate for the post of king s minister,
received his dismissal on July I2th, 1789, when
Camille Desmoulins forced his way into the pages
of history. It was about four in the afternoon. The
distant thunder of the approaching rising was already
rumbling over Paris. Drinking a glass of wine to
raise his spirits, Camille emerged from a cafe and
mingled with the agitated crowd around the Palais
Royal. Shaking a pistolet, he clambered on to a table,
taking no notice of the police officials who came
running from all sides. Several thousand people
turned their heads inquisitively, craning their necks to
see this man who, when he had attracted their
attention, stutteringly shouted:

Citizens, there is not a moment to lose. I am just
come from Versailles; Necker has been dismissed.
This dismissal sounds the tocsin of a Bartholomew s
night for all patriots. This evening all the Swiss and
German battalions will emerge from the Champ de
Mars to destroy us. We have only one resource, to
take to arms, and to wear cockades so that we can

197

NINE WOMEN

recognize one another. Let all wear green cockades,
the colour of hope. Friends, the hour has arrived, the
terrible hour of conflict between the oppressor and
the oppressed, and we have only one password: " Un
timely death or eternal liberty!" Then, waving his
pistolets, he cried: Let all citizens follow me!

The passion and flaming eloquence of the unknown
speaker captured the crowd. The menacing shout To
arms! ran and blazed up like fire over dry grass.
Within two days the Bastille was being stormed, and
once more Camille was found at the head of the insur
gents. The stammering orator swiftly achieved
notoriety. In the college of Louis-le-Grand, where
for some years he had studied together with Robes
pierre, he had received a classic education. The
stories of Brutus, Spartacus and the Gracchis, the
pathos of the ancient revolutions, had more than once
sent the impressionable Camille into tears of rapture
or howls of rage against the tyrants, and now the
French revolution opened a prospect that his dreams
and the programme of the third estate would be
realized. Abandoning his unsuccessful attempts to
become a famous lawyer, Camille fervently participated
in the revolutionary struggles. Revengeful, explosive,
vindictive, shallow, yet keen-witted, he easily turned
to the pursuit of the one career which could ensure
him a conspicuous position and an influential role.
He took to the pen, scribbling and disseminating
pungent and penetrating pamphlets against the
counter-revolution, against the foreign monarchical
alliance, against the aristocrats, and ere long against

198

LUCILE DESMOULINS

the king himself. He founded the journal Revolutions
de France et de Brabant, in which, in passages scintillat
ing with malicious, but invariably superficial jests, he
eloquently championed democratic ideas. All his
closest friends of that time Robespierre, Brissot,
Frron, Petion were members of the Jacobin Club.
He was successful in all his ventures, and soon
achieved such eminence that M. Duplessis came to
regard it as an honour for his daughter to marry this
erstwhile vagabond who now had such imposing
prospects. Having obtained her parents* consent to
their union, on December i ith, 1790, Camille, a prey
to the conflicting feelings of love, altruism, and satis
faction with the wealth that had come his way, wrote
to his father:

To-day, December nth, I see myself at last at the
height of my desires. Happiness has kept me waiting
long, but at length it has arrived, and I am as happy
as one can be on this earth. The charming Lucile,
of whom I have so often told you, whom I have loved
these eight years at last her parents have consented,
and she does not reject me. Only a moment ago her
mother came to tell me this news with tears of joy
in her eyes. The inequality of our fortunes M.
Duplessis has a rental of twenty thousand livres has
been the obstacle to my happiness hitherto; her father
was dazzled by the proposals which were made to him.
He refused a suitor who had a hundred thousand
francs ; Lucile had already refused another with a rental
of twenty-five thousand livres. You will recognize
Lucile at once by a single trait: when her mother

199

NINE WOMEN

gave her to me just now she conducted me to her
room; I throw myself at Lucile s knees; surprised to
hear her laugh, I raise my eyes and see that her eyes
are in no better state than mine, she was all in tears,
she was weeping copiously, and yet she was still
laughing. I have never seen such a ravishing sight,
and I never imagined that nature and sensibility could
effect a union of two such striking contrasts. Her
father has told me that he delayed only because he
wished previously to give me the hundred thousand
francs which he had promised his daughter, and that
I can go with him to a notary whenever I wish. I
replied : "You are a capitalist. You have rolled in money
all your life, I cannot interfere with the marriage
contract, and so much gold would embarrass me. You
love your daughter too much for me to bargain for
her. You are demanding nothing of me, so draw up the
contract as you please." In addition he is giving me
half his silver plate, which is worth about ten thousand
francs. But don t make too much of a song about all
this. We shall be modest in our prosperity. . . . We
may well be married within a week. It delights my
dear Lucile as much as myself that they can no longer
separate us. Don t earn us the hatred of those who are
envious of us by telling this news, but lock your joy
in your heart as I do, or confide it at the most to my
dear mother, my sisters and brothers. I am now in a
position to come to your assistance, and that adds
greatly to my joy. My beloved, my wife your daughter,
and all her family embrace you. . . .

On December 29th, 1790, in the Church of Saint

200

LUCILE DESMOULINS

Sulpice, as majestic, harsh and gloomy as a feudal
castle, Camille Desmoulins was joined by the Catholic
Church in bonds of holy matrimony with joyfully
weeping Lucile Duplessis. After the ceremony he
received the congratulations of Brissot, Robespierre
and Petion, who had been present at the wedding.
Camille again hastened to boast of the splendour of
his marriage to his family in Guise, who had always
been so unjust and had never truly appreciated him.
Old Desmoulins was with trembling hand to pass
his son s letter on to his friends and neighbours,
secretly marvelling not because the witnesses were
Petion and Robespierre, the 61ite of the National
Assembly/ and Brissot de Warville and Mercier, the
elite of the journalists/ but because his errant son had
done so well for himself by marrying the daughter of
the highly respected bourgeois, M. Duplessis.

Words would fail to describe the happiness which
was now Lucile s. Henceforth her disposition to
melancholy, her ready resort to tears and her despon
dent speech were gone; she became her husband s
indefatigable companion, entering into all his affairs,
equally enchanted to darn his stockings and to trans
cribe his articles, which affected her by their reflection
of Camille s mind. Their apartments, which had been
well and comfortably furnished by her father and
mother, were a tribute to the young housewife s
incessant labour. Tired patriots knew that at Madame
Desmoulins there was always an excellent supper; the
wine, served in crystal decanters bearing the inter
twined initials *C* and *L/ would be old and of the

201

NINE WOMEN

best vintage. Through his marriage Camille was
realizing all his former dreams : he had a wife who was
always seeking to anticipate his wishes, his own
apartments with several rooms, and an income which
ensured a comfortable existence for many years to come.
He saw himself a universal favourite and idol. As he
wandered along the paths in the garden of the Duplessis
estate, which after the Revolution had been renamed
Bourg d Egalite, Desmoulins delighted to play the
orator, gesticulating as he rehearsed the speeches he
intended to deliver in the Jacobin Club. Sometimes
M. Duplessis would listen to him rapturously, but
more frequently he snorted angrily as he noted his
son-in-law s words, which he regarded as empty
babble, or worse, as a seditious preaching of blood lust.
M. Duplessis was afraid of the Revolution, but still
more was he afraid of a fall in the value of the gilt-
edged securities in which he had invested his fortune.
Lucile, however, never ceased praising all that her
husband said or did, and when she failed to convince
others by her argument she took offence, saying with
stubborn insistence : * Well, what of it? When I find
defects in Camille, I love them/

Lucile reacted to her husband s political activities
exactly as she would have done to any other profession
he might have followed. Had he been a doctor, she
would have esteemed the healing art and would have
assisted him to tend his patients. When, in 1792, he
attempted to return to the legal profession she con
scientiously learnt the legal codes by heart, and declared
that the juridical sciences were most necessary and

202

LUCILE DESMOULINS

useful for humanity s beatitude. If Camille had been
a monarchist his wife would have hated the revolution;
but he was a revolutionary, and that was sufficient to
determine Lucile s outlook on the world. The main
indeed the only requisite to her peace was that she
should never be separated from her husband; and as
the days passed she entered into a growingly intimate
union with him. Of an evening, whilst Camille was
writing his pamphlets and newspaper articles, Lucile
must needs sit close at hand, occupied with needle
work, or simply rocking herself to and fro in a rocking-
chair piled with gaily-coloured little cushions. When
ever a happy thought, a flowery simile or quotation
from the ancients entered Camille s mind he emotion
ally read the passage to his wife, who responded with
enthusiastic approval. Lucile even gloried in her
inability to criticize Camille.

On July 6th, 1792, Lucile gave birth to a son, who
was named Horace. Camille himself carried his son
to the commune administration, where the infant was
given a republican baptism free of all religious
ceremonies, and Horace s name was the first to be
registered under the civil registration law. In his
declaration of the child s birth Desmoulins wrote: I
wanted to avoid the reproach which my son might at
some future time make against me, of having bound
him by oath to religious opinions which possibly would
not be his own, and of marking his entry into the world
by an inconsequent choice of one of the nine hundred
or more religions professed by man, at a time when he
was still unable to recognize his own mother.

203

NINE WOMEN

After the birth of her child Lucile devoted herself
entirely to her family ; but the events of August I oth,
in which Camille participated, temporarily tore her
away from the petty interests of domestic existence.
On August i oth, 1792, the people of Paris stormed the
Tuileries and overthrew the Bourbons, and during
these days Lucile realized for the first time what a
dangerous profession her husband had chosen. In
her diary on August 1 2th she wrote :

I returned from the country on August 8th. Al
ready all spirits were fermenting strongly. Someone
had wanted to kill Robespierre. On the ninth I had
the Marseillaise to dinner with me: we were very gay.
After dinner we all went to Danton. Danton was full
of determination. I myself laughed like an idiot. They
were afraid that the affair would not come off. Al
though I was not at all sure, I told them as if I had
certain knowledge that it would. "But how can you
laugh like that? 7 Madame Danton said to me. "Alas 1"
I replied, "it presages that perhaps I shall weep many
tears this evening . . ." The weather was beautiful,
we took several turns up and down the street; it was
fairly crowded. We retraced our steps and sat down
outside a cafe. Several sans-culottes ran past us shout
ing: "Hurrah for the nation!" then soldiers on horse
back, and then enormous crowds. I was suddenly
seized with fear. I said to Madame Danton: "Let us
go/ She laughed at my terror, but in doing so she
grew anxious in her turn, and we left. I said to her
mother: "Adieu, you will soon be hearing the sound of
the tocsin . . ." Soon I noticed that they were arming.

204

LUCILE DESMOULINS

Camille, my dear Camilla, arrived with a fusil. O God,
I hid myself in an alcove, covered my face with my
hands and wept; nevertheless I did not want to show
so much weakness or to tell Camille in front of everyone
that I did not wish him to be mixed up in this affair.
I seized a moment when I could talk to him without
being overheard, and then told him all my fears. He
reassured me and declared that he would not leave
Dan ton. But I realized that he was running into
danger.

Treron looked as though he had resolved to perish.
"I am weary of life," he said, "I wish only to die . . ."
Each patrol that arrived, I believed I was seeing them
for the last time. I went into the salon, where there
was no light burning, in order not to witness their
preparations. There was no one in the street. All the
people had gone home. Our patriots left. I sat down
by a bed, overcome, shattered ; I dozed off more than
once, and when I tried to speak I talked nonsense.
Danton came and lay down. He did not seem parti
cularly troubled, he hardly left the house. Midnight
approached. Several times people came to look for
him ; finally he left for the Commune. The Cordeliers
tocsin bell tolled for a long time. Alone, bathed in
tears, on my knees at the window, my face buried in
my handkerchief, I listened to the sound of that
fatal bell. Uselessly did they try to comfort me ... I
felt sure that their plan was to go to the Tuileries. I
sobbingly told the others of this. I felt as if I were
about to faint. In vain did Madame Robert ask for
news of her husband: nobody gave her any. She

205

NINE WOMEN

believed he was marching with the faubourgs. "If he
dies," she said to me, "I shall not survive him. But it
is this Danton who is at the bottom of everything. If
my husband perishes I shall be the woman to stab
him" . . . Camille returned at one, he fell asleep on
my shoulder. Madame Danton was at my side; she
seemed prepared to hear that her husband was dead
... I lay down and fell asleep to the sound of the
tocsin, which was now to be heard on all sides. We
arose. Camille went out, after assuring me that he
would not expose himself to danger . . . Ten, eleven
o clock came and went without our having news of
what had happened. . . . Suddenly I thought I heard
a cannon shot. . . . We heard shouting and weeping
in the street, we thought all Paris must be swimming
in blood. Then we plucked up courage and went to
Danton s. The people were shouting: "To arms!"
everybody was running there. . . . For a long time
we were without news. Then someone came and told
us we had won.

The next day I heard that Danton had been made a
minister/

Concerning these same events and his subsequent
successes of August 1 5th, Camille wrote to his father :

My dear father,

You will have learnt from the newspapers of the
events of August loth. It remains for me to inform
you of my own share in them. By the grace of cannon
my friend Danton has become Minister of Justice;
that sanguinary day had to end for us two especially

206

LUCILE DESMOULINS

by our being either elevated or hoisted. In the
National Assembly he declared: "If I had been
vanquished I should now be a criminal."

The cause of liberty has triumphed. Behold me
lodged at the palace of Maupeou and Lamoignon.
Despite all your prophecies that I should never do
anything, I am raised to the highest position that
can be achieved by a man of my dress ; and far from
becoming more vain because of this, I am very much
less vain than I was ten years ago, because now I am
of much less value than then in regard to imagination,
fervour, and patriotism, which I do not distinguish
from feeling, humanity, and love for such things;
and these emotions cool with the passing of the years.
But they have not cooled my filial love; and your son,
now secretary-general to the Department of Justice
and he who is commonly called secretary of the seals,
hopes that he will soon be able to give you proofs of
this.

During the trial of Louis XVI, Lucile was a regular
visitor to the Convention. She found it a little trying
when, in the heat of argument, the advocates and
opponents of the death sentence were carried away to
the extent of being ready to fling themselves on one
another. But she firmly remembered that, following
Camille s example, she must be in favour of the king s
execution, and when Louis fate was sealed she ex
claimed: At last we triumph! Lucile lost all con
straint as with artificial indignation she confided her
hatred for the queen to her diary. *O, you wretch/ she

207

NINE WOMEN

wrote, apostrophizing Marie Antoinette, woman who
does not merit that the sun should ever shine on you !
What, you think that the vengeance of heaven will not
come upon you, that you will be victorious? No,
perhaps the day is already at hand when the calamities
you have caused will recoil upon you; then you will
weep, but it will be too late, for nobody will have any
compassion for you. Remember with fear the fate of
queens who, like you, did evil. See! Some of them
perished in poverty, others ascended the scaffold; that
is the fate which perhaps awaits you also.

Events took their course. The tender-hearted
Gironde, which had preferred the tactics of perfidious
compromise and had protested against the execution
of the Bourbons, was itself brought to the bar of
judgment in the Revolutionary Tribunal and sent to
the scaffold. Through Camille, during the early days
of the Revolution Lucile had been friendly with Brissot
and Petion; afterwards she remembered that it was
Brissot who had put her hand into Camille s. But
during the struggle with the Girondins and their
ensuing defeat Desmoulins wife made no reference
whatever to them in her diary. Desmoulins was now
furiously antagonistic to Brissot and the Girondins,
and for Lucile they had ceased to exist even before
their dismissal from the scene. She could hardly
question the justice of anything which Camille did.
She knew and would willingly have repeated all his
arguments in favour of the execution of his recent
friends, but with the exception of her father she came
into contact with nobody who would have attempted

208

LUCILE DESMOULINS

to argue with her or to defend the enemies of the
Revolution.

Hardly had the Girondins passed for ever into
silence when the Dantonists, and Desmoulins with
them, turned to attack the extremists/ who only recently
had been their allies in the struggle with the Brissotins.

Lucile found the terrible Enraged particularly
exasperating; they could not even claim to possess
the good qualities, the exquisite eloquence, learning
and urbanity of the Girondins, yet they dared to
disturb the peace of responsible citizens in an endeavour
to secure excessive benefits to the poorer classes, who,
in Lucile s opinion, had received consideration enough.
Their attacks on the rights of private property and
personal liberty simply astounded Desmoulins wife
by their sheer nonsensical impudence. What injury,
she naively asked, did liberty suffer by her family
having a considerable rental, an estate, and even the
silver plate with which they had dowered their daughter?
And Chaumette, too, who had sunk to such depths as
to dare openly to deny the existence of God, was coarse,
ill-mannered, and had a habit of expressing himself in
ladies company as if he were among the common
people. As she listened to Camille execrating the
H^bertists for their proposal to burden the rich with
taxation, Lucile made it her business to remind him
that the unfrocked boor/ the editor of fere Duchgne,
had again laughed indecently as he passed her. His
wife, Madame Hebert, also invariably suffered from
gentle Lucile s tongue because of her motley, taste
less finery and her plain face.

o 209

NINE WOMEN

When she learnt that Camille was intending to
publish a further journal Lucile openly expressed her
delight, anticipating a settlement of old scores with the
H6bertists. From Brissot s experience she knew the
danger that lurked in the pen of an influential journalist.
The first number of Le Viem Cordelier was issued at
the end of 1793, after being revised by the still
amicably disposed Robespierre. But as it continued
Robespierre began to fear that, under the cloak of an
offensive against the extreme left, he was himself being
attacked, and the exigencies of the political conflict finally
threw Maximilian and Camille into two different camps.

Lucile had remained unperturbed whilst the leaders
of the Gironde were being sacrificed, but she began
to be alarmed by the mass development of the Terror
as she learnt that some former devotee of her mother,
a relative, or an aristocratic dame of her own acquain
tance had perished on the scaffold. On such days she
left the muslin curtains undrawn, and hid in her son s
room from the terrible but as yet quite imaginary fear
that death on the scaffold awaited her also. On such
days, when Camille returned home she would greet
him with incoherent entreaties to leave Paris immedi
ately and to go to their estate, where they could live the
life of country gentry in peace and quietness. But these
accessions of terror were as yet comparatively infre
quent. Nor were they confined to Lucile, for Camille
also would occasionally be seized with panic. The
estimate which Marat had made of this weak, neuras
thenic and shallow politician three years previously
needed no revision in 1793:

210

LUCILE DESMOULINS

Despite all your wit, my dear Camille, you are still
very new to politics. I say it with regret in devoting
your pen to your country how much better would you
serve her if your step were firm and sustained; but
you vacillate in your judgments, to-day you censure
that which to-morrow you will approve. . . . You
appear to have neither plan nor purpose. . . .

In his foreboding that the future would bring
trouble and unhappiness for himself and Lucile,
Camille wrote to his father a letter which clearly
reflected his anxious, profoundly pessimistic state of
mind: Why cannot I be as obscure as I am known?
he exclaimed. Where is there a refuge, a shelter
which will hide me and my wife, my child and my
books from the world s gaze? He vainly sought
to retreat, but it was too late; and, hoping that salvation
would come through victory, he intensified his fierce
campaign against his antagonists on the left. Lucile,
however, still tried to shut out her fear of an imminent
calamity. She zealously distributed invitations to
dinner, and endeavoured to recapture the care-free life
she had known in her home on the Rue de POdeon.
One day, as the servant was bringing a tray laden with
Sevres china cups of steaming chocolate into the rose-
tinted dining room, Lucile struck her little hand on
the table, and turning to Camille s friends, who had
been dissuading him from entering upon a verbal
duel with Robespierre, said in jestingly challenging
tones : Let him fulfil his task, let him save the country/
And as she coquettishly set out the cups on the table
she roguishly added: Any of you who attempts to

211

NINE WOMEN

interfere with him shall not receive any chocolate from
me. But Lucile s playful mood swiftly passed.

During the latter months of 1793, she more than
once confided her anxieties to Louise, Danton s seven
teen-year-old wife ; but her timorous, religious-minded
friend was not interested in politics, was afraid of blood,
and did not know what reply to make to Lucile s
burning arguments that Chaumette and his associates
must first be executed, after which it would be possible
once for all to dismantle and burn the guillotine.
Lucile censured Danton s wife and spoke superciliously
of her mental limitations, expressing her astonishment
that Danton could find pleasure in such a woman.
She condemned Danton for being married by a priest
who had not sworn loyalty to the State, for his indiffer
ence to State affairs after his marriage, and for the
readiness with which he neglected meetings and
abandoned his friends in order to remain at home or
to drive with Louise to his estate.

By the beginning of 1794, Camille was proceeding
to extraordinary lengths in his Press campaign against
the left/ Returning as good as they received, the
Hbertists attacked the Dantonists, and especially Des-
moulins, for going so far as to demand the restoration
of religion, that tool of the legislator/ and for demanding
that the extreme left should be sent to the guillotine
whilst demagogically appealing for clemency to be
shown to all other citizens. At first encouraged by her
husband s political delirium, Lucile began gradually
to succumb anew to her fears to her dread of the future.
When she attended the stormy and ominous meetings

LUCILE DESMOULINS

of the Jacobin Club or read the newspapers, she began
to realize that her husband s attempt to thwart the
revolutionary element was carrying him on to disaster.
Who then could still save Camille s cause? Danton?
But he was too self-confident and assured that the
Revolution would not lift its hand against any of his
supporters. Fabre d Eglantine was unprincipled and
without influence. There was yet one other friend:
Freron. Remembering how persistently he had pes
tered her and assured her of his love, Lucile could
surely hope for his sympathy. She wrote to Freron,
entreating him to come to Paris to Camille s aid, and
complaining of the slanders which the extremists were
circulating against her also.

These monsters have dared to reproach Camille
with having married a rich wife. Ah! let them never
speak of me ; let them forget that I exist ; let them allow
me to go and live in the heart of the wilderness; I
demand nothing of them. I leave them all I possess,
provided I do not have to breathe the same air as they.
If only I could forget them and all the sufferings they
have caused me. . . . Life is becoming a heavy
burden for me. ... I can no longer think. To think,
so pure, so sweet a happiness. Alas, I am bereft of
that. . . . My eyes are filled with tears. I hide this
terrible pain in the depths of my heart. I show Camille
a serene face : I pretend to have courage so that he may
not lose his/

But Freron excused himself with a jesting reply, and re
mained in the provinces, having no desire to risk his head.

Desmoulins extraordinarily severe polemical attacks

213

NINE WOMEN

now began to arouse the indignation of the democratic
petty bourgeoisie led by Robespierre, for they suspected
him of treachery. Lucile fainted when Hebert proposed
that the Jacobin Club should follow the example of
the Cordeliers and exclude Camille from membership.
Two strange women sympathetically led her into the
garden, still leafless and raw with winter rains, and
endeavoured to comfort her; but she started up, fell
to the ground, and lay moaning as though she had
already heard the death-sentence pronounced on
Desmoulins. To be excluded from the Club, and that
after being accused of relations with reactionaries and
especially with the traitor general, Dillon ! Oh, Lucile
knew well what that portended. When she returned
to the hall of the Club, Danton, Collot D Herbois, and
finally Robespierre himself spoke in Camille s defence.
Maximilian was concerned primarily with destroying
the extreme left, in which task Camille was a very
serviceable assistant; and he did not as yet desire to
strike a blow at the Dantonists, although certain
among them seemed to him also to have shifted too
far to the right.

Agitated and tense, Lucile strained her ears to
catch the words of Robespierre s heavy, even voice
through the opposing shouts of the left. She had
difficulty in gathering the sense of the IncorruptibleY
speech, but he appeared to be condemning the
obvious nonsense written by the editor of Le Vieux
Cordelier^ and was proposing not that he should be
expelled, but that the Club should confine itself to
publicly burning the noxious and senseless journal.

214

LUCILE DESMOULINS

Hardly had Robespierre ended when the ashen and
dishevelled Desmoulins leapt to the tribune. Stuttering
incessantly, he tried to shout down the turbulent hall.
Throwing restraint and caution to the winds, he attemp
ted to reveal the cunning game being played by Robes
pierre, declaring that Maximilian had himself
supervised the issues of the Vieux Cordelier and calling
him also to account as his coadjutor. Not in the least
desirous of being proclaimed an ally of the Dantonists,
Robespierre coldly and curtly reminded Camille that
he had supervised not more than two numbers. Weak
with anxiety and trembling in her nervousness, Lucile
remained to hear Camille excluded from membership
of the Jacobin Club.

From that moment terror hung over Desmoulins
house. The sound of a rifle-butt on the ground, the
heavy tread of passers-by, the rumble of a carette or a
cart brought Lucile at once to the window. She pressed
her face against the glass, her vision blurred by the
tears in her eyes; she whispered naive prayers, and
when she was unable to control the sound of her sobs
she hid her face in the curtain so that Camille should
not hear. And he would sit, now silently and numbly
pausing at a comma, then writing on and on, crossing
out and beginning again ; or would turn to unnaturally
boisterous romps with his son. Anxious not to leave her
husband alone for a single moment, Lucile occasionally
accompanied him to the Convention or on visits to friends .

On the evening of March 3&lt;Dth, Lucile remained up
till a very late hour. Camille had sat all the evening
with his head on his hands, staring at a letter from his

215

NINE WOMEN

father informing him of the death of his mother, an
energetic and good old .woman. Desmoulins regarded
the news of his mother s death as an omen. Lucile
quietly tiptoed out of the dining room, leaving her
husband alone with his mournful thoughts. She had
combed her hair and donned her nightcap when
suddenly in the street she heard approaching steps,
heavy and rhythmic like the roll of a drum. Hearing
a military command she ran back to Camilla, who had
risen apprehensively from his chair. Seeing his wife,
he whispered, hoarsely as though in his death agony:
They have come to arrest me. 7

When the street had lapsed into silence and the
patrol escorting Camille to the Luxembourg prison
had disappeared around the corner, for the first time
Lucile gave voice to a long and piercing scream. But
this rending cry, at the sound of which the servant
sighed, thinking her mistress had become crazed with
grief, restored Lucile to a consciousness of the in
vincible necessity to act. She could not bear the thought
of living without Camille, she yearned after him like
a tigress after her stolen cubs, and at any cost was
determined to settle accounts with those who had
dared to take her husband from her. Day and night,
careless of her attire, she sped through the city, im
portunately visiting the various offices and institutions,
or standing like one hypnotized in the Luxembourg
Gardens opposite the prison where Desmoulins was
confined. Occasionally as she hurried along the street
she would break into sudden curses and threats against
the government, evoking timorously sympathetic

216

LUCILE DESMOULINS

glances from the passers-by. Desiring to share Camille s
imprisonment, she attempted to get herself arrested.
Why am I at liberty? Do people think that just
because I am a woman I do not dare to raise my voice?
Do they count on my remaining silent? she said.
Leaving no stone unturned in her efforts to secure her
husband s release, she wrote to Robespierre, whom
she regarded as the most influential man in Paris,
reminding him of his former friendship with Camille.
In her letter she mingled entreaties and reproaches
indiscriminately.

Camille saw the birth of your ambition/ she wrote.
He foresaw the road which you wished to travel, but
he remembered your old friendship, and as far from the
insensibility of your Saint Just as from his petty
jealousies, he recoiled before the thought of making
charges against an old school friend, a companion of
his labours/

Robespierre did not reply to her letter, and she
understood his silence to imply his condemnation.
Despair lent her courage and goaded her on to impru
dent acts. In the sleepless nights projects impossible
of execution were born in her mind ; now she thought
to place herself at the head of an insurrection which
would end in Camille s liberation; then suddenly it
seemed possible to bribe the gaolers and arrange for
the prisoner s flight.

In his letters to her from prison Camille s groans
sounded in Lucile s ears like a call to vengeance, Her
mind became obsessed with them. In the last he wrote
as though delirious with his own torment:

217

NINE WOMEN

O my dear Lucile. . . . My beloved. I am inno
cent, but often I cannot plead entire innocence as a
husband, a father and a son. If only it had been Pitt or
Cobourg who had dealt so harshly with me but my
colleagues; but Robespierre who signed the order for
my arrest; but the Republic, after all I have done for
her! That is the prize I have received for so many
virtues and sacrifices. . . . Someone is calling me.
... I have just been examined by the commissaries of
the Revolutionary Tribunal. They asked me only one
question: "Had I conspired against the Republic?"
What a mockery ! And can they really insult the purest
of republicans thus? Now I see the fate which awaits
me. Farewell. ... O my dear Lucile ! I was born to
write poems, to defend the unfortunate, to make you
happy. . . . We can well carry with us the witness
that we perish as the last of the republicans. Forgive
me, my beloved, my true life, that I lost at the moment
when they separated us. I live in my memories. I
should rather have attempted to make you forget them,
my dear Lucile, my dear Loulou. Live for my Horace;
tell him of me. You will tell him what he can never
hear from my lips that I would have loved him
dearly. Despite my anguish, I believe that there is a
God. My blood will efface my faults, my human
weaknesses, and that which there is of good in me, my
virtues, my love for liberty, will be recompensed by
God, I shall see you again some day, O Lucile. Con
scious though I am of it, is death, which will deliver
me from the sight of so many crimes, so great a mis
fortune? Adieu, Loulou, adieu my life, my soul;, my

218

LUCILE DESMOULINS

divinity on earth. . . . I see the shore of life receding
before me. I still see Lucile, I see her, my dearly
beloved; my Lucile, my bound hands embrace
thee, and my severed head fixes its dying eyes on
thee.

On the eve of the execution of the Dantonists,
Lucile was seen whispering to the guard of the Luxem
bourg prison. In the Committee for Public Safety
Saint Just announced that Desmoulins wife, mad and
enraged against the patriots, had been caught attempting
to organize a revolt in the prisons, and that her chief
confederate was General Dillon, the miserable traitor
imprisoned in the Luxembourg.

At the noontide of April 5th, a cart stood by the
guillotine on the deserted square. Into it the exe
cutioner and his assistants, talking blithely of the
weather, the harvest, their children, were piling the
bodies of the dead Dantonists. As the tall, muscular
executioner fondly drew each head out of the basket,
he held it up and stood staring at it before finally
throwing it on top of the bodies already flung into the
cart. Camille s face with its open, bulging eyes did
not please Sanson, and he laughed fastidiously as he
recalled how Desmoulins had trembled and dreaded
the guillotine.

Lucile went to prison calmly and joyously, as though
she had been summoned by Camille. A mystic belief
in God inspired her with the hope of meeting her
husband again, and death had become something to
be desired. After a brief examination by the Revolu-

219

NINE WOMEN

tionary Tribunal she was adjudged guilty and con
demned to death.

As she listened unmoved to the sentence she ex
claimed: *O joy! in a few hours I shall see my Camille
again.

From prison she wrote her mother a farewell note:
Good night, my dear mother, a tear falls from my
eyes; it is for you, I am going to sleep in the tran
quillity of innocence/

Arraying herself for the execution as though she
were going to meet her lover, Lucile Desmoulins went
down to the prison gates where the executioner s
tumbrel was awaiting her. The white veil thrown over
her hair, as on her bridal day in Saint Sulpice, fluttered
and floated in the spring breeze. In the death cart
Lucile had a last encounter with the former Public
Prosecutor for the Commune, Chaumette, and Madame
H6bert, who, like her, were riding to the guillotine.

220

ELISABETH LEBAS

How many were there who perished, broken in
the struggle, unmentioned of history insig
nificant women who helped to build the gigantic
edifice of the Revolution! Mothers, daughters, friends,
the number of those caught up by the whirlwind of
the great French Revolution must have been legion;
and for a little space, during the moments of supreme
trial, they rose to heights of true heroism.

During the revolutionary years there was a certain
Maurice Duplay, a carpenter by trade, who lived in
the Rue Saint Honor6, in a wooden building entered
from just inside the main gates. He had rented his
house from the Convent de la Conception, situated in
the same street. Greatly to the delight of the Jacobin
carpenter, owing to the confiscation of Church proper
ties during the Revolution all the real estate belonging
to the convent, including the house he occupied, was
taken over by the nation. In addition to the narrow
two-sjtoried building with windows overlooking the
street, the house had two wings flanking the carpenter s
yard, one of them being occupied by Robespierre
from July I7th, 1791, until his death just three years
later. He occupied a single room, very simply fur
nished, and always kept in perfect order.

Owing to his enterprise and an^expanding business
Duplay had been comparatively prosperous for some

223

NINE WOMEN

years before the Revolution broke out. Under a shed
in the yard his men were always hard at work making
substantial cupboards, stools, and beds like catafalques.
After 1789 orders for the solid, carved furniture
required for palaces and opulent mansions declined
considerably, but in their stead Duplay obtained
contracts from revolutionary institutions ; the hammer
tapped, the saw screamed, the plane sang, the shavings
flew as merrily as before, and the carpenter s yard was
never free from the smell of varnish and paint. Madame
Duplay was a good-hearted woman and an energetic
and hospitable housewife, who fully shared her hus
band s dreams of seeing his children established as
petty bourgeoisie whose lives would be secure from
want.

The youngest of the Duplay children, their only son
Jacques, whom Robespierre nicknamed our little
patriot/ had a remarkably reflective and questioning
mind. He received political instruction from very good
teachers, and his Jacobin upbringing was not without
permanent influence, for to the end of his life Jacques
remained faithful to the tenets of Jacobinism. Of
the Duplays four daughters, one was married and
lived outside Paris, and the other three were all
grown up when the Revolution broke out. They also
received quite a good education for those times,
spending several years in a convent, as did most
girls born of well-to-do families. Their conventual
training did not make them priggish and arrogant;
although they had studied music, poetry, and the
finer handiworks they readily turned to cookery and

224.

ELISABETH LEBAS

laundering and had no falsely proud attitude to
housework. Eleonore, Elisabeth and Victoire were
all blessed with perfect health, strong, capable hands,
and firm and purposeful characters.

From 1 79 1 to 1 794 the eldest of the sisters, E16onore,
a self-contained and sensitive girl, was studying under
the famous artist Regnault, whose pupils during those
days were chiefly aristocratic young ladies seeking an
undegrading occupation remote from the revolutionary
reality. Madame Robespierre/ as they teasingly
called the Jacobin El6onore in joking allusion to a
quite imaginary relationship with Maximilian, had
nothing in common with them.

Elisabeth Duplay, the carpenter s second daughter,
was handsome, of a sunny temperament, and alluringly
charming in her relations with others. Victoire,
homely and plain, was always her mother s right hand
in cooking and domestic duties. During the revolu
tionary years the Duplay girls were to be found not
only in the carpenter s yard but in the Jacobin Club,
and they participated in a number of revolutionary
incidents. In the little square courtyard where the
furniture the pride of the carpenter was dried,
and where the family and Robespierre s linen the
pride of the Duplay women basked in the sun, the
three sisters were frequently to be seen with skirts
tucked up, busy with pails and brooms. As Elisabeth
poured away the slops or played with the cats and dogs
she would hum a snatch of the Carmagnole or crack
jokes with her father s men, laughing aloud often
from sheer exuberance of spirits, rejoicing in herself

P 225

NINE WOMEN

and in everything around her. At that time she was
about twenty years of age.

The girls were regular visitors to the Jacobin Club,
where they sat patiently through the endless sessions,
listening attentively to the hour-long speeches, which
although not always particularly striking for their
substance or originality, were couched almost invari
ably in florid language and delivered with an exagger
ated emotionalism. It was in the gloomy hall of the
Jacobin Club that certain metaphors which have now
grown somewhat hackneyed, such as the torch of
the revolution and the hydra of tyranny were first
coined.

When, after the massacre on the Champ de Mars,
Duplay, an enthusiastic radical, brought the persecuted
Robespierre home to be their lodger, a considerable
change resulted in the life of the family. From the
master down to the journeyman, who were all on an
equal footing in the carpenter s house, everybody tried
to please the Incorruptible and to prove their attach
ment to him, as though seeking to express the ador
ation which the common people of Paris felt for Robes
pierre. Madame Duplay, a model housewife, asked
her relatives in the country to send in fowl and fruit
for him, and whenever Maximilian praised her dinner
or her preserves her homely peasant s face was wreathed
in happy smiles. When Robespierre was asleep or at
work the whole family passed by his door on tiptoe,
and if a session of the Convention or the Club was
protracted until dawn one or other of the women would
wait up to open the gate for him. The lonely and

226

ELISABETH LEBAS

distrustful Robespierre, who had not known family
life for years, naturally came to feel great attachment
for the carpenter s family who had made him so
completely one of themselves. And ere long he began
to bring his friends home to the hospitable house in
the Rue Saint Honor6. After their long conferences
in the wing where Robespierre s room was situated,
Saint Just, Couthon, Fouquier-Tinville and David
would often call at the main building where the
Duplays lived, to take part in improvised soirees. On
such occasions the girls would sing, sometimes
accompanied by Buonarotti, a descendant of Michael
Angelo, and the future friend of Baboeuf ; Saint Just
recited, Madame Duplay bustled around with refresh
ments, Maurice Duplay would get a word in here and
there with the latest gossip of the town crowds or
the jokes of the Palais Royal, and customarily the
party did not break up till dawn. Sometimes the
evenings were devoted to readings of the classics, and
then Robespierre would declaim passages from Cor-
neille or Racine by the firelight.

One day in September, 1792, Philippe Lebas, a
twenty-seven-year-old member of the Convention,
called to see Robespierre, and thenceforth he and his
great shaggy dog were daily visitors. Whenever he
dropped in at the Duplays he would tease Elisabeth,
discuss painting with Eleonore, play the violin, strum
on the harpsichord, and help Madame Duplay with
her domestic tasks or the favourite Jacques with his
studies. The joyous, healthy Elisabeth won his heart
from the first day of their acquaintance. The rather dry,

227

NINE WOMEN

always sternly logical Elonore, who was in love with
Robespierre, inspired Lebas with a feeling of respect
rather than sympathy.

Philippe worshipped Robespierre, whom he regarded
as the creative genius of the Revolution; and Robes
pierre responded with a genuine affection for Lebas,
prizing his honesty, steadfastness, mental courage and
sincerity qualities which were becoming all too rare.

Maximilian always showed a protective tenderness
and attention to Elisabeth; although engrossed in his
own affairs he was the first to observe that she and
Philippe had fallen in love with each other. He stopped
her in the narrow passage of the house one day and
told her what he had noticed, embarrassing the girl
by his significant praise of Philippe, for she knew that
Maximilian was severe in his judgment of character.

At first the love of Philippe and Elisabeth pursued a
normal course, although it was touchingly simple and
beautiful a romance of anxieties, doubts and un-
speaking smiles, of glances, sighs and tears.

One day Elisabeth was sitting in the -Convention
with Charlotte, Robespierre s sister, in the first row
behind the barrier separating the public from the
deputies. She was wearing one of her finest gowns,
a grey one with tiny rosettes, and a little shawl around
her shoulders. As he glanced across at her on his way
to vote Philippe thought how beautiful she was, but
in her confusion Elisabeth believed that the young
deputy was laughing at her. Nevertheless it was
strange that Lebas should ask for the ring from her
finger drumming idly on the bench, and instead of

228

ELISABETH LEBAS

returning it should put it into his pocket, to go out
smiling uncertainly. Completely bewildered and dis
traught by this mysterious behaviour, Elisabeth went
home and wept all night, and to the perplexity of her
friends began to grow sad and pale. The poor girl
suffered terribly, for she could not understand Philippe s
conduct, and presumed that he had observed her feeling
for him and was trifling with her. And besides, the
loss of the ring, a present from her parents, might lead
to questions and detection. For a time which to the
girl seemed an eternity nothing further happened, for
Philippe had fallen ill and could not call at the carpen
ter s house. At last his dog came running up the wooden
stairs wagging his tail furiously, and after him strode
Philippe, joyous and smiling as always. Elisabeth
besought him to return the ring; and he, no less agi
tated than she, could no longer keep silent and con
fessed that he loved her.

The carpenter and his wife considered it a great
honour to have Robespierre s friend for a son-in-law,
and the formalities attendant on the marriage were
quickly settled. The contract was signed on August
1 6th, 1793.

The idyllic love of Philippe and Elisabeth was one
of the very few romances recorded during the two
revolutionary years immediately preceding Thermidor.
During these latter years there were not wanting
signs of that degeneration in morals which reached
its extreme forms during the period of the Directory.
Love was regarded simply and coarsely; marriages were
noteworthy for their impermanence, and divorces

229

NINE WOMEN

followed one after another. The men and women of
the time did not burden or complicate their emotions
with questionings and doubts ; they surrendered them
selves to their passions hastily and without reflection.

The married life of Philippe and Elisabeth was
remarkable for its tranquil happiness. For a brief
period it was the consummation of that ingenuous
Utopia of petty bourgeois happiness which the Jacobin
dictatorship of the revolutionary burghers promised
to the masses.

As before, Elisabeth still occupied herself with
housework and sewing in her own little apartment,
which had been simply and cosily furnished by her
mother; as before when her housework was done she
would go with her husband to the Convention, the
Club, or to her parents. The son which Elisabeth bore
was welcomed with demonstrative rapture by Philippe
and the old Duplays, and even the unbending Robes
pierre smiled as he watched the clean and chubby
infant sprawling in its cradle. Nevertheless, as the
months passed Philippe grew more and more pensive
and abstracted. During the spring of 1794, on his
f-eturn late at night from the Convention he would
sit without speaking, mechanically stroking his dog
Schillichem s gleaming coat, or would alarm Elisabeth
by dropping vague hints about the possibility of a
catastrophe. Her alarms were dispelled only in her
parents house, where reigned an untroubled peace.

The old carpenter, who was completing a large and
profitable order for the Committee of Public Safety,
spent the whole day surrounded by assistants, planing,

230

ELISABETH LEBAS

sawing, painting and proudly displaying his semi-cir
cular benches, his tables and chairs: articles which
he considered of paramount importance in the everyday
life of the people. His appointment as juror of the
Revolutionary Tribunal also conduced to the carpen
ter s contented mood. Of an evening, after he had
washed and had combed his scanty locks, citizen
Duplay would go off to the Jacobin Club, to argue,
shout and listen to the debates.

The summer of 1 794 was unusually sultry and rainless.
In the evenings Elisabeth would stroll in the Champs
Elysees with her sister Eleonore behind the quietly
talking Lebas and Robespierre. At the end of the
eighteenth century the Champs Elysees were not the
tidy, cultivated gardens they are to-day, but were
merely fields overgrown with bushes and scarred with
gullies and holes.

Lebas had infected Elisabeth with his own inflexible
fanaticism, and she was so confident that Robespierre
and Philippe were always right that the Terror, and
the rumble of the death-cart which daily passed along
Rue Saint Honore, could not disturb her happiness.
She regarded the guillotine as an unfortunate necessity,
a means of salvation, whilst the Duplays noted the
number of executions with a dull tranquillity.

A little before Thermidor, Duplay, Lebas and
Robespierre were in the country. They sat down under
a densely foliaged tree to picnic to the accompaniment
of laughter and gaiety. Linked closely arm in arm
Eleonore and Maximilian went off into the forest, and
attempting to conceal their happy pride the elder

231

NINE WOMEN

Duplays exchanged eloquent glances. Although no
one had expressed the hope aloud, all were looking
forward to an early marriage between Elfonore and
Robespierre. But this visit to the country provided
only a brief respite amid anxious days. Philippe
returned home later and later, and talked more and more
frequently to Elisabeth of how she was to live when he
was gone. He answered her anxious questions with
jests, but to Maximilian he did not conceal his anxiety.
Lebas did not trust the Convention, he had a pre
monition of the conspiracy being hatched by the
Thermidorians, and insistently urged timely and
resolute measures. Like the other Robespierrists he
realized that any threat to the Jacobin dictatorship
involved a mortal danger to the Revolution. Philippe s
direct and practical character imposed a necessity for
action, and in face of Robespierre s vacillation and
procrastination he was plunged into despondency and
troubled with presentiments of defeat.

As he marched in the procession during the Feast
of the Supreme Being some weeks before Thermidor,
Lebas caught the sound of laughter, jeers and smother
ed threats among the ranks of the former Dantonists,
the surviving Girondists and even the * Marsh, which
hitherto had been neutral and silent. Returning home
filled with foreboding, he told Elisabeth with dreary
certainty in his voice that the end of the Revolution
was at hand if Robespierre continued in his irresolution.
During these tormenting days of the sultry, heavily
ominous summer, Elisabeth bravely concealed her own
fears from Philippe. Their outward life continued

232

ELISABETH LEBAS

unchanged, and she tried to find relief in making plans
for the future.

The morning of the Ninth of Thermidor arrived,
and Lebas went expectantly to the Convention.
Robespierre, now ready for decisive action, had assured
him that he would once more swing the deputies over
to his side with the speech he had prepared, and so
gain a majority. Elisabeth quickly learned of the
events in the Convention from women in the street,
who mercilessly told her details of the arrest of the
Robespierrists and prophesied that she would soon be
a widow. Shortly afterwards a guard unexpectedly
arrived at the house with Philippe under arrest. In
his presence they carried out a search and sealed up his
papers. In her memoirs of her husband s last hours at
home Elisabeth declares that among the documents
taken by the guard were some which greatly com
promised the Dantonists. But these would appear to
have disappeared completely from knowledge. When
the process of sealing and packing the papers was
ended Philippe was escorted to the prison of La Force.
As he said farewell to his wife he expressed the hope
of a speedy liberation, for he was counting on the
intervention of the Paris Commune and the Jacobins
of the faubourgs.

Two hours later Elisabeth, agitated and trembling,
hired a coach and drove to the prison to take Philippe
such necessary articles as a mattress, a folding bed, a
bundle of blankets, linen, and a few mementoes of
herself and her son. As she arrived before the poorly
guarded prison gates she saw the delegates of the

233

NINE WOMEN

Paris Commune,, which had decided to resist the
Thermidorians. The delegates had been sent by
Fleuriot, the mayor of Paris, to insist on the liberation
of the Robespierrists, and the prison authorities, who
were subject to the Commune, were complying with
the demand. Lebas was the last of the prisoners to
emerge. Unable to restrain a cry of pain and hope
Elisabeth threw herself into her husband s arms.
As he embraced her he hurriedly whispered words
which were still to sound in her ears fifty years after.
Teed little Philippe with your own milk/ teach him
to love his country/ tell him that his father died for
its sake. Lebas was as implacable as ever, but no
feeling of confidence in victory could be gained from
the undaunted Jacobin s words.

As he went to the Hotel de ville with the younger
Robespierre he repeated to his wife: Live for our
dear son, inspire him with noble sentiments ; that you
can do. Adieu, adieu. He disappeared inside the
building, but Elisabeth could not stir from the spot
where he had left her. She spent hours outside,
unable to tear her eyes away from the windows,
watching the silhouettes passing across their lighted
ground, hoping to see Philippe once more. Only as
night was falling did she return home, to find her little
son crying bitterly, for he had been deprived of his
mother s milk for many hours.

In the Hotel de mile Philippe and Robespierre s
brother found Maximilian, Couthon and Saint Just
also come straight from prison, and with them the
sobered Hanriot, military commander of Paris. Again

234

ELISABETH LEBAS

and again in the course of the evening Lebas rose
from his seat at the table where they were in conference,
and stood gazing out into the great square, where
strange doings were afoot. In the torchlight the
swiftly assembled divisions of the faubourgs, still
faithful to the Robespierrists, presented a fantastic
spectacle. Their arms were imposingly arrayed in long
rows of orderly piles. Across the threatening, clouded
heaven lightning was flickering. A heavy summer
rain began to fall, hissingly extinguishing the Jacobins
camp fires. Lebas waited impatiently for Robespierre
to act, noting uneasily how much time had already
been lost. The armed forces of Paris under General
Hanriot s command were at Robespierre s disposition,
and the artillery could have dispersed the Convention
without difficulty, for during those first few hours the
Thermidorians were without military strength. Why
did Maximilian not take steps immediately to declare
the Convention dissolved? Why had he not given
orders for Tallien, Barras and the other conspirators
to be arrested? Why did the new revolutionary govern
ment tarry with the announcement of its formation?
Lebas could not know that maybe Robespierre was
waiting for the faubourgs themselves to rise and so
decide his fate and the fate of the Revolution, that
maybe he was expecting the vacillating majority in
the Convention to rally to his side. And maybe
Robespierre was taking into consideration not Paris
alone but the whole of France, which could not easily
be raised against the constitutional democratic author
ity, against the embodiment of the sovereign will of

235

NINE WOMEN

the State: the Convention. And then there was the
army might it not come to the aid of the Convention,
might it not remain with the organizer of victory,
Carnot; might it not wipe Hanriot s artillery off the
face of the earth? And when Hanriot s own soldiers
wavered, and when the Jacobin volunteers dispersed
to their homes after nightfall, was it not because in
their eyes Robespierre was a rebel calling for a fresh
insurrection against lawful authority? There had
been so many revolts and overthrows of authority,
and meantime the cost of living, unemployment and
hunger were increasingly oppressing the poorer classes.
The enthusiasm of the faubourgs could not flame up
as in former days like a fiery torch to light the historical
road of the people. Robespierre could not bring
himself to a decision to pull once more on the bridle-
rein and set tired Paris rearing. Lebas clenched his
fists impotently. Outside, the rain was falling in
torrents. Hanriot gave orders for his troops to be
mustered, but the square before the Hotel de mile
remained almost empty. Then the white-clad volun
teers of Barras took the offensive. Their patrols
ransacked the city, everywhere proclaiming Robes
pierre outside the law. Two divisions marched on the
Commune Council, where they met with an unexpected
success. The Hotel de mile was unguarded, and
inside in the brilliantly lighted halls the delegates of
the faubourgs and the orators of the municipality were
still exchanging speeches of greeting, Robespierre
and his handful of friends were still making prepara
tions to organize a rising. Too late. The forces of the

236

ELISABETH LEBAS

Convention burst into the Hotel de ville^ breaking
down the door of the low-ceilinged hall where the
Jacobin leaders were in conference; and the sound of
the shot with which Philippe Lebas ended his life was
muffled by the dull thud of the wounded Robespierre s
falling body, the crash of overturning tables, the tramp
ling of feet, the curses of the Jacobins and the exultant
shouts of the Thermidorians. The younger Robes
pierre threw himself out of the window and was
shattered on the stone flags of the square.

When, exhausted with waiting for the upshot of
that endless night, Elisabeth at last heard the tragic
news that the Robespierrists were defeated, she
swooned, and for two days she lay unconscious.
Happily for her she did not hear the familiar rumble of
the executioner s tumbrel carrying Robespierre and
his associates past Duplay s house. She did not see the
bestialized, howling mob that only yesterday had
worshipped the Incorruptible, as to-day it held up
the death-cart outside the carpenter s house whilst
some hooligan ragamuffin anointed the closed window
shutters and gate of the dwelling with blood. Lying
motionless, with shattered jaw and eyes closed,
Robespierre showed no sign of reaction to their jeers.
But El&more, Maximilian s faithful friend, who
witnessed the scene through a chink in the shutter,
was not spared even this torture.

When slowly she recovered Elisabeth made a
fruitless search for Philippe s grave. Schillichem had
disappeared together with his master; for two days he
lay outstretched on the humble mound where Lebas

237

NINE WOMEN

was buried, and returned only on Thermidor the
Twelfth, whining mournfully and adding his grief to
the sufferings of his dear master s wife.

Shortly after Thermidor agents of the Committee
for Public Safety arrived at Elisabeth s apartments and
carried her with her six-weeks-old baby to the Talarue
prison, where she was joined by Eleonore. The sisters
were quartered in a stifling garret under the very
roof of an ordinary dwelling house which had been
hurriedly converted into a place of detention. Every
evening Elisabeth washed out the rags that served
for the baby s napkins, and Eleonore laid them under
her own mattress to dry them.

The carpenter Maurice Duplay, his wife, and his son
were all arrested immediately after Robespierre s fall.
Madame Duplay, thinking the guillotine awaited her,
hanged herself on Thermidor the Tenth,

When, eight months later, Elisabeth emerged
from prison, she had neither home nor money. She
had to provide for herself and her baby by undertaking
heavy physical labour, washing linen in the river.
Persecuted and solitary, she gloried in the name she
bore, refused to give any information to the authorities,
and not once during the dreary years of the Thermi-
dorian reaction did a word of regret or complaint
escape her.

That was far from being the case with Charlotte
Robespierre. She also was arrested after Thermidor,
but she hastily disavowed her brothers, so ensuring
herself a pension of six thousand francs from the
Directory. Madame Carreau, as Charlotte Robes-

238

ELISABETH LEBAS

pierre thenceforth called herself, was clever enough,
despite frequent changes of government, to retain her
pension until the day of her death. In her memoirs
and her last testament she vainly sought to explain
away her contemptible conduct, maintaining that she
had not abjured her brothers. But despite several
attempts, the Thermidorians failed to corrupt Elisa
beth Lebas. In her memoirs she told of the methods
she had to adopt in order to repel their insistent
demands. On one occasion, afraid that they might
get her to abjure Philippe Lebas by a trick, Elisabeth,
being without pen and ink, cut her hand, and with a pin
dipped in her own blood wrote that she would accept no
assistance whatever from her husband s executioners.

Later Elisabeth was married a second time, to
Philippe s brother, who died in 1829. Lebas s widow
lived on till 1859. Some time before her death she wrote :
4 1 love liberty; the blood that flows in my veins now, at
the age of seventy, is the blood of a republican woman/

Philippe and Elisabeth s son became a talented
scientist who devoted himself to his profession with
the same ardour and fidelity that his father had given
to the Revolution. By a strange caprice of history,
during the years of the Restoration Professor Philippe
Lebas, the son of the member of the Convention,
was for some time a tutor to a certain young Frenchman
residing abroad. Apparently this young man was not
greatly influenced by Lebas s opinions, for no Jacobin
ever came of him.

The pupil of Philippe Lebas was none other than
Louis, the future Napoleon the Third.

239

MADAME TALLIEN

THE two muscular chairmen carefully set down the
gilded Sedan chair at the foot of the marble
staircase. The attendant lackey hastened to draw
aside the purple curtains, then yielded place to an
aristocratic fop in white satin shoes and elegant
peruke, who assisted the Marquise de Fontenay to
alight. In royal Versailles the fte had not yet begun,
but the park, laid out a I anglaise^ was already gay with
illuminations. The wind set the Chinese lanterns
swinging, and the sly, roguish shepherdesses, the
curly-wooled lambs and beribboned calves painted on
the silk and paper curtsyed and capered. Adjusting
her farthingale, the Marquise de Fontenay passed
into the dimly lit cloakroom in order to give the last
touches to her coiffure. The flowers stuck into the
lovely hair fluffed up over her brow, were still quite
fresh: their stalks had been inserted into slender
vases concealed among the curls.

At the moment of the Marquise de Fontenay s
arrival the Queen of France also was occupied with her
toilet in the boudoir of the Trianon place. Whilst
four hairdressers worked at the royal coiffure for the
sixth time in succession, Diana Polignac and Princess
Lamballe were vieing with each other in regaling Marie
Antoinette with trivial court tittle-tattle. The 3O2nd
lock on the nape of the queen s neck would obstinately

243

NINE WOMEN

persist in uncurling, and the sailing vessel perched
precariously on the fluffy coquet threatened to turn
turtle. The queen was tired of covering her face with a
paper mask, and the powder with which her hair was
liberally sprinkled clung to her face in a white mass.
In one corner of the boudoir Mademoiselle Bertin,
the queen s dressmaker, was bustling about, supervising
a dozen waiting-maids engaged in laying out a ball
dress of finest Chinese silk and Lyons velvet over the
flowered divan. When she had finished with the gown
Mademoiselle Bertin set to work to unpack two dozen
long cartons just arrived from Paris by courier. She
reverently drew out the handkerchiefs with em
broidered pastoral designs by Vosges lace-makers,
the azure-coloured stockings, the buckles for the
slippers, the bows for the corsage, setting aside those
articles which to-day found favour in Marie Antoin
ette s eyes.

The shrieks of merriment which the favourites
grimaces provoked impeded the hairdressers task,
but the queen could not bear to be bored, and insisted
upon continual amusement. The animated conversa
tion was unexpectedly interrupted by a lady in waiting.
Curtsying at every comma, she reported that all was
not well at the queen s farm; the yellow Swiss heifer,
the one that wore a rose-coloured bow and a little
china bell with a Watteau miniature painted on it, had
fallen ill and could not leave its stall. Afflicted by the
news, Marie Antoinette jumped up from her chair,
threw off her dressing gown, drove out the hairdressers
and called for her carriage. A youthful page on duty

244

MADAME TALLIEN

at the door ran for a chaise and a veterinary surgeon.
The sail of the vessel attached to her majesty s coiffure
spread despairingly in the evening breeze; the queen
departed for her dairy farm.

Some two hours later, escorted by the king, the
rouged and powdered Marie Antoinette was opening
a ball in the Mirror Hall of Versailles. Trembling
with agitation, enviously admiring the queen negli
gently playing with her fan, the debutante Marquise
de Fontenay made a deep curtsy. When their
majesties had passed, the Marquise de Fontenay
hurriedly straightened up and threw a proud, almost
derisive, yet grateful glance towards her noble consort.
The short satin breeches emphasized the Marquess s
gouty knees; his stomach was compressed by a
tightlaced corset, and paint in abundance failed to
conceal the shrivelled skin of his cheeks, which hung
over his Valenciennes lace collar like the chaps of a
decrepit old bulldog. As he talked he dribbled from
the corners of the mouth, over the powder down to his
chin; his eyes were like little dirty damp rags; yet
far from being content with his beautiful wife, the
Marquess de Fontenay was always seeking oppor
tunities for flirtation. For that matter the Marquise
made no claim to his fidelity, for she endured him only
as an unwelcome appendage to the title, armorial
bearings and illustrious family tree which he had
conferred on her.

Who is that brunette? She is a dainty little morsel/
remarked the dandy, scatterbrain and mediocre
Comte d Artois to his neighbour, a fair-skinned,

- NINE WOMEN

Sumptuous-breasted and goggle-eyed elderly dame
who looked as though she had stepped straight out of a
picture by Rubens. The amiable court gossip drew
her back-scratcher out of her corsage, scratched her
bare back, fixed her eyes on Fontenay, and replied
contemptuously: She s a parvenue, the daughter of the
Madrid banker Cabarrus and some Spanish woman.
Her father has recently bought her our poor, impover
ished Fontenay for a husband and there was a time
when the Marquess was anything but a fool/ the old
lady sighed dreamily. The girl has now been presented
at court such are the times we live in. Money it s
all a matter of money , your lordship.

Not until the following morning did the radiantly
happy Marquise de Fontenay return to Paris. Hardly
had she changed her attire when she hastened to her
own salon, where a number of distinguished visitors
were awaiting her. The Marquise was all agog to
impart the information that henceforth she was as accept
able at court as the supercilious Lauzun and de Rohan.

Th&resia de Fontenay s reception room was cleverly
arranged to provoke admiration for its mistress. On
the white harpsichord, music was negligently scattered
sentimental ballads and Spanish romances which the
Marquise herself played with feeling and delicacy.
On an easel stood a landscape a meadow with a herd
of cattle always in the elementary stage. Le Nouveau
Heloise, copiously annotated, lay open on the inviting
little divan. Among the great flower vases was a
forgotten embroidery depicting a lusty Cupid kissing
a blase Shepherdess.

246

MADAME TALLIEN

The banker Cabarrus delighted to boast of his
idolized daughter. She was as learned as the encyclo
paedists ; she inherited her beauty from her mother, an
illustrious Spanish woman; her practical mind she
owed to her father, an experienced financier and man of
affairs. At the age of sixteen Ther6sia, longing for a
title and the pleasures of court life (she had all she
wanted except these) had willingly become the wife
of the toothless, penniless old aristocrat. She had
participated in the family conferences to discuss the
advantages of such a match, and had hastened to give
the decision practical effect, for she regarded marriage
with de Fontenay as an indispensable step along the
road to glory and entrancing adventures. When she
became a Marquise, Th6rsia diligently studied the
situation at the court and among the nobility. The
story of Madame Maintenon, the mistress and after
wards the wife of Louis XIV, greatly appealed to the
cold, ambitious mind of the banker s daughter. But
Louis XVI was as soft as butter, and never paid any
attention to women. A corpulent glutton and a weak
but headstrong fool, he was only a continual butt for
ridicule, and with inward chagrin Th6r6sia realized
that she could never hope to win the laurels of a royal
favourite. The court did not justify her adventuristic
hopes, and she speedily grew tired of the endless
balls and petty flirtations, which but little flattered
her exacting egotism. Shortly before the Revolution
the Marquise de Fontenay, eager to be abreast of the
fashion of the moment, began to dabble in liberalism.
Of course, she did so not entirely from disinterested

247

NINE WOMEN

motives, for she was planning to secure for her father
an authoritative control over the country s catastrophic-
ally declining finances. During this period La Fayette
and the brothers Lameth, who were demanding a
constitution, were her frequent guests. The obscure
Swiss, Necker, had acquired influence before her very
eyes, and his daughter Madame de Stael, who was
by no means as beautiful as the daughter of M.
Cabarrus, was being extolled as the most talented and
intelligent woman in France, Here were examples
worthy of Theresia s emulation. But 1789 shattered
all her plans and hopes.

The revolution mortally frightened the Marquess de
Fontenay, and one night, unable longer to endure his
fears, he resolved to flee the country. Th&resia could
not restrain a merry laugh as she glanced at her
husband agitatedly ambling up and down their taste
fully furnished bed-chamber. His bloated, clammy lips
were trembling with his terror, and from between his
toothless gums came a strange sound like the shuffle of
slippers. As he huddled into his dressing gown and
tousled the scanty hair on his pate the old man drew
terrible pictures of the future, when the canaille
would plunder their estate, burn down the house and
hang its owners on the street lanterns. De Fontenay
regarded the couplets of the Carmagnole which he
heard in the streets as an augury of the fate which
awaited all aristocrats. But to Th6r6sia, the turbulent
France which had enabled men like Necker, Mirabeau
and Bailly to achieve power appeared far more inter
esting than emigration and her native Spain, where she

248

MADAME TALLIEN

would be faced with the prospect of living with her
insufferable old husband in the obscurity of exile.

Attired as a common person/ de Fontenay made
his way across the frontier like a miserable, timorous,
creeping mouse. Then Th6rsia made her first
attempt to enter the realm of politics. She adopted the
little-known name of her father, Cabarrus, and
renouncing her husband, declared that the old,
dissolute tyrant and aristocrat had abandoned her
and fled to the counter-revolutionaries. She stated her
own convictions in a petition which she read to the
National Assembly, wording it throughout in bom
bastic and artificial, albeit moderate phraseology.

Citizen Representatives/ Ther6sia Cabarrus ap
pealed: When morality is more than ever the subject
of your high deliberations ; when the parties which you
overcome turn you with new force to the fecund truth
that virtue is the life of republics, and that good
manners must maintain that which the people s
institutions have created, are we not justified in believ
ing that your attention will be directed with consider
able interest towards that section of the human
race which exercises such great influence? Woe
indeed to the women who, ignoring the destiny to
which they are called, would, in order to release them
selves from their own responsibilities, affect the
ambition of appropriating the responsibilities of men,
and - would thus lose the virtues of their own sex
without acquiring those of yours.

But would it not also be a misfortune if, deprived
in the name of nature of exercising those political

249

NINE WOMEN

rights whence are born strong decisions and social
combinations, women were given justification for
regarding themselves as strangers to that which should
ensure their support, and even to that which can
prepare them for their existence?

In a Republic all, of course, must be republicans,
and no being endowed with reason can exile himself
from the honourable employment of service to his
country without covering himself with shame. . . .
You assuredly will permit women to hope that they
may occupy a place in public instruction, for could
they reconcile themselves to the belief that they count
for nothing in the particular cares which you reserve
for infancy? Could they think that you will not entrust
them above all with the education of their younger
fellows who have had the misfortune to be bereft of
maternal instruction?

But that which I come to-day particularly to claim
in women s name and with the greatest of confidence
is the honourable prerogative of being called to the
sacred refuges of misfortune and suffering, in order
there to lavish their care and their sweetest consolation.
... I think that in such a school, by developing and
understanding their early sentiments, and by the
practice of good deeds, girls who will shortly become
wives can be instructed in all the details of the duties
which they will ere long have to fulfil towards their
infants, their husbands, their parents. . . . Command,
citizen representatives, our hearts conjure you, that
before taking husbands all young girls must spend a
certain period in refuges for the poor and suffering, in

250

MADAME TALLIEN

order to succour the unfortunate, and under the aegis
of a regime organized by you to exercise those virtues
which society has the right to expect from them.

* Citizen representatives, she who is now paying you
the homage of her thoughts, her most intimate senti
ments, is young twenty years of age ; she is a mother,
she is no longer a wife. All her ambition, all her happi
ness would be to be among the first to devote themselves
to these gentle, these enravishing functions. Deign to
accept with interest this burning vow, and, through
you, may it become the vow of all France/

The Convention listened unmoved to this address.
Paris was accustomed by now to such declarations and
was not interested in the former marquise. Her
lack of success frightened off the pampered and self-
confident adventuress, who was blessed with a plentiful
reserve of impudence but was wanting in courage.
Good patriots instinctively distrusted her. Her friend
La Fayette passed shamefully off the historic scene;
Mirabeau died, but his treacherous plans came to
light; a furious campaign developed against the
monarchists, Thersia Cabarrus began to realize
that the Revolution was not after all an alluring adven
ture holding out great prospects to feminine vanity.
The Marquess de Fontenay and her father the Count
Cabarrus were far away, her secret store of money and
jewels was coming to an end. The revolutionary
armies were fighting on the frontiers of France, so
flight was dangerous. The fearful Thrsia was now
entirely possessed by one tormenting thought: how
to escape ; how at all costs to save herself.

251

NINE WOMEN

In 1794 she went to Bordeaux, in the hope that she
would be able to make her way to the Spanish frontier,
and so with her father s aid to flee from France. But
the revolution made mock of her hopes.

Desiring to divert the suspicions that her presence in
Bordeaux naturally aroused, the former marquise sought
to take part in the social life of the town. On reflection
she decided that the teaching profession would be the
safest and most innocent for her. To one of the
fraternal societies she gave a lecture in which ^she
proposed the introduction of compulsory education.
She had studied the history of Sparta and Athens, and
she very interestingly and effectively cited historical
examples to illustrate the value of physical exercise in
schools. Her lecture had a well-merited success. This
banker s daughter was without question a capable
woman, and her father was fully justified in being
unconcerned about her and considering that she would
be able to look after herself even under the rule of
the canaille.

Although the patriots of Bordeaux held aloof from
the former aristocrat, they paid tribute to her majestic
beauty. On days of revolutionary festivals it was
citizeness Cabarrus who was invited to represent the
allegorical Liberty. The Commissary of the Conven
tion, Tallien, could not remove his eyes from the
former marquise, as, with her arms flung out pathetically,
her raven hair unbound and falling over her white
gown, she walked gravely along at the head of the
revolutionary holiday crowd. Th6rsia observed and
fully appraised his infatuation. She was quite indiffer-

252

MADAME TALLIEN

ent to Tallien, but she needed his help, for as the
trusted representative of the Convention he was all-
powerful in Bordeaux. The Marquise de Fontenay,
who had cut herself off from her own emigre and
counter-revolutionary friends, who had vainly tried
to ingratiate and amuse herself with the revolution,
and who was too cowardly to become its open enemy,
rejoiced in her unexpected devotee as affording a
means of salvation, a chance of being free from the
fear of a knock on her door at the night hour customary
for arrests during the Terror.

Citizeness Cabarrus took every opportunity of
stressing her friendship with Tallien, and within a
month she had regained all her old self-confidence.
Fortune favoured her; the Commissary of the Conven
tion was neither a very penetrating judge of character
nor so devoted to the revolution as to be redeemed from
great and petty weaknesses. Tallien was a man easily
swayed by outside influences, cowardly, vengeful,
always striving to live well but never succeeding,
an extraordinarily ambitious and unreflecting careerist
whom chance had made an official of the Revolution.
Uncontrolled power in the provinces had completely
demoralized him. Thersia Cabarrus understood men
and knew how to exploit their failings. Tallien became
completely subject to her wishes, and she began
skilfully to meddle in her friend s affairs, chiefly in
order to intercede on behalf of various suspect and
imprisoned acquaintances. After some time Paris
became aware of the equivocal happenings taking
place in Bordeaux. In an attempt to lull suspicions

NINE WOMEN

Tallien worked up an artificial frenzy of revolutionary
fervour, intensifying the Terror in the hope that by the
summary execution of suspects he would demonstrate
his own loyalty to the Convention. But it was difficult
to pull wool over the eyes of Robespierre and the
Committee for Public Safety. Tallien was recalled
to the capital, and when Thr6sia followed him to the
city she was arrested, for the Incorruptible ascribed
Tallien s unpardonable conduct mainly to the influence
of this former marquise.

In the La Force prison Ther6sia Cabarrus was
allotted a solitary cell bare of all furniture except a
straw mattress, through which the dry stalks pene
trated and scratched her cruelly. She was subjected
to a very severe regime, and none of her artifices,
dissimulation, and attempts at bribery had any effect
on her gaolers. She raged and stormed up and down
the gloomy cell, overwhelming Tallien with epithets
hardly complimentary to him. Oh, if only she could
obtain an interview with him and exploit her power
over him! Her enforced inactivity led the young
Spanish woman to dwell on her past life. Really, why
was everyone so antagonistic to her, she wondered.
She was the daughter of a financier and the wife of a
marquess, truly, but she had not seriously tried to play
any part in politics. Her guiding principle had always
been to love and to enjoy herself, to be a powerful
empress, but not a rival of men. And surely her
beauty had entitled her to that role ever since her
childhood? In Bordeaux through Tallien s instru
mentality she had saved from the scaffold many who

MADAME TALLIEN

had once graced her salon, who had pleasantly titillated
her emotions with flattery and adulation, who had
danced with her at the balls in Versailles, who on
winter mornings had sent her baskets of cornflowers,
king-cups and camomiles. How was she to blame if
these people were now spies in the pay of Pitt and
were enemies of the revolution? Your talents,
madame, are transplendent, to judge by what I see;
but your goodness is only equalled by your personal
charms, the Marquess de Paroy had once told her,
and citizeness Cabarrus considered that such a
compliment had thoroughly earned its author the right
to be saved from the guillotine. Th&resia delighted in
finery and dancing, in everything that enhanced her
beauty and rendered it irresistible. And since the
Revolution had deprived her of her fortune, what
harm was done if Tallien had recompensed her some
what for her losses and yielded to his charmer s
caprices, even though in doing so he had compromised
himself and the Convention?

After a week her prison regime was modified, and
she was accorded permission to walk in the tiny,
paved prison-yard. Tallien had not forgotten his
wife/ as he now began to call Th6r6sia, and was
working for her release. His mother rented a room for
him in a house opposite the prison, and from the
window the Commissary of the Convention was able
to see the prisoner and to communicate with her by
signs. He even managed to organize an irregular
exchange of correspondence with her.

Prisoners were not allowed to grow grey in La Force.

255

NINE WOMEN

The exterminating power of the guillotine was
increasing from day to day. The executioner Sanson
could hardly keep up with his morning s task, and was
always complaining that he had no time for dinner and
never saw his children at all, as he had to leave his
home early in the morning and returned only at nightfall.
Theresia realized that there must be no delay, that
every new morn brought her nearer to death; she
tried to imbue Tallien with courage, and regarding
Robespierre as the cause of her arrest, urged that her
lover should settle accounts with him.

During those summer days of 1794 there were
numberless little groups of discontented members
expectantly whispering among themselves in the build
ing of the Convention. The gaunt cynic, fanatical
atheist and experienced slanderer Vadier, the head of
the Committee for Public Safety, was quietly spreading
compromising stories of the mysticism of the Incor
ruptible, who, he declared, was seeking to revive
religion with the aid of the ignorant, half-witted beldam,
the prophetess Catherine Thos the mother of
God, as her devotees called her. The distrustful
Vadier remembered Robespierre s many petty affronts,
and for some time past he had organized a system of
espionage over Robespierre s movements, not, however,
realizing that he in his turn was being watched.
Fearful for the safety of their own heads, the corrupt
rats, Barras and Freron, were dreaming of overthrowing
the irreproachable triumvirate, Robespierre, Couthon
and Saint Just. The Incorruptible himself was
.pursuing an ambiguous course: instead of resolutely

256

MADAME TALLIEN

attacking the thieving intriguers and dangerous
conspirators and rewarding their services with the
scaffold, as certain of the Robespierrists desired, Maxi
milian procrastinated and confined himself merely to
vague innuendoes which alarmed all the deputies,
without definitely stating which of them he was
accusing. The mood of the country and even of
Paris did not augur any considerable support to the
consequential petty bourgeois revolutionaries. De
prived of their leaders, who had been executed in
the spring of 1794, the most extreme elements
of the urban population were exasperated with the
Robespierrists; dissatisfied with the taxes and other
burdens, the great bourgeoisie were still mourning
the defeat of the Girondins ; in the sections of the Paris
Commune a dangerous indifference and distrust were
developing. The rogue, spendthrift and political
intriguer Barras, who had grown rich on the Revolution,
was one of the first to attempt with any success to
wage a secret agitation for the overthrow of the tyrant
Robespierre among the members of the Marsh,
who were the deciding but dormant factor in the
Convention. He showed keen insight in choosing his
allies among the deputies, picking out Tallien among
the first. During those early days of Thermidor the
former Commissary was a sorry spectacle. Betwixt
love and fear he was tossed from one mood to another,
sick with indecision. He hated Robespierre with a
hate all the stronger because he was afraid of him.
Barras quickly learnt of the relationships between
Tallien and Thr6sia Cabarrus, and realized all the

R 257

NINE WOMEN

possibilities that this coward almost demented with
love presented as a conspirator. Desiring to force
Tallien into action, Barras convinced him that
Ther6sia would undoubtedly be executed by the tenth
or twelfth of Thermidor at the latest. Then over a
glass of wine he initiated him into the plan for over
throwing Robespierre, assuring him that the conspira
tors were supported by a majority of the Convention.
On the seventh of Thermidor Tallien received a
letter from Theresia which finally cut the thread of
his vacillation:

The administrator of the police has just left; he
came to inform me that to-morrow I am to go to the
Tribunal, in other words to go to the scaffold. That
has little resemblance to the dream I had last night:
Robespierre no longer existed, and the prisons were
opened . . . but owing to your notorious cowardice
there will soon be no one left in France capable of
making my dream come true.

Barras, Freron, Vadier, Collot d Herbois and
Tallien, the prime forces in the coming coup, looked
forward to the session of the Convention on Thermidor
the ninth as the decisive hour in their fates. On the
eve of the ninth Tallien succeeded in throwing a tiny
note into the prison courtyard in which Theresia was
exercising. It read: Be as prudent as, I shall be cour
ageous, but calm yourself/

On the morning of the ninth Tallien examined his
dagger with all the resolution of a suicide. He had
little belief in the possibility of success. According
to the plan finally adopted, during his speech in the

258

MADAME TALLIEN

Convention he was to draw the dagger from his belt
and threaten to stab Robespierre. To steel his courage
he thought of Theresia, only to shudder at the thought
that her ravishing head might soon be lying in Sanson s
dank basket. When he entered the Convention, Barras,
clean shaven and as elegantly attired as ever, gave
him an encouraging glance, although the arch-con
spirator himself could hardly control the trembling
of his knees. Only the gaunt Vadier, wandering
apparently without aim among the deputies benches,
revealed no sign of agitation.

The tragedy then played to its close in the Con
vention was deeper than the Thermidorians themselves
had dared to hope for: the Marsh quaked, and the
* Incorruptible was overwhelmed beneath it. The
country, even Paris itself, turned traitor to the revolu
tion, Barras afterwards declared that Tallien was like
a god as, shaking his newly purchased dagger far
more dramatically than during his private rehearsal,
he roared: death to the tyrant!

Thrsia Cabarrus passed out through the gates of
La Force on Thermidor the tenth, at the hour of
Robespierre s execution. At the prison gates she found
the infatuated Tallien, the hero of the day, waiting to
welcome the former Marquise de Fontenay; with him
were Barras and a crowd of the new regime s adherents
freshly emerged from underground. Enchanted with
Th6r6sia, the amiable Thermidorians vied with one
another in declaring that the country owed its libera
tion to her, for was it not she who had galvanized
Tallien into activity? Some worldly-wise humorist

259

NINE WOMEN

called the beauty Our Lady of Thermidor, and the
nickname became young Madame Tallien s inseparable
title. (On leaving prison she had hastened to accept
Tallien s proposal of marriage.)

The Golden Age had now arrived in Th&r&ia s
life. The Directory, or rather the Director, and the
gallant devotees of Madame Tallien crowned her
empress of beauty, elegance, and fashion. Every
evening the row of carettes, cabriolets and chaises
before her cottage, as she described her stylish
detached house in Chaillot, stretched as far as the fields
of the Champs Elysees. The gilded youth, wealthy
and frivolous women thirsting, like Theresia, for gaiety
after the heavy fast of the Revolution, business men,
politicians, administrators, all sought to obtain invita
tions to Th^resia s salon the women in order to
display their toilets, to flirt, and dance; the men to
advance their interests and to have a word with the
influential persons. Naturally Madame Tallien was
peerless ; no one could compare with her in the affecta
tion, originality and daring of her toilet. Sometimes
she would appear attired like a David picture, in the
guise of Beautiful Helen. A light, translucent
robe, caught by two jewels at the shoulders, fell negli
gently down to her feet, which were shod in golden
Greek sandals. On one side the robe was slashed from
the hip to the ankle, affording the foppish youths in
tousled a la victime perukes, with extravagant bows
at their necks and whistling switches in their hands
an opportunity to stare avidly at Th6r6sia s slender,
lissom leg. Or she would arrive at a ball attired as a

260

MADAME TALLIEN

Bacchante. In her blonde peruke (it was she who
introduced the fashion of coloured perukes) marvel
lous velvet flowers blossomed; the gown she wore was
so diaphanous that her body could be distinguished
beneath it, and one breast was left bare, as though by
accident. The Parisians could never keep pace with
their queen ; even the actress Lange, the viscountess
Beauharnais, and the beautiful Recamier, had to
acknowledge her supremacy in this perpetual extrava
ganza of taste and invention.

During the decline of the Directory it became as
fashionable to organize political conspiracies in the
salons as to give a vaudeville show or a diverting
masquerade. Theresia must needs take a hand in this
new amusement. She attached herself to a group of
hysterical society women, flashily dressed bourgeois
youngsters and doddering old fogies for whom life
had stood still since the reign of Louis XV. This
coterie declared itself in favour of establishing the king
of Spain on the throne of France, and Madame Tallien
calculated that if their futile plan were realized her
father Count Cabarrus could obtain a portfolio as
king s minister. In Vendemiaire rumours of nocturnal
gatherings of monarchist conspirators spread among
the Paris salons, and the name of Tallien s wife was
connected with the meetings. Alarmed by the menaces
of the Directory, Theresia hastened to withdraw, for
the alluring intrigue threatened to develop into a
dangerous scandal. Thenceforth Madame Tallien ab
jured all her pretensions to political importance and was
entirely content with her undivided sway in the salons.

261

NINE WOMEN

During the twelve months following the Ninth of
Thermidor Tallien s prestige declined considerably;
his excessively revolutionary past, his execution of
certain aristocrats who had influential relatives in
Paris, and his attempt with Fr&ron, through their
journals L Ami des Citoyens and UOrateur du Peup!e y
to turn the pages of history back to the Revolution,
rendered him especially suspect. The movement of
reaction carried France to the right, preparing the way
for the Empire and the restoration of the Bourbons.
Tallien had served his purpose and was no longer
necessary. In his endeavours to maintain himself
in power, Barras willingly sacrificed his former friend.
The Thermidorians Frron, Vadier and Tallien proved
to be too revolutionary for the new epoch which they
had rendered possible, and the best of them, such as
Collot d Herbois, cursing their insanity and their
treachery to the Revolution on the Ninth of Thermidor,
attempted to organize a revolt, and ended by being
sent to penal servitude at the dry guillotine of
Cayenne. Observing that Tallien was losing his
political influence and authority, Th^resia did not
hesitate to act accordingly and to leave him, taking
their little daughter, Thermidor, with her. She now
lived under the protection of the elegant Barras in the
house that had been presented to her after Thermidor.
Her days sped past as before in merry-making, amours,
and the absorbing creation of ever new toilets and
finery. But the calculating Barras did not feel disposed
to maintain this excessively spendthrift concubine for
long; he contentedly handed her on to Ouvrard, one of

262

MADAME TALLIEN

the open speculators and monopolists who had grown
fat on the hunger of the revolutionary years.

After the ugly old Marquess de Fontenay, the boring
egotist Tallien, and the world-weary cynic Barras, the
short-legged and vain-glorious Ouvrard now danced
attendance on Theresia. Her cottage was exchanged
for a palace with a crowd of servants, with English
horses and brand-new carettes in the stables. During
five years Thrsia bore five children to Ouvrard,
and the prudent banker sent each infant immediately
into the country to be reared by a reliable foster-
mother. Occasionally Madame Tallien would drive
to the distant village to pinch the rosy cheeks of the
little Talliens (the children were known by their
mother s legal name). From 1795 onwards Theresia
could include General Bonaparte and his wife among
her friends. There was the merest tinge of patronage
in her affection for Josephine, who was less beautiful
than she, but was just as indolent and fond of amuse
ment. Soon after Thermidor Thr6sia had enthusi
astically assisted Barras, of whom she was a little
jealous, to unite the impoverished countess with the
talented Corsican general. During Bonaparte s
Egyptian campaign, on which he was accompanied
by the deposed Tallien, Josephine was a frequent
guest at Th6rsia s house. The friends spent long
hours on comfortable couches, studying themselves in
mirrors, exclaiming at the appearance of each new tiny
furrow. Th&rsia was now becoming satiated with a
too extravagant and empty life, whereas the tempera
mental Josephine, who was living on a minor scale

263

NINE WOMEN

and amusing herself with incautious and petty sensual
intrigues, yearned for luxury. Occasionally Th&resia
would remind Josephine of her own first meeting with
Napoleon. Shortly after the siege of Toulon an un
known officer had called on her. Such visitors were so
common in Madame Tallien s reception room that
she hardly troubled to take stock of this latest arrival.
Describing his need and his services, and showing
his coat with the sleeve torn off at the elbow, the
supplicant had said: Citizen Tallien is all-powerful,
cannot he assist the hero of Toulon to obtain a piece of
cloth at a fixed price? Madame Tallien had promised
to intercede with her husband, and obtained the cloth
for Napoleon a few days later. After this incident
Bonaparte had become a regular visitor to her salon.

By the end of the nineties the beautiful Tallien,
always careful of her appearance, and observing a
single grey hair among the dark mass, like a white
moonbeam falling across a black carpet, was beginning
to consider how she could place the rest of her life
on a financially stable basis by marrying a man as
solid of fortune as her own father, so that she could
retire to an estate. She did not regard the banker
Ouvrard as wholly suitable for her purpose. But only
in 1805 &d s ke achieve her design by wedding the
Count de Caraman, whom Napoleon afterwards raised
to the rank of Prince de Chimay. Bonaparte sent
Ther6sia his congratulations on her marriage, and
Josephine, who had recently been crowned empress,
even honoured her with a visit. But the Princess de
Chimay never received an invitation to the imperial

264

MADAME TALLIEN

palace. Even under another name the former wife of
Tallien and friend of Barras was not a desirable person
to be seen in attendance on the empress. This circum
stance caused Our Lady of Thermidor continual
mortification, and she found consolation only after the
restoration of the Bourbons, who were more favourably
disposed towards her.

My life has been an astonishing romance, 7 remarked
a grey-headed, fashionably dressed old lady living in
retirement on her estate of Chimay, in the thirties of
last century.

In 1834 all her children paid her visits: there was
the grey-headed Marquess de Fontenay; the younger
Thermidor Tallien, also getting on in years, who bore
a striking resemblance to her father and incarnated
the days of Madame Tallien s glory ; the sons of Barras
and the banker Ouvrard, and finally the three young
Princes de Chimay.

In the September, soon after the death of Our
Lady of Thermidor, 7 her name was once more on the
lips of all Paris. The three children of Ouvrard, whom
Th6rsia had finally registered under the name of
Cabarrus, instituted a civil suit, demanding to be
accorded the legal right to the title of Princes de
Chimay. Having no desire to lose their inheritance
the Prince s legitimate children objected. As the former
Commissary of the Convention and Director, who had
died in poverty and oblivion in 1820, had never
renounced any of the children Th6r6sia had borne
before her formal divorce from him, the court rejected
the pretensions of Barras s and Ouvrard s children to

265

NINE WOMEN

princely rank, and assigned them the name of Tallien.

In so doing the judges played them a malicious trick,
for the name of Tallien had long since become a shame
ful stigma, which during her latter years the aged
princess herself had sought by very possible means to
suppress.

This celebrated civil process once more vividly
reminded the world of the successive stages of Madame
Tallien s life: from the Marquess de Fontenay to the
Jacobin Tallien, by way of Barras, the head of the
Directory, to the millionaire Ouvrard, and from
Ouvrard to the Prince de Chimay, Those stages
corresponded remarkably with the rise and still more
the decline of the great Revolution. All through her
career Th&resia Cabarrus cleverly adapted herself to
the political regime dominant at the moment.

266

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

EVEN to-day the islands of the Caribbean sea have
an exotic beauty that captures the imagination of
a European, but in the eighteenth century the island
of Martinique, with its suggestion of a mysterious,
distant and primitive opulence, was naturally a power
ful attraction. For over fifty years France and Britain
fought stubbornly for the possession of Martinique.
Not a few adventurers were to be found there, dissi
pated aristocrats who had placed their last hopes in the
fecund, tropical island and had settled on it as planters.
The hands of black slaves and a luxuriant soil swiftly
filled the colonists empty pockets. One of these
settlers, Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, owned a sugar
plantation which called for the labour of twenty slaves
in addition to hired labourers. The planter married a
beautiful native, and in 1763 she gave birth to a
daughter, Marie Jos6phine Rose. The tiny Creole
girl was placed in the charge of a native nurse, and she
spent her childhood among the superstitious, com-
pulsorily proselytized pagans and in the peculia r
environment of a great plantation homestead.

Rose was left without satisfactory supervision during
her early life, and she grew up to be a very ignorant
girl. She was by no means contemplative in character,
and the gigantic trees, the oppressively luxuriant
vegetation, the tropical rains left her imagination

269

NINE WOMEN

unquickened. Her superstitions were crude, her mind
sober and practical. She had inherited her father s
sensuality ; she early reached the age of adolescence, and
began to indulge her amorous proclivities.

During Rose s girlhood one Alexandre de Beau
harnais, a youth some years her senior, lived for a time
with the Tascher family. His father, the Marquess
de Beauharnais, had been the governor of Martinique
for many years, and had become intimately acquainted
with Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie through his love for
Rose s aunt, Madame Renaudin. When the British
captured the island from the French the Marquess
fled to France, leaving his son, Alexandre, behind, but
taking the beautiful Renaudin to Paris with him.
When Rose was about nine years old Viscount Alex
andre also journeyed to Paris to pursue his studies.
The girl s own education had been cursory and
superficial. Her inborn coquetry and frivolity gave
her father cause for anxiety, and when Madame
Renaudin wrote proposing that his fifteen-year-old
daughter should be sent to her he gladly availed him
self of the invitation.

On Rose s arrival in Paris her aunt at once set to
work to realize a long-cherished dream: to wed the
son of the Marquess de Beauharnais to her beautiful
niece. The former friend of Rose s childhood had
now developed into a decidedly clever young officer.
Under his tutor s influence he had been imbued with
advanced ideas, and worshipped Voltaire and Rousseau.
Like La Fayette, he had taken part in the American
expedition, and, like Brissot the future Girondist

270

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

leader, during his stay in America he had become a
Quaker. Alexandre dreamed of a revolution, although
by virtue of his rank he moved among the best circles
of royal France and had easily become a favourite
with the Paris beauties. The Creole from Martinique,
a timid provincial girl, had very little attraction for
Alexandre; nevertheless Madame Renaudin s clever
manoeuvring, the sentimental memories of childhood,
and his father s persuasions had their effect on the
complaisant viscount, and, to Rose s great delight, in
1779 she became the Viscountess de Beauharnais.

But the instability of this union was very speedily
revealed. Alexandre grew steadily more indifferent
and neglectful of his wife. In 1781, after the birth
of their son Eugene, the relations between the young
couple became so strained that Alexandre went to
Italy, leaving Rose in the old marquess s house. During
his absence Madame Renaudin tried to initiate her
into the secrets of subjugating men and winning
admiration in fashionable society. Under cover of the
grumbling of the podagric old marquess and the
crackling of the logs on the hearth, the ageing, experi
enced beauty told her gay episodes from her own past
life.

But her aunt s schooling was all to no purpose: as
soon as Alexandre returned the family differences
broke out again with renewed strength. The viscount
was only too glad to set out with an expedition to
Martinique to fight the English. Just about this time
the viscountess gave birth to a daughter, Hortense,
and she devoted herself rapturously to the joys and

271

NINE WOMEN

cares of motherhood. Rose loved her children passion
ately, like a tigress, jealously watching over and idoliz
ing them; and in this affection she proved herself a
true daughter of a dusky native woman.

Alexandre returned from Martinique accompanied
by a young creole girl and determined to annul his
marriage. Rose would not agree to a voluntary
separation, and the insistent Viscount de Beauharnais
initiated a judicial process, demanding the division
of the property and accusing his wife of immorality
and infidelity. The Catholic marriage was indissoluble,
but the court of peers could separate the couple.
Rose prudently donned the garb of humility and retired
with her children to a convent. She played the part
of injured innocence with great skill, and captivated
the bewigged old judges. They recognized her
Virtue/ adjudged her a large income and left her her
daughter, whilst her son was to remain in her charge
until he was five years old.

Completely provided for materially, a free woman,
and without stain in the eyes of society, the triumphant
viscountess hastened to redeem the time she had lost
within the walls of the convent. Among the circles
in which she moved, horse-riding, pastoral idylls,
languid sighs, dreams, the language of beauty-spots,
and open profligacy were the be-all and end-all of
existence. But Rose was still not a finished production;
society considered her uncultured and too loquacious.
Feeling the chilliness of her reception, the planter s
daughter decided to take her children on a visit to
her parents in Martinique. There, confident of hei

272

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

position as mistress, she went over the plantation,
calculated the profit on the sugar-canes, ordered her
father about in the extracting works, exchanged kisses
with the officers of the garrison, talked to the women
slaves, and yearned for Paris.

She remained in Martinique for three years, until
one day a vessel from France brought news of the
Revolution. The slaves of the island began to revolt,
and the terrified woman hurriedly returned to Paris.
Here she found Alexandre de Beauharnais already
elected by the aristocracy to the States-General, voting
with the Third Estate, and popular in the faubourgs.
He welcomed the viscountess amicably and became a
frequent guest at her house. At this period citizen
Beauharnais was completely in the grip of a fantastic
passion for the Revolution. Superficial yet sincere,
he had fallen in love with the revolution as if it had
been a woman: he was faithful to it, went about
attired like a genuine $an$-culotte for its sake, and
wore an inordinate number of tricoloured cockades.

Rose Beauharnais was not greatly interested in the
Revolution, but she could hardly fail to observe that
the value of money was declining, that her favourite
striped muslin from India was becoming more expen
sive, and that Alexandre de Beauharnais had achieved
a position of some authority and was surrounded
with important personages. It became her dream to
establish a brilliant salon. France of the eighteenth
century had cultivated feminine salons, and in Paris
there were a large number presided over by courtesans,
royal favourites and illustrious women. During the

s 273

NINE WOMEN

revolutionary period the democracy counterpoised
the aristocratic salons with their own clubs, the salons
of the poor. The Jacobin clubs, which spread in a
great network over France, disappeared on the defeat
of the Revolution, and the salons began to recover their
former importance in the political world, drawing
inspiration for their activities from the reaction. All
things considered Rose Beauharnais s salon was a
brilliant society affair, which, owing to Alexandre
Beauharnais, who had swiftly risen to the presidency
of the Constitutional Assembly, was frequented by
Assembly deputies, provincial commissaries and young
generals. It was in this way that she made the acquaint
ance of Tallien and Barras, who were later to be of
considerable importance in her life.

The triumph of the Jacobin party proved fatal to
the political career of such a free-thinking aristocrat
as Alexandre de Beauharnais had remained. At the
moment of a serious crisis at the front the Convention,
regarding him as a revolutionary general, appointed
him commander of the army on the Rhine. But the
philosophizing and studious Beauharnais did not
justify the reputation he had won as a participant in the
American War of Independence, and in a difficult situa
tion his army was cut off by the enemy and lost. He
surrendered Mayence, and was then summarily dis
missed. In Paris the acute party struggle and Terror
were at their height. Executions of generals suspected
of treason were an almost daily occurrence. Having no
illusions or hopes of escaping alive, General Beau
harnais nevertheless returned to Paris. He fatalistically

274

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

waited to be arrested and went calmly to prison. His
last diversion was the pretty little Delphine de Custine,
who was also awaiting execution.

Realizing that, like the wives of other aristocrats
accused of treason, she would certainly be arrested,
Madame de Beauharnais prepared energetically for
prison and took steps to provide for her children.
Ostensibly she placed her son to be educated in the
care of a carpenter and her daughter in that of a
sempstress. But this was mere pretence: the children,
and her little dog Fortun6 also, were to be in the charge
of a faithful governess. Evidently the countess
regarded the revolution as comparable with the hurri
canes she had known in her childhood. They had
carried away houses, ruined the planters, swept people
to destruction; but after a time everything had been
restored to its former state, and, as before, the whip
had whistled in the hands of her father and his
overseers.

She negligently glanced at the order for her arrest,
kissed the children, and went off to the Cannes prison
humming a tune. In her long-prepared bundle was a
little linen, much powder, a powder puff, and pomade
for her lips: these being the most necessary articles
in Madame de Beauharnais s normal existence.

Like other places of confinement, in 1794, just
prior to Thermidor, the damp and gloomy Carmes
was given over to a frenzy of indulgence. The men
and women, herded together, lived a dazed existence;
momentarily awaiting the summons to the Tribunal and
thence to the guillotine. The fear of loneliness, the

275

NINE WOMEN

terror of death, the women s hope of pregnancy which
postponed execution, threw strangers and even
enemies into one another s arms. They abandoned
themselves unresisting to their passions, justifying their
transient unions and erotic orgies by the importunate
horror of the guillotine knife. Aristocrats, artisans,
menials, servants, modest girls, worldly gallants,
and soldiers recently the heroes of their revolutionary
day, filled the prisons to overflowing. The irascible
counter-revolutionary and the Enraged H^bertist,
the hysterical, mystical woman, the unfrocked priest,
the senile crone, the poet, the merchant, the scavenger
and the duchess were all mixed together, in gloom or
unnatural gaiety awaiting the hour of death. Among
this human sediment Rose came into contact with the
brave, but harsh and melancholy General Hoche.
Their romance was a typical prison story: passionate,
loveless, inspired by nothing except the shadow of the
guillotine. When after Thermidor the prisons spewed
out their prisoners, Hoche, the hope and mainstay
of the Directory, recalled his relations with Madame
Beauharnais with irritation and disgust. Yet, judging
from his letters and the testimony of contemporaries,
it was Hoche of whom Napoleon, forgetting his wife s
innumerable liaisons, was most painfully jealous.

Alexandre Beauharnais was executed on Thermidor
the fifth. He died a steadfast atheist; his last letter to
his family contained his final instructions, and was
marked by an exalted egotism. The end was drawing
near for Rose also, but the ninth of Thermidor came
in time to save her.

276

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

The guillotine went on working as usual in the
Place des Gr&ves, but henceforth other heads were
falling. The prisons were emptied, but in order to be
filled with fresh prisoners with the members of the
Paris Commune, the Jacobins, and the Robespierrists.
For a brief period the hero of the day was Tallien,
one of the leaders of the Thermidorian coup. Whilst in
prison Rose Beauharnais had become acquainted with
Tallien s wife, Theresia Cabarrus, and after her deliver
ance from prison and the guillotine Madame Tallien
invited the * beautiful Creole to call on her, realizing
what an adornment Rose would be to her cottage.

Madame Beauharnais 7 liaison with the all-powerful
dictator Barras led to a distinct improvement in her
embarrassed financial position ; but on the other hand
her expenses were increasing incommensurably. The
Paris of the licentious gilded youth and charming and
easy-virtued women made merry and squandered its
money. Madame Beauharnais had to resort to all
kinds of expedients in order to meet her expenses,
in spite of the considerable sums she received from
Barras, The fashions changed every day: the shawls,
tunics and buskins, the fine and intricate gowns
modelled on David s drawings, cost fabulous sums.
Perukes, jewellery, horses and equipages were all
necessities. Clever Madame Beauharnais found it
decidedly difficult to retain her place among the
fashionable stars of the time Madame Tallien,
R^camier, and Lange.

In his memoirs Barras declares with vainglorious
frankness that, growing tired of his favourite, he

277

NINE WOMEN

pushed her into the arms of the simple-minded Bona
parte in order to influence him on behalf of the
Directory. Whether this were so or not, Barras
unquestionably supported the plans for the alliance,
and assisted Madame Beauharnais to receive the bash
ful Napoleon with ostentatious splendour. Rose had
become acquainted with Bonaparte largely by acci
dent. Her son, Eugene Beauharnais, had addressed
himself to Napoleon with a petition to be returned his
father s sword, which had been confiscated by order
of the Convention. He obtained a personal interview
with the general, and his request was granted, Madame
Beauharnais considered it her duty to express her
gratitude in person to Napoleon, especially as it
provided her with a plausible pretext to make his
acquaintance. Rustling with silks and scented with
fashionable perfumes, she called at the office of the
Military Commander of Paris. One can easily imagine
this experienced coquette, after carefully practising
her most irresistible glances and smiles before her
mirror, bringing into action all her arsenal of resources
to seduce this awkward and ragged field officer who
had had to solicit Madame Tallien s patronage in order
to obtain a piece of cloth for a new uniform. To
Barras s delight Rose made great headway. Bona
parte returned her call at the cosy little house on the
Rue Chantereine, and soon became a regular visitor
and an intimate friend of Madame Beauharnais,
calling her Josephine in preference to Rose, the name
she had been known by since childhood. Bonaparte
was a poor man and could not bring Josephine presents.

278

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

The wine in her cellars, the fowl, the fruit, the table
services and linen were all provided by Barras, who in
return was kept supplied with useful information
concerning the dangerous general. Josephine was not
in love with Napoleon, and at the outset she wondered
what Barras could find to interest him in the little,
frequently dirty Corsican, who was so ill-mannered and
inelegant. He irritated her with his soldier s habits,
his coarse jokes and his clumsy caresses. But Barras
had a high opinion of Napoleon and was afraid of his
influence; the rich Parisians invited him to their
houses; the journals all extolled him; and Josephine
was compelled to take these factors into account. When
the enamoured and jealous Napoleon, desiring to give
a more permanent basis to their relations, proposed
marriage to her, she did not hesitate. Despite her
superficial brilliance she was poor, she was deeply
in debt, and marriage with a revolutionary general
completely safeguarded her, the widow of an executed
aristocrat, from the persecutions or the vagaries of
the new regime. The enraptured Napoleon derived
some little satisfaction from the illustrious title and
worldly sagacity of his beautiful paramour. The
marriage contract between Napoleon and Josephine
contained a number of deliberate evasions and fictions.
She was six years older than he, and for her sake their
ages were incorrectly stated: Napoleon added two
years to his, whilst Josephine reduced hers by four,
and thus the disparity was eliminated. Barras and
Tallien acted as witnesses of the civil ceremony. Two
days after his marriage Napoleon departed on his

279

NINE WOMEN

Italian expedition. In his frequent letters from the
field he invariably implored Jos6phine to come to him,
and these letters with their passionate rhapsodies
testify to the mad, sensuous love he had for his wife.
He was jealous, and was painfully suspicious that she
was unfaithful to him ; again and again he reminded her
of their kisses and embraces. Meantime Josephine
would not forgo even the most insignificant and
fortuitous amour. She went at last to Napoleon,
not because she was driven by any yearning for him,
but in quest of amusement and in compliance with his
importunate demand. Moreover Napoleon s resounding
victories, the popularity of his name, and the Directory s
dependence on him, all compelled Josephine to believe
in his further exaltation and still more brilliant future.
Tripping across the bloody battlefields as though
over the carpets of a fashionable reception hall,
Josephine travelled through Italy. She was over
whelmed with presents, surrounded with the rapturous
devotion of the young officers. The jingle of spurs
and the sight of shapely masculine waists drove her
well nigh to distraction, but despite her frequent and
diverting escapades, in her letters to Paris she did not
omit to go into raptures over the necklaces received
from Murat or to estimate the cost of the next ball.
And whilst Napoleon s army was passing through Italy
like a tornado, Josephine, a typical specimen of the
contemporary bourgeois woman, was busily calculating
how much she would have to pay for the estate of
Malmaison, which she had coveted even while Alex-
andre Beauharnais was alive.

280

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

On his return from Italy the Parisians gave Napoleon
a rapturous welcome. In order to free himself of the
Directory s suspicions, which were growing propor
tionately with their envy, he kept in the background,
avoiding the ovations, and lived a self-contained,
markedly simple existence. General Bonaparte and
his wife visited only a select circle of friends. At this
period Napoleon was already using his wife to spy upon
Barras.

The conjunction of an acute political insight and a
half fantastic military objective suggested to Napoleon
the plan of an expedition to distant Egypt. He was
absent from France for over a year, and during his
expedition Josephine was left entirely to her own
devices. On her return to Paris she had been accom
panied by a certain staff officer of the Italian army,
Hyppolyte Charles. This intriguing young man
easily found entrance into the houses of the rich
Parisians, made a success of assisting ladies in their
financial operations, and combined in one person an
engaging tenderness with sound business instinct. In
Venice and Milan Charles had carried Josephine s
shawl and had fulfilled other functions usually allotted
to a page; in Paris, still blessed with her favour,
he became her agent for commercial commissions.
Besides amusing herself with a swift succession of
romantic escapades which became the talk of Paris,
Jos6phine made haste to improve her family s material
position, and, through Charles, established close
relations with certain business firms. During the epoch
of the Directory military contractors grew rich with

281

NINE WOMEN

fabulous swiftness, skilfully organizing their millions
of profits through Barras, and through men in close
touch with him who played the part of unseen middle
men and transmission agents. Josephine successfully
took a hand in the advancement of transactions and the
felicitous delivery of bribes. Her own income grew
steadily with the aid of munificent presents and subsi
dies, and her long cherished dream of possessing the
palace and estate of Malmaison became a reality.
Together with Hyppolyte Charles she surveyed the
property, negotiated, finally bought it, and furnished
the house with ostentatious luxury.

Napoleon became aware of the conduct and schem
ing of his wife whilst he was still in Egypt. It was not
the purchase of Malmaison or Josephine s commercial
transactions that irritated the general: such qualities
he had always valued; but the rumours connecting her
name with Charles, and the extensive, if exaggerated
list of casual lovers piqued Bonaparte s egotism.
Tormented with jealousy, distrust and disillusion
ment, he outlived his love for Josephine and firmly
determined to divorce her. Nevertheless, on his
return to Paris he did not act on his resolve. Josephine s
connections and her popularity in circles of importance
to Napoleon, especially among the old and the new
bourgeoisie, were the essential reason for his change of
mind, although her penitent promises and embraces
strengthened his decision not to obtain a divorce.
The pro-consul whose objective was the throne of
France could not be troubled with the ordering of
his personal affairs.

282

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

During the period of the consulate Josephine wielded
great influence in the internal affairs of the republic.
She retained her directness and accessibility, her
complaisance to others errors and weaknesses, but on
occasion she could be brilliantly majestic and unerring
in her instinct for etiquette. Never losing sight oi
her own advantage, the consul s wife uninterruptedly
occupied herself with the accumulation of riches.
Her chests were filled with fine linen and precious
articles, and she delighted in receiving costly gifts.

As the wife of the consul, Josephine gave numerous
musical evenings and brilliant receptions in Mal-
maison. To entertain her guests she secured the ser
vices of the finest Italian singers, as well as of the
celebrated actor Talma, to whom Napoleon once
venomously applied Goethe s words that his pathos
called for distance. But with all her extravagance the
consul s wife was still not the peerless spendthrift
she became as empress.

Josephine s supreme bitterness arose from her lack
of children by Napoleon, and she was continually
tormented with the thought that this might be made
a pretext for divorce. The farther Bonaparte s glory
extended, the more his power and his consequent
honour and fortune were established, the more strongly
did Josephine cling to the rank of his wife; whereas
he, who had long since ceased to love her, was increas
ingly unfaithful to her. They had exchanged their
positions. Josephine s indifference, which once had
been the source of such misery to Napoleon, had given
way to an ungovernable jealousy and continual scenes.

283

NINE WOMEN

The ageing woman was especially haunted by the fear
that some one of his innumerable favourites would
give birth to a son and so dethrone her. Persecuting
Napoleon with her tears, she interfered in his affairs,
strengthened her connections in Paris, gave her daughter
Hortense in marriage to his brother Louis, and in various
other ways tried to safeguard herself against any possi
bility of dismissal. For several years she succeeded in
staving off the evil day, and in 1804 Napoleon even
consented to crown her empress. On the eve of her
coronation Josephine once more resolved to try and
render a divorce impossible by resorting to the aid of the
Church. After seeking with gifts to assure herself the
support of the Pope, who had been summoned to
Paris for the coronation, she confided to him that her
marriage had not been celebrated by the Church.
At night, at the Pope s demand, Bonaparte was
joined with Josephine in holy matrimony according to
the rites of the Church of Rome.

Now crowned empress, Josephine played fast and
loose with the country s treasury, surpassing all
bounds in her prodigality, crazed by the possibility
of being able to buy and possess anything she fancied.
Nevertheless, as in past years, she not only aimlessly
squandered money, indulging her passion for question
able luxury, but also steadily sank more capital in her
beloved Malmaison. This remarkable palace a cross
between a well organized dairy farm and a gilded
menagerie was crammed with monsters and highly
trained animals. The empress ordered birds and
animals from Australia, Africa and Asia, and trainers

284

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

from all over the world. She also found time to occupy
herself with other interests, especially those of a match
maker. Napoleon was busily establishing a new
aristocracy ; and Josephine, who was friendly with the
wives of many of the French bourgeoisie, assisted their
husbands to obtain titles. And the grateful bourgeoisie
of Paris rallied to her support when the emperor,
wishing to establish his dynasty by the birth of a son,
decided at last to divorce her. The bourgeoisie wel
comed the new empress with undisguised hostility.
The ugly, notoriously degenerate Austrian Marie
Louise, one of the purest blooded princesses in
Europe, was obviously quite unsuited to be the wife
of one who but recently had been merely a soldier of
an emperor who was doing his best to blot out his
unimposing origin. Nor was she suited for his court,
where too frequently a bombastic title concealed a
soldier, a shopkeeper, some wealthy nouveau riche y
a former member of the Convention or an apostate
Jacobin. This kinswoman of Marie Antoinette,
through whom Napoleon had allied himself with the
Bourbon, Hapsburg and other monarchies, remained
hopelessly out of sympathy with the ambitious
emperor and his innumerable relations seated on major
and minor thrones.

As soon as she realized that further artificial swoons,
hysterics, and scenes were of no avail and might even
prove detrimental to her interests, Josephine submitted
to her dismissal. She was left with only one course:
to make a virtue of necessity by declaring that she
retired in the interests of France, which needed the

285

NINE WOMEN

consolidation of the new dynasty. She retained the
title of empress, was granted an enormous pension,
and was allowed to keep Malmaison ; and so triumph
antly, not without theatrical ostentation, she and her
suite abandoned Napoleon s palace.

On her estate she was as busily idle as ever. With
all her heart she believed that Napoleon s separation
from her was a fatal mistake on his part. And when
some four years later the news of his defeat and
abdication of the throne arrived at Malmaison she
regarded it as the confirmation of her sage prognostica
tions. She sincerely believed that the enterprising
Corsican who had carved himself such a swift and
fantastic career had never estimated her at her true
worth. Josephine attributed his appointment as
commander of the Italian army to her connections and
her influence; and later on, on the eighteenth of
Brumaire, was it not she who, reclining on a sumptuous
divan, had ensured the success of his coup by holding
the Director Gohir prisoner to languid glances and
tender pressures of the hand, so fulfilling Napoleon s
instructions to keep him with her until the tragi
comedy in Saint Cloud was played out? Was it not
she who had cleverly drugged Barras s suspicions with
fictitious stories? In Josephine s mind all these subsi
diary details in Napoleon s success and elevation
seemed of decisive importance. Whilst the ship was
carrying Napoleon to the shores of Elba, Josephine,
surrounded by the friendly rulers who had marched
into Paris, was femininely content to know that neither
the new wife of imperial birth nor the desired heir had

286

JOSEPHINE BONAPARTE

brought Bonaparte fortune. She was even ready
magnanimously to intercede with her new devotee,
the Russian Tsar, on behalf of the exiled emperor,
in order to prove convincingly and irrefutably to all
how great was her significance in Napoleon s destiny.
Rumours were afoot that the dismissed empress was
planning to visit Bonaparte in his exile. But at the
very height of the banqueting in honour of the allied
armies in Paris in 1814 she fell ill with angina and died.

During the Second Empire Josephine s grateful
grandson, Napoleon the third, vainly tried to establish
a national cult of his grandmother. But the Jacobin
Sansculotte, 7 as citizeness Beauharnais had called
herself in 1794, the adventurist wife of General
Bonaparte, the frivolous and avaricious empress
Josephine was in no way fitted for elevation to the
status of national heroine. Women such as she,
poisonous, gaudily coloured fungi, flourish and wield
influence only during periods of decline and corrupt
reaction. The history of Madame Tallien and the life
of Madame de Custine, the heroine of Thermidor,
have many features in common with the story of
Madame Beauharnais.

The unprincipled and clinging Josephine, who had
been nurtured by the Directory, and who adapted
herself perfectly to all modifications of regime,
embodied the most characteristic traits of a woman
of the First Empire. She contrived with rare skill
to build herself the indispensable bridge across the
gulf between the old, regal, and aristocratic, and the
new, bourgeois, and plutocratic France,

287

1 06 220

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "NINE WOMEN"

See other formats