One thing we will specify, to throw light on many: the aspect under which, seen through the eyes of these Girondin Twelve, or even seen through one's own eyes, the Patriotism of the softer sex presents itself. There are Female Patriots, whom the Girondins call Megæras, and count to the extent of eight thousand; with serpent-hair, all out of curl; who have changed the distaff for the dagger. They are of 'the Society called Brotherly,' Fraternelle, say Sisterly, which meets under the roof of the Jacobins. 'Two thousand daggers,' or so, have been ordered,—doubtless for them. They rush to Versailles, to raise more women; but the Versailles women will not rise.[1]
Nay behold, in National Garden of Tuileries,—Demoiselle Théroigne herself is become as a brown-locked Diana (were that possible) attacked by her own dogs, or she-dogs! The Demoiselle, keeping her carriage, is for Liberty indeed, as she has full well shown; but then for Liberty with Respectability: whereupon these serpent-haired Extreme She Patriots do now fasten on her, tatter her, shamefully fustigate her, in their shameful way; almost fling her into the Garden-ponds, had not help intervened. Help, alas, to small purpose. The poor Demoiselle's head and nervous-system, none of the soundest, is so tattered and fluttered that it will never recover; but flutter worse and worse, till it crack; and within year and day we hear of her in madhouse and strait-waistcoat, which proves permanent!—Such brown-locked Figure did flutter, and inarticulately jabber and gesticulate, little able to speak the obscure meaning it had, through some segment of the Eighteenth Century of Time. She disappears here from the Revolution and Public History for evermore.[2]
Another thing we will not again specify, yet again beseech the Reader to imagine: the reign of Fraternity and Perfection.
- ↑ Buzot, Mémoires, pp. 69, 84; Meillan, Mémoires, pp. 192, 195, 196. See Commission des Douze (in Choix des Rapports, xii. 69–131).
- ↑ Deux Amis, vii. 77–80; Forster, i. 514; Moore, i. 70. She did not die till 1817; in the Salpêtrière, in the most abject state of insanity; see Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales (Paris, 1838), i. 445–50.
