lutions which effected them
have invariably selected the principal actors in the change as
their victims. It is their fate to experience this, as it becomes
the task of the historian to avenge their memories. Still I am at
a loss to imagine how I, a mere woman, should be exposed to the
fury of a storm, ordinarily suffered to expend itself upon the
great leaders of a revolution. You, Robespierre, were well
acquainted with my husband, and I defy you to say that you ever
thought him other than an honorable man. He had all the roughness
of virtue, even as Cato possessed its asperity. Disgusted with
business, irritated by persecution, weary of the world, and worn
out with years and exertions, he desired only to bury himself and
his troubles in some unknown spot, and to conceal himself there
to save the age he lived in from the commission of a crime.

"My pretended confederacy would be amusing, were it not too
serious a matter for a jest. Whence, then, arises that degree of
animosity manifested toward me? I never injured a creature in my
life, and can not find it in my heart to wish evil even to those
who injure and oppress me. Brought up in solitude, my mind
directed to serious studies, of simple tastes, an enthusiastic
admirer of the Revolution--excluded, by my sex, from
participating in public affairs, yet taking delight in conversing
of them--I despised the first calumnies circulated respecting me,
attributing them to the envy felt by the ignorant and low-minded
at what they were pleased to style my elevated position, but to
which I infinitely preferred the peaceful obscurity in which I
had passed so many happy days.

"Yet I have now been for five months the inhabitant of a prison,
torn from my beloved child, whose innocent head may never more
be pillowed upon a mother's breast; far from all I hold dear; the
mark for the invectives of a mistaken people; constrained to hear
the very sentinels, as they keep watch beneath my windows,
discussing the subject of my approaching execution, and outraged
by reading the violent and disgusting diatribes poured forth
against me by hirelings of the press, who have never once beheld
me. I have wearied no one with requests, petitions, or demands.
On the contrary, I feel proudly equal to battle with my own ill