endently of all political considerations. The latter were
totally out of the question in the kind of correspondence I kept
up with them during the early part of their absence. No written
memorial bears witness against me in that respect. Those adduced
only lead to the belief that I partook of the opinions and
sentiments of the persons called conspirators. This deduction is
well founded. I confess it without reserve. I am proud of the
conformity. But I never manifested my opinion in a way which can
be construed into a crime, or which tended to occasion any
disturbance. Now, to become an accomplice in any plan whatever,
it is necessary to give advice, or to furnish means of execution.
I have done neither. There is no law to condemn me.

"I know that, in revolutions, law as well as justice is often
forgotten, and the proof of it is that I am here. I owe my trial
to nothing but the prejudices and violent animosities which arise
in times of great agitation, and which are generally directed
against those who have been placed in conspicuous situations, or
are known to possess any energy or spirit. It would have been
easy for my courage to put me out of the reach of the sentence
which I foresaw would be pronounced against me. But I thought it
rather became me to undergo that sentence. I thought that I owed
the example to my country. I thought that if I were to be
condemned, it must be right to leave to tyranny all the odium of
sacrificing a woman, whose crime is that of possessing some
small talent, which she never misapplied, a zealous desire to
promote the welfare of mankind, and courage enough to acknowledge
her friends when in misfortune, and to do homage to virtue at the
risk of life. Minds which have any claim to greatness are capable
of divesting themselves of selfish considerations. They feel that
they belong to the whole human race. Their views are directed to
posterity. I am the wife of a virtuous man exposed to
persecution. I was the friend of men who have been proscribed and
immolated by delusion, and the hatred of jealous mediocrity. It
is necessary that I should perish in my turn, because it is a
rule with tyranny to sacrifice those whom it has grievously
oppressed, and to annihilate the very witnesses of its misdeeds.
I have this double