This last arrest had brought a large crowd around the place, and some such voices as are always to be heard at popular gatherings yelled for the prisoner's death.
An official saw that this desire must not spread, and was making a speech, to which the mob was yielding, when the messenger came back from the Hall to say the order was genuine, and they ought to set at liberty the prisoner named Suleau.
At this name, a woman in the mob raised her head and uttered a scream of rage.
"Suleau?" she cried. "Suleau, the editor of the 'Acts of the Apostles' newspaper, one of the slayers of Liege independence? Let me at this Suleau! I call for the death of Suleau!"
The crowd parted to let this little, wiry woman go through. She wore a riding-habit of the national colors, and was carrying a sword in a cross-belt. She went up to the city official and forced him to give her the place on the stand. Her head was barely above the concourse, before they all roared:
"Bravo, Theroigne!"
Indeed, Theroigne was a most popular woman, so that Suleau had made a hit when he said she was the bride of Citizen Populus, as well as referring to her free-and-easy morals.
Besides, he had published at Brussels the "Alarm for Kings," and thus helped the Belgian outbreak, and to replace under the Austrian cane and the priestly miter a noble people wishing to be free and join France.
At this very epoch Theroigne was writing her memoirs, and had read the part about her arrest there to the Jacobin Club.
She claimed the death of the ten other prisoners along with Suleau.