You accuse your biographer of having committed an indignity in directing an accusation against a woman, because this woman was your wife; do you not commit an indignity yourself in insulting many others?
And if you blame those who calumniate the morals of Proudhon because he is not of their opinion, in what light do you think that men will regard your calumnious insinuations against women, because they do not think like you?
You claim that we have no morality, because we lack respect towards the dignity of others; who has set us this detestable example more than you? You, who style yourself the champion of the principles of '89—who are the men and women whom you attack?
They who are in different degrees, and from different stand points, in favor of these principles.
Your anger has no bounds against George Sand, our great prose writer, the author of the bulletins of the republic of '48. You depreciate Madame de Stäel, whom you have not read, and who was in advance of most of the masculine writers of her epoch.
Two scaffolds are erected, two women mount thereon: Madame Roland and Marie Antoinette. I, a woman, will not cast insult on the decapitated queen, dying with dignity and courage; no, I bow before the block, whatever head may lay on it, and wipe away my tears. But, Marie Antoinette died the victim of the faults that her princely education had caused her to commit against the modern principles; while Madame Roland, the chaste and noble wife, died for the revolution, and died blessing it.
Whence comes it that you greet the queen with your sympathies, while you have nought but words of blame and contempt for the revolutionist? And the men that belong to the great party of the future, how do you style them?
The Girondins, effeminate;
Robespierre and his adherents, eunuchs;
The gentle Bernardin de St. Pierre, effeminate;