[BORN 1754. DIED 1793.]
CARLYLE.
far nobler victim follows, one who will claim remembrance from several centuries—Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her prison. "Something more than is usually found in the looks of women painted itself," says he, "in those large black eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate; we were all attentive round her, in a sort of admiration and astonishment. She expressed herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody, that made her language like music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her conversation was serious, not cold. Coming from the mouth of a beautiful woman, it was frank and courageous as that of a great man." "And yet her maid said, 'Before you she collects her strength; but, in her own room, she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window and weeping.'" She has been in prison,—liberated once, but recaptured the same hour,—ever since the 1st of June, in agitation and uncertainty, which has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty—that of death. In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here, in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe; with ex-minister Clavière calls the beheaded twenty-two "nos amis, our friends," whom all are so soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written which all the world still reads.
But now, on the 8th of November, "clad in white," says Riouffe, "with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle," she is gone to the judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step; lifted her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed; her eyes seemed to have been wet. Fouquier-Tinville's questions had been "brutal;" offended female honour flung them back on him with scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with her a certain Lamarche, "director of assignat-printing," whose dejection she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her"—a remarkable request—which was refused. Looking at the statue of Liberty which stands there, she says, "O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!" For Lamarche's sake she will die first, to show him how easy it is to die. "Contrary to the order," says Samson. "Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a lady;" and Samson yielded.
Noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle, and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian statue, serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of things, long memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris city, in the era of Noble-sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her clear perennial womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopédies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness and a kind of sacredness over all that preceded; so in her, too, there was an unnameable; she, too, was a daughter of the Infinite; there were mysteries which Philosophism had not dreamt of! She left long written counsels to her little girl. She said her husband would not survive her.
Some days afterwards, Roland, hearing the news of what happened on the 8th, embraces his kind friends at Rouen; leaves their kind house which had given him refuge; goes forth, with farewell too sad for tears. On the morrow morning, 16th of the month, "some four leagues from Rouen, Paris-ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M. Normand's avenue," there is seen, sitting leant against a tree, the figure of a rigorous wrinkled man, stiff now in the rigour of death, a cane-sword run through his heart, and at his feet this writing: "Whoever thou art that findest me lying, respect my remains; they are those of a man who consecrated all his life to being useful, and who has died, as he lived, virtuous and honest. Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning that my wife had been murdered. I wished not to remain longer on an earth polluted with crimes."
