THE WOMEN OF FRANCE.
Louison Brisot went from the presence of Mirabeau with a tumult of
contending passions at war in her bosom. Ardent, vindictive, and
egotistical, she guarded herself with a power of secretiveness and sharp
cunning so completely, that it was not wonderful a man so reckless as
Mirabeau should have misunderstood the depth and danger of her
antagonism. He had no idea of the powerful self-control which curbed her
fierce passions, and gave double force when she allowed them to break
forth in all their fiery strength. Her coarse nature had mated itself so
vehemently with the eloquent demagogue, that he was sometimes startled
to find himself completely duplicated in the form of a woman—so
completely that he began to dislike himself in her. This feeling often
broke forth mockingly, as he was apt to scoff at himself when the worst
traits of his own character forced themselves on his intelligence.
Mirabeau forgave himself for thus reviling his own rude nature—but the
woman forgave nothing.
Men like Count Mirabeau are often the most fastidious beings alive,
regarding delicate shades of propriety in their friends, and almost
invariably look for objects of affection above their own level. In order
to create a real impression upon this man, it was necessary to enlist
his imagination, and that always lifted itself to the grand and
beautiful, not to say the unattainable. Mirabeau held his immediate
compeers but lightly, as, in his better moments, he often despised
himself.
Louison Brisot was ambitious; and in the riot and turmoil of the
Revolution, now growing formidable, she found scope for all her evil
passions, and all her intellect. In this Revolution she saw but one
leader, Mirabeau. His eloquence inspired her; his stubborn will held all
her own powers in thrall. She saw strong, fierce, brave men yield to his
invincible force of character. If he moved, the people went with him; if
he spoke, they held their breath, and listened as if this man, with the
blue blood of France soiled in his veins by all the baser passions known
to themselves, were, in fact, a being to worship and follow with
clamorous praises. With women like this, love is a score of baser
passions disguised under one name, which they desecrate. Mirabeau knew
this, and took no pains to deceive the woman regarding the amount of
respect that he felt for her. Had he known from the first that she had
witnessed that dangerous interview with the queen, his audacity would
have tempted him to brave her.
Louison felt this, and gave him no opportunity, being one of those
extraordinary women who could wait, though every fierce passion of her
soul were at a white heat. Two words broke from her lips as she left the
house, and those were,
“Double traitor!”
For a day and a night Louison shut herself up in her own apartments, and
strove to organize some plan of operation for herself. Should she make
it known to the clubs that Mirabeau had held a private interview with
the queen, whom they all hated with fiendish detestation, and turn the
force of public indignation on him at once; or should she wait, watch,
and gather up facts that would ensnare him completely, and see the lion
pant and struggle in the net her hands had cast over him.
Louison’s nature, which was at once fierce and crafty, led to the
quieter course. With all her courage, she thought of openly assailing
this powerful man with thrills of terror. She knew him to be
unscrupulous as herself, and far beyond her in influence. Would the
clubs, in fact, believe her if she ventured to stake her unsupported
word against his? As yet that meeting had no results. If Mirabeau had
sold his influence to the queen, money would be forthcoming; and no fear
would prevent the count from lavishing it with dangerous prodigality.
For money he must change his course in the Assembly; let him do this
ever so adroitly, she could connect the change with his unusual
expenditure, and thus sustain a charge it would be dangerous to make on
her own unsupported assertion.
This terrible woman had, at last, gained control over her disturbed
passions, so far as was necessary to the hypocrisy and treason by which
her vengeance might be carried out. She was not the only woman in that
dark epoch, who hurled her own personal wrongs and evil passions into
the general anarchy, and called them patriotism. Patriotism! The amazons
and butchers of France made this grand word so hideous, that liberty
turns from it with distrust, even to this day; like the holy religion of
Christ, it is used to cover a thousand sins—and treason is never so
dangerous as when it cloaks itself under a name that true men hold
sacred.
If ever a time has been on earth, when women could possess all the power
of men, it was during the French Revolution. How did it end? Who among
those females has left a trace in her national history which is not
written in blood, and in acts more atrocious than men would have dared
perpetrate, had not the cheers of blood-thirsty women urged them on.
While there was no law, men and women stood on a level—anarchy made no
distinctions of sex. When women become immodest, men sink to their
lowest level. What a fearful level was that to which the proud old
nation of France was brought when assassination took the mockery of law,
and indiscriminate murder became a national amusement.
A few great and true-hearted women certainly were drawn into this awful
maelstrom; but it was to sicken in the sea of blood that overwhelmed
them, and perish under the heels of an enraged multitude, whose fiendish
acts their own enthusiasm had aided to inspire. Who among all the army
of women that marched to Versailles, on that gloomy day, has an honored
place in the history of France now? Of the hundreds who mingled their
voices with those of Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, at the clubs, is
there one who has not been consigned to the blackest infamy by all
historians? Madame Roland, who gloried in writing her husband’s letters,
and was in character and position lifted far above the infamous rabble
of women who made demons of the men they influenced, died on the
scaffold, bravely as she had lived; but the last words on her lips were
a bewailing cry over the atrocities perpetrated in the name of her ideal
god.—Liberty.
Louison Brisot possessed all the crafty and unscrupulous qualities that
made leaders in those horrible times. Like most of her compeers, who
were not blindly led, she seized upon the evil passions of others to
work out her own desires and crude ambition. With a sharp intellect and
depraved heart, she had flung herself at the feet of Mirabeau, partly in
homage to his undoubted genius, and partly because he was the brightest
power in that Assembly of demagogues. But the count had never even
pretended to give her, in return for her adoration, anything like
respect. Sometimes he deigned to accept her as the instrument of his
ambition, as he always used the talent of others for his own
advancement, whenever it came in his way; but for all she could do for
him he gave no return, save that careless acceptance which exasperated
while it enthralled her.
So long as Mirabeau loved no other woman, Louison contented herself with
an ostentatious exhibition of her fancied power over him. This won her
the notoriety which so many women coveted; but when she knew that the
queen, a woman she hated more than any other in France had cast the
charm of her high position and personal loveliness over this powerful
man; when she saw the tender reverence with which his lips touched that
white hand, the passion of her love blazed into fury. She saw herself
hurled down from the position which had been assumed till it was
recognized as one of power, and laughed to scorn by the person whose
very contempt was more valuable to her than the purest love of a meaner
man.
Louison gave no sign of the agitation that had at first overwhelmed her,
but watched and waited with feline patience for any movement that might
bring the haughty man she both loved and hated, within the grasp of her
vengeance.
There was no social rule by which the agitators of France governed
themselves in those days, and there was no association so debased that
these men dared not glory in it. With them there was nothing to conceal,
because there was no shame; they worshiped excess in a goddess called
Liberty; they crowned her with roses; and while defying all decency,
called on the whole world to witness their orgies and share in them.
In a state of society like this, it is not strange that a woman like
Louison could find access anywhere, or that she had made herself almost
an inmate of Mirabeau’s house, and entered it at any time that suited
her pleasure.
One evening Louison called at Mirabeau’s residence; but it was closed,
and she was told that on the day before Mirabeau had left his lodgings,
and taken a house in the Chaussée d’Anton, which he was fitting up with
great splendor. Louison turned away from the lodgings, which had been
deemed far too sumptuous for a friend of the people, with a heart on
fire again, and the bitterest word she knew of escaped through her
clenched teeth.
“The aristocrat!” she hissed, rather than spoke. “He has done this with
money from that woman—the meeting in the Park was not their first. His
soul is poisoned with her gold. I will look upon this new palace myself,
but not till I have walked off my rage. He must not look upon me while
this fire burns so hotly.”
The woman pressed both hands upon her heart as she turned from the door,
and was herself terrified by the fierce struggle going on there; the
very breath, as it rose panting to her lips, seemed to strangle her.
What better proof of Mirabeau’s utter subjection to the court did she
want than this removal to an aristocratic quarter and luxurious
dwelling? No one knew so well as herself that Mirabeau had no income
from property, nothing but his talent and influence to sell. He still
retained so much of the habits of his lordly birth, that the squalid
penury affected by Robespierre and Marat revolted him. He had never yet
been able to throw off the tastes of a gentleman in his mode of living,
and in this lost all the independence which was so necessary to
statesmanship.
A new thought came into Louison’s head. Mirabeau had taken money from
the court. Might not this be his sole motive for asking or accepting
that interview with Marie Antoinette. Had he ever hesitated to cajole or
deceive a woman in the pursuit of any object? And what reverence would
his audacious nature feel for the queen, merely because she was seated
on a throne which already shook to its foundations?
This idea came with force upon the angry woman, the thought that money,
instead of love, had taken her idol to St. Cloud, swept away half the
jealousy that tortured her. She began to feel a bitter triumph in the
supreme duplicity of which she suspected the count guilty.