CHAPTER LXXIX.

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.