the rebellion of 1916 she fought and killed under
Michael Mallin of the Citizens' Army. She was hardly out of jail for
participation in the rebellion when she was clapped in again for alleged
complicity in the never-to-be-proved German plot. While she was in jail,
she was elected the first woman member of parliament.

White from imprisonment, her small round steel-rimmed glasses dropping away
from her blue eyes, and her curly brown hair wisping out from under her
black felt hat, the countess embraced a few of the women in the room and
exchanged handclasps with the men. Below the crowd was clamoring for her
appearance at the window.

"Fellow rebels!" she began as she leaned out into the mellow night. Then
with the apparent desire to say everything at once that makes her public
speech stuttery, she continued: "It's good to come out of jail to this. It
is good to come out again to work for a republic. Let us all join hands to
make the new republic a workers' republic. A change of flags is not
enough!"

Two oil flares with orange flame throwing off red sparks on the crowd, were
fastened to the brake below. It was the brake that was to carry "Madame" on
her triumphal tour of Dublin. The boys of the Citizens' Army made a human
rope about the conveyance. In it I climbed with the countess, the plump
little Mrs. James Connolly, the magisterial Countess Plunkett, Commandant
O'Neill of the Citizens' Army, Sean Milroy, who escaped from Lincoln jail
with DeValera, and two or three others. Rows of constables were backed
against the walls at irregular intervals. I asked Sean Milroy if he were
not afraid that he would be re-taken, and he responded comfortably that the
"peelers" would never attempt to take a political prisoner out of a
gathering like that. As we neared the poverty-smelling Coombe district, the
countess remarked that this, St. Patrick's, was her constituency. At the
shaft of St. James fountain, the brake was halted. Shedding her long coat,
and standing straight in her green tweed suit, with the plush seat of the
brake for her floor, the countess told the cheering workers that she was
going to come down to live in the Coombe. Heated with the energy of talking
and throwing her body about so that her voice would carry over the crowd
that circled her, the countess sank down on the seat. As the brake drove
on, motherly little Mrs. Connolly tried to slip the big coat over the
countess. But the countess, in one of those sudde