o quit their children that
they may die by the sides of their husbands or lovers? Amazons of the
rabble, magnificent and abject, something between Penthesilea and
Theroigne de Mericourt. There they are seen to pass as cantinieres,
among those who go forth to fight. The men are furious, the women are
ferocious,--nothing can appal, nothing discourage them. At Neuilly, a
vivandiere is wounded in the head; she turns back a moment to staunch
the blood, then returns to her post of danger. Another, in the 61st
Battalion, boasts of having killed three _gardiens de la paix_[51] and
several _gendarmes_. On the plain of Chatillon a woman joins a group of
National Guards, takes her stand amongst them, loads her gun, fires,
re-loads and fires again, without the slightest interruption. She is the
last to retire, and even then turns back again and again to fire. A
_cantiniere_ of the 68th Battalion was killed by a fragment of shell
which broke the little spirit-barrel she carried, and sent the splinters
into her stomach. After the engagement of the 3rd of April, nine bodies
were brought to the _mairie_ of Vaugirard. The poor women of the quarter
crowd there, chattering and groaning, to look for husbands, brothers and
son's. They tear a dingy lantern from each other, and put it close to
the pale faces of the dead, amongst whom they find the body of a young
woman literally riddled with shot. What means the wild rage that seizes
upon these furies? Are they conscious of the crimes they commit; do they
understand the cause for which they die? Yesterday, in a shop of the Rue
de Montreuil, a woman entered with her gun on her shoulder and her
bayonet covered with blood. "Wouldn't you do better to stay at home and
wash your brats?" said an indignant neighbour. Whereupon arose a furious
altercation, the virago working herself into such a fury that she sprang
upon her adversary, and bit her violently in the throat, then withdrew a
few steps, seized her gun, and was going to fire, when she suddenly
turned pale, her weapon fell from her hands, and she sank back dead. In
her wild passion she had broken a blood vessel. Such are the women of
the people in this terrible year of 1871. It has its _cantinieres_ as
'93 had its _tricoteuses_,[52] but the cantinieres are preferable, for
the horrible in them partakes of a savage grandeur. Fighting as they are
against brothers and kinsfolk, they are revolting, but against a foreign
enemy, they would have been s