e

Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

Of the crimes there could, indeed, never have been any doubt, but
posterity took but little heed of them, for they were amply condoned by
the single virtue. That virtue was, indeed, of a transcendent character,
for it was nothing less than the delivery of the French nation from the
Dahomey-like rule of that Robespierre who deluged France in blood, and
who, albeit in Fouche's words he was "terribly sincere," at the same
time "never in his life cared for any one but himself and never forgave
an offence." Moreover, the act of delivery was associated with an
episode eminently calculated to appeal to human sentiment and sympathy.
It was thought that the love of a fair woman whose life was endangered
had nerved the lover and the patriot to perform an heroic act at the
imminent risk of his own life. Hence the hero became "Le Lion Amoureux,"
and the heroine was canonised as "Notre Dame de Thermidor."

M. Gastine has now torn this legend to shreds. Under his pitiless
analysis of the facts, nothing is left but the story of a contemptible
adventurer, who was "a robber, a murderer, and a poltroon," mated to a
grasping, heartless courtesan. Both were alike infamous. The ignoble
careers of both from the cradle to the grave do not, in reality, present
a single redeeming feature.

Madame Tallien was the daughter of Francois Cabarrus, a wealthy
Spaniard who was the banker of the Spanish Court. The great influence
which she unquestionably exerted over her contemporaries was wholly due
to her astounding physical beauty. Her intellectual equipment was meagre
in the extreme. At one period of her life she courted the society of
Madame de Stael and other intellectuals, but Princess Helene Ligne said
of her that she "had more jargon than wit." As regards her physical
attractions, however, no dissentient voice has ever been raised. "Her
beauty," the Duchess d'Abrantes says in her memoirs, "of which the
sculptors of antiquity give us but an incomplete idea, had a charm not
met with in the types of Greece and Rome." Every man who approached her
appears to have become her victim. Lacretelle, who himself worshipped at
her shrine, says, "She appeared to most of us as the Spirit of Clemency
incarnate in the loveliest of human forms." At a very early age she
married a young French nobleman, the Marquis de Fontenay, from whom she
was speedily divorced. It is not known for what offence she was arr