great as she was and
still be pure. These ghouls of history will to the end of time dig into
the graves where such queens lie entombed. This woman has slept serenely
for nearly a century. Sweet oblivion has dimmed with denial and
forgetfulness the obloquy which hunted her in her last days. Tears such
as are shed for vestal martyrs have been shed for her, and for all her
faults she has the condonation of universal sorrow. Nothing but the evil
magic of sympathetic malice can restore these calumnies, and even then
they quickly fade away in the sunlight of her life. Nothing can touch
her further. Dismiss them with the exorcism of Carlyle, grown strangely
tender and elegiac here. "Breathe not thy poison breath! Evil speech!
That soul is taintless; clear as the mirror sea." She was brought to
trial. The charge against her was, "That there has existed a horrible
conspiracy against the unity and indivisibility of the French people;
that Marie Jeanne Phlipon, wife of Jean Marie Roland has been one of the
abettors or accomplices of that conspiracy." This was the formula by
which this woman was killed, and it simply meant that the Gironde had
existed and that she had sympathized with it.

She was racked with interrogations, and returned to the prison, weeping
at the infernal imputations which they cast upon her womanhood. On the
day of her final trial she dressed herself in spotless white, and let
fall the voluminous masses of her brown, abundant hair. She was asked to
betray her husband by disclosing his hiding place. Her answer is full of
wifely loyalty and dignity--"Whether I know it or not I neither ought
nor will say."

There was absolutely no evidence against her except of her affiliations
with the Girondists. The mockery ended by her condemnation to death
within twenty-four hours, and this Iphigenia of France went doomed back
to her cell. Her return was awaited with dreadful anxiety by her
associates in confinement, who hoped against hope for her safe
deliverance. As she passed through the massive doors, she smiled, and
drew her hand knife-like across her neck, and then there went up a wail
from all assembled there, the wail of titled women, of sacred nuns, of
magdalens and thieves, a dirge of inconsolable sorrow, of humanity
weeping for its best beloved child.

Late in the afternoon of November 8, 1693, the rude cart which was to
bear her to the guillotine received her. She was dressed in white; her
hair fell like a ma