the heart of the spirit of massacre aright, then
Josephine was gifted with, and made the instrument of, a divine
instinct that should claim attention and reverence for all time, even
though her subsequent misdeeds occasionally incline us to avert the
eye.

But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful
Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the
shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led
to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with
calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the
strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not
granted. Then looking at the statue of Liberty, she exclaimed with
fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What things are done in thy name!" and
these throbbing magical words reverberated through France with
wonderful effect. The guilty populace, shuddering with superstitious
awe at the revolting horrors committed in the name of Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, or Death, flashed a thought on the scaffold of
the stainless victim, then on the loathsome prisons that were filled
with suspects, rich and poor, all over France. Then, in time, the
dooming to death of some of the prominent polecats who committed
murder in the name of liberty and fraternity brought Robespierreism to
an end. Robespierre himself was cursed on the scaffold by a woman who
sent him to "hell with the curses of all wives and mothers," and
Samson did the rest. And it may be logically assumed that the parting
words of Jeanne-Marie Philipon at the foot of the scaffold inoculated
the public mind, not only with the horrors that were being committed
in the name of Liberty, but what things were cantishly being said in
its name. I like to think of the stainless lady's inspired phrase
rather than Josephine's tears as being in some degree responsible for
the end of the Reign of Terror.

After her release, Josephine's shattered health was a cause of
anxiety, but this was soon re-established, and she quickly put her
emotions aside and plunged into gaiety with an alacrity that makes
one wonder whether she had more than spasmodic regret at the awful
doom that had come to her husband, who left a somewhat penitent letter
behind, wherein he speaks of his brotherly affection for her, bids her
"goodbye," exhorts her "to be the consoler of those whom she knows he
loves," and "by her care to prolong his life in their hearts."
"Goodbye," says