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 he; “for the last time in my life I press you and my children to my breast.”

These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress the widow with any apparent interest.  The picture recorded of their tragic married life is not sweet.  Neither lived up to the great essentials which assure happiness.

Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering round rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in Les Carmes they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General Hoche, were too familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count with that of a young lady suspect.  The truth of such accusations seems highly improbable, and they may well be regarded as malicious slander.  It is not unlikely that Josephine was on friendly