During this period, by one of those chances that appear like the premeditated vengeances of destiny, she recognised in Paris the young Belgian gentleman who had seduced and abandoned her.  Her look told him how great was his danger, and he sought to avert it by imploring her pardon.  “My pardon,” said she; “at what price can you purchase it?  My innocence gone—­my family lost to me—­my brothers and sisters pursued in their own country by the jeers and sarcasms of their kindred; the malediction of my father—­my exile from my native land—­my enrolment amongst the infamous caste of courtezans; the blood with which my days have been and will be stained; that imperishable curse attached to my name, instead of that immortality of virtue which you have taught me to doubt.  It is for this that you would purchase my forgiveness.  Do you know any price on earth capable of purchasing it?” The young man made no reply.  Theroigne had not the generosity to forgive him, and he perished in the massacres of September.  In proportion as the Revolution became more bloody, she plunged deeper into it.  She could no longer exist, without the feverish excitement of public emotion.  However, her early leaning to the Girondist party again displayed itself, and she also wished to stay the progress of the Revolution.  But there were women whose power was superior even to her own.  These women, called the furies of the guillotine, stripped the belle Liegoise of her attire, and publicly flogged her on the terrace of the Tuileries, on the 31st of May.  This punishment, more terrible than death, turned her brain, and she was conveyed to a mad-house, where she lived twenty years, which were but one long paroxysm of fury.  Shameless and blood-thirsty in her delirium, she refused to wear any garments, as a souvenir of the outrage she had undergone.  She dragged herself, only covered by her long white hair, along the flags of her cell, or clung with her wasted hands to the bars of the window, from whence she addressed an imaginary people, and demanded the blood of Suleau.

XII.

After Theroigne de Mericourt came other demagogues, less widely known, but already celebrated in their own quartiers, such as Rossignol, the working goldsmith; Brierre, a wine-seller; Gonor, the conqueror of the Bastille; Jourdan, surnamed Coupe-tete; the famous Polish Jacobin, Lozouski, afterwards buried by the people at the Carrousel; and Henriot, afterwards the confidential general of the convention.  As the columns penetrated into Paris, they were swelled by new groups, that poured forth from the crowded streets that open on the boulevards and the quays.  At each influx of these new recruits, a shout of joy burst from the columns, the military bands struck up the air of the Ca Ira, the Marseillaise of assassins, whilst the insurgents sang the chorus, and brandished their arms threateningly at the windows of those suspected of being aristocrates.