I am sure you will admire with me the—­as one might say—­bicephalous ability of this old nun, who has managed to keep well with the nobility and the secular clergy on the one hand, and on the other to lead with her wand the radical party, their sworn enemy.  Admirable for her charity and her lucid intellect, respected throughout the region as a saint, exposed during the Revolution to a dreadful persecution, which she bore with rare courage, one can easily understand her close relations with the upper and conservative classes; but why she should be equally welcome to democrats and to the subverters of order would seem, at first, to pass all belief.

The power which she undoubtedly wields over the revolutionary party took its rise, madame, in a struggle which they formerly had together.  In 1793 that amiable party were bent on cutting her throat.  Driven from her convent, and convicted of harboring a “refractory” priest, she was incarcerated, arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death.  The matter was reported to Danton, a native of Arcis, and then a member of the National Convention.  Danton had known Mother Marie-des-Anges; he thought her the most virtuous and enlightened woman he had ever met.  Hearing of her condemnation, he was furiously angry, and wrote, as they said in those days, a high-horse letter to the Revolutionary tribunal, and, with an authority no human being in Arcis would have dared to contest, he ordered a reprieve.

The same day he mounted the tribune, and after speaking in general terms of the “bloody boobies” who by their foolish fury compromised the future of the Revolution, he told who and what Mother Marie-des-Anges really was; he dwelt on her marvellous aptitude for the training of youth, and he presented a scheme in which she was placed at the head of a “grand national gynaecium,” the organization of which was to be made the subject of another decree.  Robespierre, who would have thought the intellect of an Ursuline nun only a more imperative reason for bringing her under the revolutionary axe, was absent that day from the session, and the motion was voted with enthusiasm.  The head of Mother Marie-des-Anges being indispensably necessary to the carrying out of this decree of the sovereign people, she kept it on her shoulders, and the headsman put aside his machine.

Though the other decree, organising the Grand National Gynaecium, was lost sight of in the many other duties that devolved upon the Convention, the excellent nun carried it out after her fashion.  Instead of something grand and Greek and national, she started in Arcis a secular girl’s-school, and as soon as a little quiet was restored to the minds of the community, pupils flocked in from all quarters.  Under the Empire Mother Marie-des-Anges was able to reconstitute her Ursuline sisterhood, and the first act of her restored authority was a recognition of gratitude.  She decreed that on every year on the 5th of April, the anniversary of Danton’s death, a service should be held in the chapel of the convent for the repose of his soul.  To those who objected to this edict she answered:  “Do you know many for whom it is more necessary to implore God’s mercy?”