WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

TO WOMEN, MOTHERS, AND DAUGHTERS.

MARCH 1, 1854.

THIS book appears at a time when the European war, interrupted for forty years, closing all books, leaves events to take their place.

And how do you read the papers? You look in the corner to find the names of your sons and your brothers, or, higher up, under the line where your husbands, perhaps, will be to-morrow!

Your mind is engrossed by news; your ear awaits with anxiety the sound of the distant cannon; you listen with inquietude for the first blow, which, solemn and profound, sounds for the great religious war of the East and West. A great war, in truth, and which has no limits. Judging from the place, time, and character, it will go on

increasing. It is the war of two sects, O Woman! of two symbols and faiths, ours and those of the past. Its definite character, yet obscured by political surmises, will reveal itself little by little.

Yes, whatever may be the equivocating and base-born features under which this terrible offspring of the times develops itself, whose name rings the death-knell of so many hundred thousand men—it is war-the war of the barbarous Christianity of the East against the social faith of the civilized West. The enemy, from the Kremlin, has frankly avowed it. The new struggle presents the sinister aspect of Moloch defending Jesus.

At the moment of concentrating our entire existence, fortune, and lives to this great occurrence, the most serious which has ever been, every one ought to tighten his girdle, collect his strength, and look into his mind, into his house, to see if he is sure of finding there that unity which makes victory.

What would be this external war if man had war in his house, a deafening and withering war of tears, mute sighs, or a sorrowful silence? If the promise of the past, seated at his fireside, surrounds him with opposition, with those ca

ressing tears which rend his heart asunder, and hold his left arm, when he should strike with both hands?

"Tell me, then, beloved wife! since we are yet together at the family board, where I may not be always, tell me, before the savage deed to which fortune leads me, will your heart always be with me? You are surprised, you vow it in your tears. Do not swear, I believe all. But I know your inward struggle. What will you do to-morrow at the time when the actual event will soon conduct us far from here?

"At this table, where we are together to-day, and where you will be alone to-morrow, strengthen your mind. Remember the heroic history of our mothers; read what they did and were willing to do; the entire devotion and the glorious faith of '89, which, in a union so profound, erected the altar of the future.

"An epoch fruitful in great acts and sufferings, but connected by unity in the struggle and community in death! An age when hearts beat in such oneness of idea, that Love was only for their country.

"The struggle is greater to-day; it embraces