that they could proceed more quickly than men, that they could walk to the end of the world. Some, accustomed to a sedentary life, and others to a religious one (like the Abbess of Fontevrand), willingly embraced in imagination the unknown, yet free and warlike life of a crusade. If the Revolution was so poorly fought by men, why was it not conquered by women, if God wished it?

The aunt of one of my friends, until then a nun, was asked what she hoped for in following this great confused army, where she would run so many dangers. She martially answered: "To make the Convention tremble."

A great number of the Vendean women believed that the less impassioned men would have great need of being sustained and aroused by their energy. They wanted to make their husbands and lovers take the right direction, and to give

courage to their priests.

Crossing the Loire,

there were very few boats, and, whilst waiting, they employed their time in confessing. The priests listened to them, seated on the hillocks along the bank.

The performance was disturbed by some stray

One of the

shots from the republican cannon. confessors fled. His penitent caught him: "My father! absolution!" "You have it, my daughter." But she would not let go of him, but holding by his cassock, made him remain under the fire.

Notwithstanding their intrepidity, these ladies occasioned very great embarrassment to the army. Besides fifty carriages, into which they crowded, there were thousands, in carts, on horseback, on foot, and every way. Many dragged children along. Several were enceinte. They soon found the men to be different from what they were at their departure. The virtues of the Vendeans proceeded from habit; away from home, they became demoralized. The confidence in chiefs and priests disappeared; the first were suspected of wavering. As to the priests, their disputes, the villany of the Bishop of Agra, the intrigues of Bernier, their manners, until then hidden, all appeared cynical. The army lost its faith in them. There was no medium; devots yesterday, suddenly doubters to-day; many respected nothing. The Vendean women cruelly paid for the part they had had in the civil war.

Without speaking of the drownings which followed after the battle of Maus, some thirty women were instantly shot. Many others, it is true, were saved by the soldiers, who, giving their arms to the trembling ladies, drew them from the fray. As many as possible were hidden in the families of the town. Marceau, in his cabriolet, saved a young lady who had lost all her friends. She cared little for life, and did nothing to aid her liberator; she was judged, and perished. Some married those who saved them; but these marriages turned out badly; the implacable bitterness soon returning.

A young officer of Maus, named Goubin, found, on the evening of the battle, a poor young lady, hiding herself behind a door, not knowing where to go. He himself, a stranger in the town, and not knowing of any safer house, took her to his. This unfortunate creature, shivering with cold and fear, he placed in his own bed. An under-clerk, with six hundred francs, he had a cabinet, chair, and bed, and nothing more. For eight nights in succession he slept in his chair. Then fatigued and sick, he asked and obtained her permission to sleep with her dressed. A fortunate chance

enabled the young lady to return to her parents' house. He found that she was rich, and of a noble family, and (what is more astonishing) had a memory. She found means to have Goubin told that she wanted to marry him: "No, Mademoiselle; I am a republican; the blues ought to remain blues!"

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CHAPTER XXXII.

THE REACTION BY WOMEN IN THE HALF-CENTURY WHICH FOLLOWED THE REVOLUTION.

AFTER the 9th Thermidor, several things hastened the reaction:—

The great strictness of the revolutionary government, the tiresomeness of an order of things which imposed the greatest sacrifices on the feelings and heart. Great was the outburst of blind and irresistible pity.

We must not be astonished if women were the principal agents of the reaction.

The general carelessness of costume, the adoption of the language and habits of the people, the open breasts of the time had been branded by the name of impudence. In reality, the republican authority, in its growing severity, was unanimous in imposing, as a guarantee of civism, austerity of manners.