children, their influence will not be overlooked. But above all, they feel confident that you will entrust to them the guidance of those little ones whom misfortune has deprived of maternal care. Let not the charge of having undervalued modesty, and its virtuous effects, be brought against such men as you : for how can modesty be taught except by a woman's voice, how enforced except by her example?* Her address was approved by the Convention, and forwarded with honorable mention to the Committees of Instruction and Public Safety. The growing influence of Robespierre at last began to excite the jealousy of his colleagues, and of the Convention generally. He perceived that an adverse current was setting in against him, and he prepared to stem it. His suspicions were more than ever directed against Tallien, whose movements he caused to be watched by spies. The intelligence thus gained convinced him that mischief was on foot. He was well aware of Tallien's relations with Madame de Fontenay, and he felt that by caging one bird, he might be inflicting a stunning blow on the other. The power he wielded in the Committee of Public Safety enabled him to imprison whom he pleased. He ordered the instant arrest of Madame de Fontenay, who was seized at Versailles, where she happened to be staying, and conducted to La Force. Even had other pretext been wanting, the fact of her bearing an aristocratic name would have justified this measure in the eyes of the committee; but besides this, her merciful doings at Bordeaux were thrown into the scale against her. was suddenly removed to another prison, the Carmes, and more rigorously watched. Among her prison companions here were Joséphine de Beauharnais (afterwards empress), Madame d'Aiguillon, and an Englishwoman, Mrs. Dalrymple Elliott, whose connection with the Duke of Or leans (Egalité) had subjected her to per secution.* Reports of the momentous events passing outside reached Madame de Fontenay at the Carmes. She heard of the theatrical ceremony in honor of a Supreme Being, at which Robespierre had arrogated to himself all the importance. She heard too of that which more nearly concerned herself and her fellow-captives the reconstruction of the Revolutionary Tribu nal. After this had been decreed, the Terror set in with an intensity before unknown. On the flimsiest pretences, or no pretence at all, the "suspected" were flung into prison, summoned thence before the Tribunal, and dismissed untried to the guillotine. According to Thiers, twelve hundred and eighty-five people were condemned to death in the six weeks that followed on the passing of Robespierre's murderous law. During this period, the life of the prisoners was a prolonged agony. To resign themselves to their fate, and await their turn, was all they could do. Madame de Fontenay, however, was not given to despondency. Life was precious to her, and she was not going to lose it without an effort. She still found means of communicating with Tallien, and she now wrote to him, adjuring him to compass Robespierre's destruction, by whatever means even by assassination. Tallien, deeply incensed, appealed to Tallien, indeed, did not need the enthe committee, declaring that the citi- treaties of her he loved to goad him to zeness Fontenay was his wife, that he action. He, and several others in the could answer for her, and that, consider- Convention, were trembling for their own ing the proofs he had given of devotion to heads. Even in the club of the Jacobins, the Revolution, she ought to be restored where a grim harmony had till now existto him. His appeal was rejected; but it ed, there was a serious split. Collot, Bilis said (on authority rather doubtful) that | laud, and Barère, knowing that RobesRobespierre offered the prisoner her lib-pierre intended prescribing them, had erty, if she would state her belief that joined the combination forming against Tallien was an "unworthy citizen" - her reply being that she would "sooner suffer a thousand deaths." Though inwardly tormented by the keenest anxiety on Theresia's account, Tallien assumed an air of unconcern. He hired a lodging near La Force, and, by securing the good-will of the turnkeys, managed to correspond with her. This seems to have been discovered, for she Notre Dame de Thermidor, by Arsène Houssaye. him. It was evident that a desperate struggle for the mastery was at hand. Meantime, even the high-spirited Theresia had begun to lose hope. One morning a turnkey entered the room she occupied, and proceeded to carry off a mattress on which she lay at night. On asking Mrs. Dalrymple Elliott has left an interesting account of her experiences at this time; but unfortunately her narrative breaks off with tantalizing abruptness some time before her meeting with Madame de Fontenay. why this was done, she was told that a | asked but that his adherents should back newly arrived prisoner wanted it, and that him up manfully. In the morning, depu. she would probably have no more need ties crowded to the Convention earlier of it. This was significant enough; but further proof that her last hour was approaching came presently, as the following stinging lines, addressed by her to Tallien, show: I have just learnt that to-morrow I am to appear at the Tribunal - that is to say, that I am to mount the scaffold. This is hardly a fulfilment of a dream I had last night. My dream was that Robespierre was no more, and that the doors of all the prisons were opened; but, thanks to your signal cowardice, there will soon be nobody left in France capable of realizing it.* than usual. Tallien was standing at one of the doors of the hall, and conferring with some of his supporters, when he saw Saint-Just pass in, report in hand, and ascend the tribune. Robespierre and Couthon followed. "Now is our time!" exclaimed Tallien. "Let us go in." And in they went, just as the speaker was beginning to read his report, which was no less than a vehement denunciation of forty deputies,. of whose presence Robespierre was resolved to be rid. Saint-Just had hardly uttered three pompous introductory sentences, when the fiery Tallien interrupted him on a point of order, and shouted out, Having shot this arrow, she submitted with calmness to having her long, black, silky hair cut short at the neck, in prepa-"Fe demande que le voile soit entièrement ration for the descent of the fatal blade. Her companions, Mesdames de Beauharnais and d'Aiguillon, and Mrs. Elliott, did the same. They then, all of them, derived what comfort they could from Tallien's reply, which ran thus: "Be as prudent as I shall be brave, and put aside your fears." déchiré!" These words were greeted by a tempest of applause from all corners of the hall. As it subsided, Billaud-Varennes began an indignant philippic against Robespierre, who, on its conclusion, dashed forward to obtain possession of the tribune. But Tallien would not allow this. Springing up the steps, he continued the attack in spirited sort. silence. But last evening I was present at a meeting of the Jacobins, and I beheld the new Cromwell assembling his forces. Trembling and I am prepared to plunge it in the miscre for my country, I armed myself with a dagger; ant's heart, if the Convention has not the courage to decree his impeachment.* It was the evening of the 26th July, or 8th Thermidor, according to the Revolu A moment since [cried he] I demanded that tionary calendar. Robespierre had on the curtain should be torn aside; and that it that day reappeared at the Convention has been so, is now evident. The conspirators after a protracted absence, and delivered are unmasked. Though well aware that my a speech in which he dwelt on his own life was threatened, have till to-day kept virtues and public services, and complained of the misrepresentation his incorruptible conduct had undergone. He threw out dark hints about the existence of a "criminal coalition" in the the very heart of the Convention, and pointed to the exposure of traitors, and the silencing of faction's voice, as the only means of saving the country. He abstained from naming anybody in particular, though called on to do so by many among his hearers; that duty he left to his colleague Saint-Just, who was to read a report, explaining everything, next day. His harangue was listened to from first to last almost in silence a silence that boded ill for him. Surprised and offended, he hastened, as soon as the sitting was over, to the club of the Jacobins, and poured out his griefs to his friends there. During the night, few members of the Convention can have slept. Mountain and Plain had combined to resist the tyrant's advance. Tallien, feverishly impatient, undertook to lead the attack, and Biographie Universelle. As he spoke, he drew a real dagger from his bosom, and brandished it before the eyes of the assembly. The temper of the house was shown by the deafening cheers which saluted this action-cheers which were repeated at intervals as Tallien poured forth a long-pent-up torrent of invective. He again Robespierre turned livid. strove to ascend the tribune, but it was already occupied by a fresh enemy. He ran backwards and forwards demanding a hearing; but the president's bell, and cries of à bas le tyran, drowned his voice. "Président des assassins!" he screamed; "for the last time, I call on you to allow me to be heard." He looked despairingly around the hall, and met nothing but menacing gestures, or averted Thiers' Histoire de la Révolution, vol. vi., p. 449 glances, while the tumult went on increasing. At length, foaming at the mouth and out of breath, he sank on his seat, conscious perhaps that all was lost. The question of impeachment was put to the vote, and passed unanimously. Before the house rose, Robespierre, and his foremost adherents, had been arrested and led off to prison. The following day, they were dragged through the streets of Paris to the guillotine. The news of Robespierre's defeat and execution quickly reached the prisons, where hundreds of wretched people were awaiting that death which had now overtaken him. Of course, Madame de Fontenay was among the first to be set at liberty. It soon became known that the close of the Reign of Terror was in a manner attributable to her, and the released prisoners, and their friends, named her, in gratitude, Notre Dame de Thermidor. Tallien had, during their residence at Bordeaux, often pressed Madame de Fontenay to marry him; but she had refused, on the ground that her father would not consent. He had now saved her life a second time, and she could not well remain obdurate any longer. They went through the form of a civil marriage to wards the end of the year. To the Terror there succeeded an inevitable reaction. While the tyranny of Robespierre lasted, society had lain, as it were, oppressed by a nightmare. Female influence seemed extinct; the voice of youth was stifled; a people before gay and frivolous had caught something of the gloomy enthusiasm of its rulers. But now that the restraint imposed by fear was removed, poor human nature as serted herself. Nothing but a surfeit of those pleasures from which they had been long cut off, would satisfy the young men and women who followed the lead of the brilliant Madame Tallien. She indeed was the ruling spirit of the scene. She had rivals, it is true. Madame Récamier, the banker's wife, was prettier; Madame de Staël far cleverer; Joséphine de Beauharnais more winning; but the sceptre of authority was hers. Her house became the rallying-point of the Thermidorians. Her desire was [says Thiers] that her husband should play the part of peacemaker, of repairer of the evils of the Revolution. She drew around her all those who had contributed with him to the events of the 9th Thermidor, and tried to win them by flattering them, by assuring them that they had a right to hope for the public gratitude, for oblivion of the past which many of them needed - and, above all, for that power which was now promised to the adversaries, rather than to the partisans, of Terror.* Thorough-going Revolutionists refused to be won over by Madame Tallien's se ductions. Such of them as were persuaded to be present at her concerts and assemblies, accused her of seeking to inaugurate an era of luxury and self-indulgence. This charge was quite justifiable. In the matter of morals, a period of unbounded license had set in. The example set by Madame Tallien herself was by no means in accordance with the fine sentiments contained in her address to the Convention. It was certainly just as well that the orphans of the republic, in whose instruction she had claimed a share, were not obliged to derive their notions of modesty from her. Extravagant costumes were adopted by both sexes. Women attired themselves after a pseudo-classical fashion. Their hair was cut short, and bound by a fillet; their necks and arms were bare; their short-waisted gowns fell in clinging folds, that showed very plainly the shape of the limbs they covered. On their feet were sandals instead of shoes. Madame Tallien, it is well known, wore jewelled rings on her toes in as glittering profusion as on her fingers. As for the young men who shone in her train-the jeunesse dorée, as Fréron taught the republicans to call them - nothing could well have been more ludicrous than their foppishness. The coats they wore had enormous collars, devised as though in scorn of the guillotine, and tails which, beginning somewhere between the shoulderblades, descended almost to the heels. Their chins - nay, the very points of their noses were buried in voluminous cravats of white lawn. Except a couple of tresses a foot long, dangling by either cheek, their hair was combed to the back of the head, and fell in a tightly plaited tail. They spoke lispingly, and without rolling the letter r. They carried huge eye-glasses, and stout clubs loaded with lead. Notwithstanding their tails and cravats, they were courageous when their blood was up; and in many a pitched battle with the Jacobins, they broke skulls in abundance with their clubs, besides getting grievously mauled themselves. There was a perfect rage for dancing among these merveilleux and merveil leuses. To entertainments called bals des victimes, none but those who had lost a Histoire de la Révolution, vol. vii., p. 120. relation by the guillotine were admitted; | affair at Quiberon exposed him to fresh and they, wearing a band of crape around censure. Newspapers, both royalist and the left arm, hopped and whirled to the republican, attacked him, the former as a memory of the dead! regicide, the latter as a traitor to the true cause. Madame Tallien's exertions in favor of moderation political, that is — were, on the whole, successful. The complete control she exercised over Tallien enabled her to perform as many acts of benevolence now, as previously at Bordeaux. She had numbers of unhappy beings, still lingering in prison, released. For others, who had been ruined by the Revolution, she obtained restitution, in part, of their property. She had a hand also in most of the reactionary measures passed, such as the suppression of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the closing of the Jacobin Club, and the condemnation of the monsters Fouquier-Tinville, Carrier, and Lebon. In the street in which she lived, the Rue Saint-Georges, there were still to be seen such ferocious inscriptions as "L'égalité, la fraternité, la république, ou la mort!" She sallied out one fine day, escorted by some of her "gilded youth," and had them all removed. At a dinner which she gave to commemorate the 9th Thermidor, the guests consisted mainly of members of the Convention of widely different opinions. As the evening advanced, words ran so high on politics that the hostess, to use her own phrase, "feared it would end by their flinging the plates at each others' heads." To calm the storm, she rose and proposed the following toast: "A l'oubli des erreurs, au pardon des injures, à la réconciliation de tous les Français!" These words had the desired effect on those present, and in return, the health of Notre Dame de Thermidor was drunk with enthusiasm. In the cloud of merited discredit which overtook him, Madame Tallien found her. self involved. There was much in her own past life for which she had reason to feel shame; but in the crimes committed by him she had no share. Society frowned on her, partly on account of the laxity of her moral conduct; but just as much be cause she bore the hateful name of Tallien. Her title of Notre Dame de Thermidor, of which she was not a little proud, was taken from her, and she heard herself styled Notre Dame de Septembre - a cruel and unjust thrust which wounded her deeply. Of the affronts offered her, we find an instance in a letter from Mr. Henry Swinburne, who was in Paris in November, 1796. He went, one evening, to a ball given by Madame de Valence. Presently, Madame Tallien was nounced. Upon this, all the other ladies hastily took their departure. an Can you imagine such folly in their circumstances and misfortunes? [exclaims he]. I will venture to say that there was scarcely one but had directly or indirectly asked, or will soon ask, a favor of that woman, whose greatest crimes perhaps are her beauty and her riches.* He saw her again, soon afterwards, at a subscription-ball at the Hôtel de Richelieu, when her presence did not cause such a flutter. She wore, it seems, "a wig en tête de mouton sticking up behind, interwoven with pearls and diamonds." Her dress was a combination of gold and poppy-color. "She looks sometimes dejected," writes Mr. Swinburne. "The women of character, though belonging to the republic, do not associate with her." At last this state of things became unendurable. Madame Tallien had always despised her husband, whose character was really as mean as his origin. He could be of no further use to her now: indeed, her social disgrace she attributed solely to her connection with him. She therefore spurned him from her presence. It wanted but this to complete his extinction. Madame Tallien had made up her mind that her husband was to play a distinguished rôle in public affairs; but in this she was disappointed. Tallien's day, politically speaking, was nearly over. At the beginning of the turmoil now subsiding, he had struggled, as had other up starts, to the surface. The assistance he lent in overthrowing Robespierre gained him power and prominence for a period. But the time had now come for him to sink again. During the trials of Carrier and Lebon, attention was naturally drawn to the atrocities by which his own pro- In 1798, when Napoleon was about to consulship at Bordeaux had at first been set out for the conquest of Egypt, Tallien marked. Afterwards, while sitting in the was permitted to make one of a number of Council of Five Hundred, under the Di- savants accompanying the expedition. rectory, he was railed at by Royalists for In Egypt he remained three years. his share in the massacres of September, 1792. His subsequent conduct in the • Swinburne's Courts of Europe. Whether he was really competent to study the pyramids, or elucidate inscriptions, it is impossible to say. He probably found a more congenial occupation in editing a journal - the Decade Egyptienne. Some disagreement with General Menou, who was appointed commander-in-chief in succession to Kléber, led to his dismissal, towards the close of 1801. The vessel in which he sailed for France, was taken by an English privateer in mid-ocean, and brought to England. He came to London, where, to the disgrace of the Whig party, the Whigs made much of him, and invited him to routs and banquets. His return to Paris was nothing short of a shock to Madame Tallien. The year after their marriage (1795) she had presented him with a daughter; but during his absence in Egypt, she had given birth to three other children, of paternity unacknowledged. To the returned savant she would have nothing to say; and to prove herself in earnest, she applied for, and obtained, a divorce from him, possibly on the ground of the incompatibility of their tempers. This done, she treated him with distant civility. To the sort of terms they were on in 1802, we find a reference in the "Life" of Lord Campbell, who writes from Paris in September of that year: Our visit to Tallien was a very curious one. We talked very coolly with him concerning the massacres of September; but nothing astonished me so much as the conversation that took place about his wife. You know she divorced him, and has since lived with a variety of other men. Yet he talked of her beauty, of her wit, of her amiable manners, of having been calling upon her, and of doing her the pleasure to introduce me to her acquaint ance. Even this semblance of friendship ceased after a time, and the humiliated Tallien retired into utter obscurity.* played during dinner; afterwards a clever ventriloquist entertained the company by his "imitation of a Revolutionary Com mittee in the corner of the room." Fox's secretary, Mr. Trotter, from whom we learn these particulars, writes of the hostess: “She is a most lovely woman, something upon a large scale, and of the most fascinating manners." He adds, "She is rather in disgrace at court, where decorum and morals are beginning to be severely attended to." It is plain that Mr. Trotter was of opinion that the court had made a mistake in renouncing so bright an ornament as la Cabarrus, on any consideration. In 1805, the Comte de Caraman, who for many months had been hovering around Theresia, like a moth around a lamp, made her an offer of marriage. The knowledge that she had divorced two husbands (both of them living) did not alarm him. She indeed, it is to be supposed, thought it high time to turn over a new leaf, and be respectable, for she accepted him, and they were married without delay. Soon after, by the death of his father, M. de Caraman succeeded to the title of Prince de Chimay, and the possession of extensive landed property in Belgium. On settling down at her new home-a splendid ancestral château the one desire of the Princesse de Chimay was that, as far as she was concerned, the past should be buried forever. But this was not so easy to effect. The past refused to be buried. She was reminded, with distressing frequency, of her existence since the outbreak of the Revolution. Her husband, by right of birth, held a high post at the court of the Netherlands; but she was not received there, nor would the queen hear of her being presented. So was it at Paris, where she and the prince went every winter. The doors of the Tuileries were closed against her; and when her old friend, the empress Joséphine, saw her, she turned her head the other way by order of Napoleon. Later in the same year, Charles James Fox visited Paris, and Madame Tallien (or Madame Cabarrus, as she preferred calling herself, since divorcing Tallien) | Of course a woman, such as she was, gave a grand dinner in his honor, the ex- could muster a court of her own, wherever patriated Irish rebel, Arthur O'Connor, she might be. At the Château de Chibeing one of the guests. French horns may, she reined supreme. There guests succeeded guests. She found most pleasThe principal remaining events of his life are well ure in literary and artistic society. The known. Fouché in 1809 obtained for him the consulship of Alicante. On his way thither he was seen by author Chateaubriand, the singer Malithe Duchesse d'Abrantès, who describes him as a per- bran, the composers Cherubini and Auber, son of lowering aspect, and atrabilious complexion. He had not been long at his new post when he caught were among those who enjoyed her hospithe yellow fever, and in the course of a dangerous ill-tality. Cherubini, finding his invention ness lost the sight of an eye. The restoration of the flagging, had abandoned music and taken Bourbons deprived him of his place, and in 1814 he was once more in Paris. Here he sank into extreme pov- to the study of botany. He was however erty, subsisting mostly on charity till his death in 1820. persuaded by the princess to resume his |