Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/45

Rh “Justice!” she exclaimed; "were justice done I should not be here. But if I am destined for the scaffold, I shall walk to it with the same firmness and tranquillity with which I now go to prison. I never feared anything but guilt.”

During the five months of imprisonment that followed her arrest, although surrounded by all the horrors of the Revolution, and though tortured by her anxiety in regard to her husband and child, she kept up before her fellow-prisoners a dignified, courageous deportment, cheering and comforting the faint-hearted and despairing with rare serenity and heroic calmness.

When alone, however, the feelings of the wife and mother triumphed at times over her philosophical endurance, and she wept with passionate, womanly vehemence. But of these yieldings to despondency her fellow-sufferers were allowed to see no trace, and beheld in her only the Spartan firmness of a soul at peace with itself.

Knowing how uncertain, or, rather, how