Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/497

454 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S TALISMAN.

before had fired the hearts of those rude, impetuous women, not cruel then, but who afterward leaped into the fight, unsexed, fierce, wicked female tigers, who, having tasted blood, lost forever afterward all relish for the milk of human kindness. It was this awful element that the genius of Madame Gosner aroused in the heart of France; it was this which cast eternal shame upon one of the greatest nations of the earth; it was this which makes all true and refined women tremble when they are called upon to plunge into the arena of politics, or the strife of nations.

True, the women of France had, perhaps, more excuse for revolt than those of any other country. Misery, hardship, and injustice, drove them into a storm of politics with terrible violence. With a single leap they sprung out of absolute subjugation into a wild chaos of ideas. In riot, rapine, and bloodthirstiness, they shamed the coarsest men by their unbridled excesses. While violating all law, and trampling human rights under foot, they sang pans to liberty, and inaugurated their terrible orgies with declarations of equal rights and eternal brotherhood. Such were the women who, claiming political equality with men, and superiority over monarchs, flung all the sweet attributes of the sex behind them in the turmoil of politics, and in a subsequent carnival of blood forgot that they had ever been wives and mothers.

How could it be otherwise? The woman who once flings aside all the beautiful entanglements of home, and assumes duties which never were intended for her; who gives free rein to the coarser passions, plunges into such fierce struggles as brutalize men, and still expect to return at any period to the gentle immunities of womanhood, knows little of the destiny she is carving for herself.

Imagine the women of France going home from a fierce debate at the clubs to caress their little ones, and teach them their prayers at night; could they touch the smiling mouths of innocent children with lips hot with smouldering hate, or curl their silken tresses over fingers wet with human blood? Could they, without an outrage to humanity, permit their little ones to kneel in holy prayer at the feet which had just been treading down saw-dust around the guillotine? After partaking of such scenes, could any woman ever expect to go back to her sweet motherhood in the shelter of home? No, no; the quiet life, the care of childhood, the love of strong men, are not for such women. Let them once forsake the shelter of domestic life, the blessedness of home, and half that is valuable in existence lies behind them. When they enter the turmoil of moral or physical war, return is impossible; a great gulf has been dug between them, and the blessedness of womanhood, which can never be repassed.

In her despair, Madame Gosner thought nothing of the great moral effect her action might produce. She had, for years, been urged forward by one grand womanly motive-the freedom of her husband. If this object had sometimes led her into strange positions, great love had always sanctified them. She had endured poverty, humiliation, sickness, with the strength of a martyr, and in all things had protected the delicacy of her child. Even in the depths of her sorrow she had found time to educate this girl and fill her mind with all the refinements which make womanhood beautiful. But now, in the madness of her despair, she forgot everything but her wrongs, and the agony of a slain hope. What was that miserable shadow of a home to her? What was there on the broad earth but misery and desolation for a woman so bereaved, and so cruelly dealt by? In her anguish she felt a yearning sympathy for the thousands and thousands of women who haunted the market-places and streets of Paris with an eternal craving for bread written on their half-famished faces; for the earth, as well as the people of the earth, had, for two successive years, been cruel to the poor; but of her very womanhood, this long- suffering matron ceased to be womanly. Was she insane? Had one idea preyed so heavily on her mind that it swept all other thoughts before it?

Be this as it may, from the hour of that terrible disappointment, Madame Gosner, the woman, was lost in the patriot. In gaining freedom for her husband, she took upon herself the gigantic task of giving liberty to France. This spirit animated her whole being; it inflamed her speeches, it aroused her in the dead of night, and filled her dreams with burning pictures of liberty. She had but two possessions left- her own talents and her daughter. In the depths of her soul she devoted both to her country. All hopes of individual happiness became a thing of the past to her.

With Monsieur Jaque the ideas of liberty, as they were given forth to the people, like an inspiration, from the tongue and pen of Mirabeau, had consolidated themselves into a passion; but, like Mirabeau, he still clung to the monarchy, and hoped to liberalize France by making its king the enemy of his own power. Brought up and educated as he had been, day by day, with his foster-brother,