Hebert, vilest of editors, flung the ordure of Pere Duchesne, vilest of
newspapers, upon this spotless woman, soon to be a saint, and sent the
newsmen to cry the disgusting charges under her prison windows, so that
she heard them rendered in all the villainies of a language whose
under-drains have sources of vileness filthier than any other speech of
man. She did not fear death, but she did fear calumny. She had never
delighted in any public display of her enormous intellectual powers, and
she had never made any such display. She had fixed the sentiment of
Lyons by an anonymous newspaper article, of which sixty thousand copies
had been bought in one day. She had written to the king a letter which
drove her husband from power, and which, when read by the people,
compelled the king to restore him. She had written a dispatch to the
pope, claiming rights for certain French in Rome, in which the sanctity
of his office and the dignity of her country was respected, appealed to,
and asserted. It is said that the state papers were hers which persuaded
William Pitt to abstain so long from intervention in the affairs of
France, in that time of English terror and hope, which furnished
arguments to Fox, and which drew from Burke those efforts of massive
reason and gorgeous imagination which will endure as long as the
language itself. The counsel by which she had disentangled the
perplexity of wisest men had been repeated by them to applauding senates
in tones less eloquent than those by which they had been received, and
triumph had followed.
Pages:
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372