MDLLE DERAISME.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3137, 18 July 1881, Page 4

MDLLE DERAISME.

A Parisian correspondent sends the following of Mdlle. Maria Deraisme, the heroine of the recent anti-Clerical Congress': —" Mdlle, Maria Deraisme was the lioness of the platform. She spoke on a great number of questions, and in every instance with ability. If she had charm or genial warmth she would be the greatest oratress in the world. Wanting both, she is inferior to many Quaker ladies I have heard discourse at meeting-houses. Heat Mdlle. Deraisme is endowed with ; but it does not show itself in flame, and its intensity scorches. In argumentative power there is no orator in the French Chamber the superior of this lady. There is a tinge of acrimony in her style, and a sub-acidity which gives it zest. Her figure is slightly awry, her face is long and pointed, and her forehead wide, high, prominent, and very smooth. It rises above pencilled eyebrows and bright and feverish hazel eyes. Mdlle. Deraisme is a woman of some fortune; keeps a carriage, has a town and country house, and will never marry as long as the sta'us of the married woman is based on the ('rientalism of the Christian religion. St. Paul, who was the exponent to the Greek and Eoman churches of Oriental ideas on women, is the pet hatred of Mdlle. Deraisme. There is not a grain of eccentricity in the manner or the method of this oratress when she is on the platform or on her feet at a banquet. She dresses richly and in excellent taste, wears sparkling rings on her slender fingers, flirts a fan worthy to figure in an art museum, gesticulates with ease and sobriety, and astonishes by her intellectual force. If she only sacrificed to the Graces —but that sbe will never do—she would be a peerless speaker."