A DANGEROUS WOMAN.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2211, 28 March 1881, Page 3

A DANGEROUS WOMAN.

The writer of “ Continental Goesip” in th "Sjdney Morning Herald ” says: A very dangerous virago is just now making some noise in Paris, both through the extravagant violence of the speeches she is delivering and also through the speculation thus excited concerning what may be expected should she and her friends succeed in getting the whip-hand over Paris, as they hope to do. The virago in question is the Louise Michel, one of the loading Furies of the Commune, recently amnestied, and now spending her time and strength in stirring up all who will listen to her to deeds of blood, which she declares to be necessary for avenging “ the martyrs ” slain by M. Thiers, and bringing in the social millenium with the flames of petroleum to add splendour to the scene. After her late triumphsntreturn_ to the scene of her Communistic enormities, her partisans dubbed her “ the Angel of the Commune.” an allusion, possibly, to “exterminating angels," in whose activities so many people believe, especially in Catholic countries. But within a few days, oddly enough, the newspaper vendors, when their prints contain anything about this woman, cry, “ The Queen of Montmartre 1 ” This “ Queen ” (a comedy queen now, but alas 1 it may be a tragedy queen some of these days) was born in 1830, her birth being a scandal in the region of “ the upper crust,” her mother being a beautiful soullery-maid in the family of her father, a very grand grandee j and the child, thus unhappily ushered into the world, was pityingly taken to, and brought up by a noble family. Louisa was clover, and profited by the educational advantages that were generously given her. She became an accomplished musician, and not only wrote verses, but prompted the verse making of illustrious votaries of the muse. Victor Hugo sent her a copy of his “ Notre Dame de Paris” with a dedication, and Lamartine declared her to be a “daughter of our country,” and so on till Mademoiselle Louise grew intoxicated with the praises showered on her. But “ a chango came o’er the spirit of her dream," when, in 1850, her noble protectress, who had survived her husband by several years, also died, and then she loft to her adopted child all that remained to her from the wreck of a formerly brilliant fortune, some £4BO, Louise soott found herself in difficulties, and she accordingly took out a certificate as governess, in order to gain her bread by teaching. But her ill-balanced brain could hardly be expected to work well in harness. A clerk in some ironworks desired to marry her, but she scornfully rejected his advances. She felt herself to be above so prosaic a settlement in life, came to the conclusion that she had a vocation, and that a glorious martyrdom awaited her in the capital; so to the capital she came. She had sold off her furniture in Audelon Court, and, with the proceeds furnished some rooms in the Rue Cadet, and set up a school, wbioh did not flourish. It wasjust at the moment when political clubs were being founded, and Lonise Michel was soon in the thick of the medley, haranguing, lecturing, and stirring up the slumbering elements of revolution that were destined to bring in the Commune civil war, the sanguinary reprisals of Satory, the consignment to Noumea, the triumphant return of a few innocent victims of revolutionary misleading, and of all the tens of thousands of abominable ruffians and galley-birds now let loose in the midst of the community by the amnesty, and what else P A question that will be more readily answered a few years hence than now. Since her return to France, Louise Michel is the adopted head and front of the most advanced Radical party. She openly urges the necessity of killing off everybody great and small who is not prepared to adopt her plan of “ improving" the world, not only urging her hearers to assassinate, but declaring her determination to be first in the work of killing. While she lived in quiet ease with the aged couple who so generously brought her up in their quiet chateau, had some country gentleman asked for her hand,she would gladly have accepted him; the smallest title of baronne, or vicomtesse, the smallest home of her own among the relatively aristocratic people with whom she mingled, would have satisfied her ambition and have kept her quiet; she would probably have been found signing addresses to the Count de Ohamboid and boldly defending the doors of convents. But she missed her opportunity and has gone steadily down-bill. Saturated with blood, powder, and petroleum, there is no returning to ordinary life for her. She hate* the world in which she has uo legitimate place, and would fain revenge all her vanished hopes and dreams, all her vexations, anxieties, and mortifications on the society in which she has no recognised place. Her utterance* would almost suggest the doubt as to her sanity, but there is method in her madness, and it will be an evil day for Paris and for Franco should she and her followers ever succeed in seizing, even for a week or a day, on the reins of power.