Having thus superintended the education of nearly all the daughters of the best houses in the province, it is easy to imagine the influence she has acquired among the aristocracy,--an influence she probably intends to use in the electoral struggle she has promised to take part in.
On the other hand, it appears that this really extraordinary woman is the sovereign disposer of the votes of the democratic party in the arrondissement of Arcis.Until now, the existence of that party in Arcis has been considered problematical; but it is actually, by its nature, active and stirring, and our candidate proposes to present himself under its banner.Evidently, therefore, the support the good mother has promised will be useful and important.
I am sure you will admire with me the--as one might say--bicephalous ability of this old nun, who has managed to keep well with the nobility and the secular clergy on the one hand, and on the other to lead with her wand the radical party, their sworn enemy.Admirable for her charity and her lucid intellect, respected throughout the region as a saint, exposed during the Revolution to a dreadful persecution, which she bore with rare courage, one can easily understand her close relations with the upper and conservative classes; but why she should be equally welcome to democrats and to the subverters of order would seem, at first, to pass all belief.
The power which she undoubtedly wields over the revolutionary party took its rise, madame, in a struggle which they formerly had together.
In 1793 that amiable party were bent on cutting her throat.Driven from her convent, and convicted of harboring a "refractory" priest, she was incarcerated, arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death.The matter was reported to Danton, a native of Arcis, and then a member of the National Convention.Danton had known Mother Marie-des-Anges; he thought her the most virtuous and enlightened woman he had ever met.Hearing of her condemnation, he was furiously angry, and wrote, as they said in those days, a high-horse letter to the Revolutionary tribunal, and, with an authority no human being in Arcis would have dared to contest, he ordered a reprieve.
The same day he mounted the tribune, and after speaking in general terms of the "bloody boobies" who by their foolish fury compromised the future of the Revolution, he told who and what Mother Marie-des-Anges really was; he dwelt on her marvellous aptitude for the training of youth, and he presented a scheme in which she was placed at the head of a "grand national gynaecium," the organization of which was to be made the subject of another decree.Robespierre, who would have thought the intellect of an Ursuline nun only a more imperative reason for bringing her under the revolutionary axe, was absent that day from the session, and the motion was voted with enthusiasm.The head of Mother Marie-des-Anges being indispensably necessary to the carrying out of this decree of the sovereign people, she kept it on her shoulders, and the headsman put aside his machine.
Though the other decree, organising the Grand National Gynaecium, was lost sight of in the many other duties that devolved upon the Convention, the excellent nun carried it out after her fashion.
Instead of something grand and Greek and national, she started in Arcis a secular girl's-school, and as soon as a little quiet was restored to the minds of the community, pupils flocked in from all quarters.Under the Empire Mother Marie-des-Anges was able to reconstitute her Ursuline sisterhood, and the first act of her restored authority was a recognition of gratitude.She decreed that on every year on the 5th of April, the anniversary of Danton's death, a service should be held in the chapel of the convent for the repose of his soul.To those who objected to this edict she answered: "Do you know many for whom it is more necessary to implore God's mercy?"Under the Restoration, the celebration of this service became a sort of scandal; but Mother Marie-des-Anges would never hear of suppressing it, and the great veneration which has always surrounded her obliged these cavillers to hold their tongues.This courageous obstinacy had its reward, under the government of July.To-day Mother Marie-des-Anges is high in court favor, and there is nothing she cannot obtain in the most august regions of power; but it is only just to add that she asks nothing,--not even for her charities, for she provides the means to do them nobly by the wise manner in which she administers the property of her convent.
Her gratitude, thus openly shown to the memory of the great revolutionist, has been of course to the revolutionary party a potent recommendation, but not the only one.
In Arcis the leader of the advanced Left is a rich miller named Laurent Goussard, who possesses two or three mills on the river Aube.
This man, formerly a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis and the intimate friend of Danton, was the one who wrote to the latter telling him that the axe was suspended over the throat of the ex-superior of the Ursulines.This, however, did not prevent the worthy sans-culotte from buying up the greater part of the convent property when it was sold under the name of national domain.