Lucile Desmoulins participant of French Revolution
Life and Writings
Lucile Duplessis Desmoulins was born in Paris in 1770, the daughter of Claude-Etienne Laridon-Duplessis, an official of the French Treasury, and Anne-Françoise-Marc Bosdeveix (who went by "Annette"). She had one sister, Adèle Duplessis, born in 1774, who some sources have claimed was briefly engaged to Maximilien Robespierre. 
Lucile spent her childhood and young adulthood in Paris and on her family's farm in Bourg-la-Reine. She kept several diaries, beginning in 1788. She also authored numerous poems, prose works, and short stories, none of which were published during her lifetime. Though many of her writings have been lost, her diaries from the summers of 1788 and 1789 and from June 1792 to February 1793 have survived.
Lucile’s writings reveal a sharp political awareness and strongly held views. In 1788, she wrote:What a sad fate it is to be a woman. How much she has to suffer – slavery, tyranny, that is her share. Yet they [masc.] want us to adore them. I believe that they would suffer us to erect altars to them and prostrate ourselves before them with censer in hand, asking them for forgiveness for the evils they make us suffer. To hear them speak, we are celestial beings, nothing is equal to us. Ah! may they deify us less and leave us free!Lucile was a fervent supporter of the Revolution. In 1789, she wrote of Marie Antoinette: "Fear the example of queens who, like you, do evil: Some have perished in misery, others have borne their heads to the scaffold. This may be the fate that awaits you.”  
She also wrote a work entitled What I Would Do if I Were in Her Place, in which she envisions being queen and immolating herself on a great pyre. One of Lucile’s short stories, La Volière, tells of a young girl named Cloé who collected nests of baby birds she found in the woods and raised them in an aviary. One day, she returned home to find the aviary had been opened and the birds had escaped and flown away. The story concludes with an interaction between Cloé and her elderly neighbor: “These ingrates! what had they to desire? I shared with them the bread that was given to me for myself alone. I had them eat out of my hand. How faithfully I went to the garden to gather fruits fallen from the tree for them! I spent whole hours looking for the fresh worms they loved so much for them! [...] During the winter, when the snow covers the fields, where will they seek refuge? They will die of cold and hunger.... If the birdcatcher has not already trapped them to give them to cruel children, or else the inhuman hunter.... O my poor little birds, I pity you! Alas! you will miss me. Cruel parents, it is you who cause us all these evils.”
An elderly shepherdess, her neighbor, had heard the lamentations of young Cloé. Touched by her good heart, she came and said to her, embracing her: “Console yourself, my dear child, do not cry over the fate of your lost birds; all your caresses, all your cares would not have made them happier."
"My good lady, what is it they could have lacked? I might have given it to them."