Morning journal and courier., 1882-12-27
Louise Michel.

| Louise Michel appears at meetings dressed 1 in black from head to foot, and delivers long monotonous tirades against property and the l 6o4ayeoisie, which are terribly effective just | because of their monotony. She has no log | ic to speak of she is as incapable of 8 def 1 hilton as Isaiah her voice is low and sweet her manner is the manner of Sister of Mer. 1 cy, while the matter is that one of the thirst. | jest bloodhounds of the convention. She l sings, siren-wise, soft revolutionary song of hate and pilla; @ and massacre Half the | time she seems to be performing to herself | her eyes are half closed; she is tete c tete | with her demon. Other orators make the mistake of being great deal too wide | awake they are precise and declanatory and statistical about the wickedness of capital This woman is simply mystical; and the diff ference between them is that they can hardly get a hearing without her aid = -.>.
 Her history is slmple she has been slight ly mad about the Revolution with big R all her life. She is now quite middle aged. This is matter of inference, inasmuch as she was old enough to have plotted the mur- der of Napoleon III, in imitation of Char. lotte Corday. She only did not murder him because the war came to remove him quite as eHectually in another way. She thought of murdering M. Thiers, but was dissuaded by frisnd. She only will not murder M Gambetta because it is of no use, There is no vaporing in all this she would do 1t,
 
 at one time, but she taught the little boys and girls catechism of her own, until they shocked the good priests by their awful questions and answers, and Louise had to go. The Commune, of course, claimed her as it's own, and she saw it all-fghting, nursing the sick, starving, trying to get killed. She missed that, but she got transported She was sent to New Caledonia, and nearly per- ished on the voyage through walking the deck in cold weather in bare feet, to protest against the brutality of an order depriving another convict of her shoes. There has never been any whisper against her good name but once, when wicked slanderer dared to say that she had been seen listening devoutly to the church service but she ex- plained herself at once to the satisfaction of every candid mind. When she came back from the penal convent under the amnesty, all revolutionary Paris Hocked to meet her, with Rochefort at it's head. There was a banquet ready, but she could not stay; she hurried off in cab to sec the old mother she had left behind in France That mother had been the bane of Louise Michel's public life, and perhaps for that reason the salvation of the other. She is old and bed-ridden, and she does not care about the revolution fig; she thinks 1t is some peculiar kind of mad ness possessing Louise, and that she must get well of it if people would only leave her alone. The anxiety of looking after the mother and of looking after the big R at the same time has made Louise Michel what she is
 A visit to her is instructive, as showing how some revolutionists live. They do not all fare sumptuously on the wages of agita. tion Louise Michel is herself the great sublime of misery and squalor which she draws with such terrible effect at public meetings It is almost impossible to exag' gerate the gloom and discomfort of her rooms on the Boulevard Ornano. To begin with, the Boulevard Ornano is quite out of 3t~o kbss Id, aIo ;kA out of the Boulevard Ornano, fer it is situa- ted near the extreme end. It is on the fourth floor it is reached by dirty stair case, through an ante chamber of dirt, and it Is dirty throughout There is but one white thing in the place-a head of Charlotte Corday-and that is only because the plaster is new. The books on the trestle table look as if they had been tumbled out there for sale in job lot it is the scholars careless ness doubled with the unthrift of poverty. Louise Michel is voluntarily poor she gives away every penny not required for her i'm mediate needs, and she saves as little as she can, from the secret conviction that taking individual wage in any fashion is sort of crime. Some time ago she announced that she would sell interviews with herself for 10f. an hour, the proceeds to 30 to some 'brethren" who were in durance for trying to blow society into the air. reporter of the Fig6r0 called upon her, had two hours talk by the clock and gravely handed her 2Of. Nothing seems in it's place amid that dreadful litter of old papers, old dresses, dogs cared volumes, pamphlets and pats of butter. The heroine-when it is not go to meeting time-is dreadfully unkempt. It is all very well for NJ Gambetta to deny that there is social question but there must be one, if any considerable number of persons live like that either thu ough their own fault or through i'll luck. Every unlovely associa- tion, one would think, must form itself free ly in that dismal home. Yet, amidst it all Louise sits, with the calm of her perfect ab. sorption in proletarian work She seems simply unaware of it she must have @ shel- ter, and this place has a roof. At any hour of the day or night, apparently, she is ready to talk about the cause, and outside of that she sees simply nothing in nsture-it is 8 clear possession of the mind.
 But there is one other clean object in the apartment besides the medallion of Charlotte Corday, the aged mother carefully tucked up in white sheets in the small bedroom. Her form of dementia, like the daughters is the revolution, but hers is dementia of hor- TOT she hates the very name of the thing She does not understand 1t one bit as mat ter of definition but as a matter of fact she knows that it tends to rob a poor woman of many little comforts she would otherwise on joy. If Louise would only settle down and keep school again As it is with these wild people from all parts of the world ringing at the bell. there is never a moments peace One day Louise starts for Belgium on two three nights week. when in Paris, she is on oratorical duty in some obscure little hall in the Faubourg St. Antoine, from which, for all the mother knows, she may never come back alive. She is certainly going to Lon don, and now a new terror is added to the poor old oreature's life by rumUr that her daughter will soon sail for America to preach the revolution there So, as the easiest way out of her embarrassments, she systematieal- lx Iko ,ho k1 &1n by limiting that he is either a speculating Barnum trying to run" her Louise as @ cu- riosity, police spy.