The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1883-02-01
louise Michel, the Anarchist.

France has been frightened out of her
seven senses lately by the Anarchists,
who are really no more than the Nihi
lists under another name. They put in
a first appearance at Montceaues mines,
and, after blowing up church and
nearly blowing up a cafe, they have ac-
quired "droit de cite" in revolutionary
Europe They have an ingenious theory,
which has simplicity for its chief recon-
mendation- to clear everything off the
face Of the earth. This time not only
are laws and learning, arts and com
merce, to die, but with them, unfortu-
nately, even that old nobility that an
earlier dreamer suffered to survive the
wreck. The Anarchists expressly invite
their adherents to put the torch to every
thing that contains a record of property,
and especially to the lawyers offices and
to the book of the great debt. Most peo-
pie thought it bad Joke until the bomb
went off in the cafe at Lyons, and nearly
blew the place to pieces and killed
man. With that bomb the Anarchists
drew their first blood; it was their bap
tism of dynamite; they are now regu-
larly Installed among the political scares
of the time.
Their chief leader in Paris is a woman,
Louise Michel. She appears at meet
ings dressed in black from head to foot,
and delivers long, mopotonous TRADES
against property and the burgeoise,
which are terribly effective just because
of their monotony. She has no logic to
speak of she is as incapable of defini-
ton as Isaiah; her voice is low and sweet;
her manner is the manner of sister OF
mercy, while the matter is that of one of
the thirstiest bloodhounds of the coIven-
ton. She sings, siren wise, soft revo-
lutionary song of hate and pillage and
massacre. Half the time she seems to
be performing to herself her eyes are
half closed; she is en- tete-a-tete with her
demon. Other orators make the mistake
of being great deal too wide awake;
they are precise and declamatory and
statistical about the wickedness of capt.
tai. This woman is simply mythical;
and the difference between them is that
they can hardly get a hearing without
her aid.
Her history is simple. She has been
slightly mad about the revolution all her
life. She is now quite middle-aged.
She WAS scboolmistress at one time, but
she taught the little boys and
girls a catechism of her own,
until they shocked the good priests
by their quotations and answers, and
Louis had to go. The Commune, of
course, claimed her as its 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 persisted 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. When she came back from the
penal convent under the amnesty, all
revolutionary Paris hocked to meet her,
with Rochefort at its head. There was a
banquet ready, but she could not stay;
she hurried on in cab to see the old
mother she had left behind in France.
That mother has 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 does not
care fig about the revolution. She
thinks it is some peculiar kind OF mad
ness possessing Louise, and that she
must get well of it if people would only
let her alone. The anxiety of looking
after the mother. and of looking after the
revolution at the same time, has made
Louisa Michel what she is.-London
World.