There was always some female leader, brave and eloquent, round whom the Furies would rally, and who was, if possible, more bloodthirsty, more ruthless than the rest. The great leaders of the Parisian Women were Rose Lacombe, the actress, and Théroigne (or Lambertine) de Méricourt, the Amazon of Liége. These two women, equally beautiful, equally brave, and equally popular, had wholly different reasons for plunging into the seething whirlpool of blood. Rose Lacombe (who was born in 1768, and was therefore past twenty when the Revolution broke out), appears to have joined in the scenes of atrocity through a love of excitement, a wish to be a leader, that feeling so natural in the breast of an actress. She was a wild, excitable girl, and although not great on the stage, had a certain fiery eloquence, which, though bombastic, exaggerated, even grotesque, was suited to an audience chiefly gathered from the Halles. Théroigne de Méricourt, however, had quite another object in coming forward as a Republican leader; this was an unquenchable thirst for revenge on the entire aristocracy, to one of whom she owed the shame of her life. Théroigne was the daughter of a wealthy farmer in the village of Méricourt near Liége, and received a finished education. When scarcely seventeen her excessive beauty attracted the notice of a young Belgian noble, who owned a château close by her father's home. In those days of the old _régime_ an aristocrat would never have recovered the disgrace of marrying a farmer's daughter; so the consequences of their mutual passion might easily have been foreseen. Deserted by her lover, Théroigne fled to England, and remained here for some months, in an agony of shame and grief. When Paris rose against the ill-starred Louis Seize, she returned to France, and became acquainted with Mirabeau, and through him she was introduced to to the Abbé Siéyes, Joseph Chénier, Brissac, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Ronsin, Romme, and others of the Republican party.