Her power increased every day. She was appointed commander of the 3rd corps of the army of the Fauxbourgs; and so great was her ascendancy over the mob, that she could by a single word acquit or condemn a victim. She thus became both feared and hated by the Aristocrats. One day when she was at the zenith of her power, she recognised her faithless lover. He sought to avert his impending fate and humbly implored her forgiveness; but Théroigne had not the generosity to save him. He perished in the September massacres, 1792. A fearful doom was reserved for the beautiful and unfortunate Théroigne de Méricourt. Like Robespierre, she believed that her power was such that she could at any moment arrest the progress of the Revolution. Only a few months after the death of her seducer, the very Furies whom she had commanded, by whom she had been almost worshipped, suspecting her of being a Girondist, turned against their Amazon leader with all the fury they had formerly displayed against Marie Antoinette. They surrounded her on the terrace of the Tuileries, May 31st, 1793, stripped her naked, and subjected her to a public flogging. Abandoned and despised by all, the beautiful amazon became a raving lunatic. Years crept on. The Directory superseded the Convention, the Consulate the Directory, the Empire the Consulate, and the Restoration the Empire, and still, in a cold grated cell of the Bicêtre, in Paris, a gibbering, white-haired, wrinkled hag crawled on all fours to and from the bars of the window, whence she shrieked forth warlike orations to phantom meetings of Republicans; again and again calling for the blood of Suleau, the Royalist author. From the day of her fall till her death in 1817, she refused to wear clothes. Her only covering was her long white hair. Rose Lacombe terminated her career more happily than her sister-in-arms. True, she also had her downfall, but it did not terminate so horribly. She fell violently in love with a young nobleman who was imprisoned in one of the dungeons of the Republic. With her usual wild impetuosity she tried to save him; but so far from rescuing him, she very nearly shared his fate. From this day Rose Lacombe's power was gone. Her voice was no longer listened to as it had once been. Jacobins and Cordeliers no longer strove to gain her support. Taking a more sensible view of the matter than one would expect, she retired from public life, and became a small shopkeeper. In this capacity she ended her days, selling petty articles over a counter all day long. The date of her death is unknown. * * * * *