When he arrived, he found her in a state so resembling a state of nature (she had but one apology for a garment, and that was of the thinnest muslin), that he was indignant. He reproached her for her indecent attire, and received the reply that he was free to get another wife to dress more to his mind. She told him coolly that she had never loved him, and only married him to save her life. But that as she was no longer in terror of the guillotine, he was welcome to her fortune, but should have nothing more to do with her person. “You know,” she added, “what I can tell if I choose.” The ladies of Paris, from Madame Bonaparte downwards, highly approve of the spirited conduct of Madame Tallien, whom they consider a persecuted beauty as well as a charming woman. The fact is that when she was Marquise de Fontenay, and in prison at Bordeaux, Tallien, then on a mission to that city, which he was reorganising in torrents of blood, proposed to save her head if she would surrender to him her purse and person, but threatened her with death should she reject his offer. She gave her hand, therefore, to this renowned Sans Culotte--a circumstance which engendered an irreconcilable hatred between him and Robespierre, which exploded on the 9th of Thermidor in favour of the former. Some of Tallien’s exploits during the Revolution are worthy of record. In the days of September 1792, he knocked out with his own hands the brains of one old priest eighty years old, and bludgeoned six others. At Bordeaux only eighteen persons were executed on his own personal recommendation, but he brought away with him from that city 1,700,000 livres (£64,000 sterling) in solid cash--money paid to him as bribes for generously restoring to liberty “good citizens he discovered to have been falsely accused.” [Sidenote: WILLIAMS AND BECCARIA]