“My friends—women of France, tell me, if you can, who it is that you are worshiping?” she demanded, looking around upon the crowd which was now increased by a rabble from the streets. “Have you grown weak enough to pay homage to a child like that? What could she do for France? See how she sinks down and withers like a dead lily, at the first sound of my voice. Is it of such material that freedom is moulded? Is she a creature to represent the liberty of a nation? Why the first trumpet blast would frighten the life from her body. What has she done that you gather around her so!” “She is goodness itself—a child of the people, innocent as an angel. It was she who stood before the king that day at Versailles!” cried a dozen voices. “Why should you come here, Louison Brisot, to assail her? What can one like you know of a blameless child like her?” “But who is she—I demand that? Who is she?” cried Louison, trembling with rage; for this was the first time her opinions had been questioned among the women of the market. A broad-chested, keen-eyed woman, seated among the vegetables on her own stall, with both arms bare to the elbow, folded over her bosom, answered this question promptly, “She is the friend of Mirabeau. He chose her to speak for us before the king. What more do you want, Louison Brisot!” “The friend of Mirabeau! Let me look on her face!” Louison Brisot sprang from the stall, where she had been accustomed to harangue the women, and forced a passage to the spot where Marguerite lay insensible, half supported by the arms of Dame Doudel. “Let me look on her face, I say. Mirabeau has no friends that are not mine.” The deathly pallor on Marguerite’s face was white and cold as it had been when Doudel fell at her feet on that awful day when the Bastille was taken. Had she seen the young creature blooming, and with smiles upon her lips, it is doubtful if she would have known her again. As it was, a triumphant smile lighted her face when she turned upon the crowd. “This is an aristocrat, and no friend of Count Mirabeau’s.” The market women laughed, some with good-natured, mellow laughter, others bitterly, and casting menacing glances at Louison. “As if we did not know,” said the woman, who had from the first, answered Louison so boldly. “I, myself, went with her before the king. Count Mirabeau put her especially under my care—the lamb! Who will have the face to gainsay me in that? Not you, Louison Brisot, who never saw her.” “But I have seen her,” almost shrieked Louison; “and as I tell you, she was trying to save one of the king’s guard at the Bastille.” “And why not?” called out the portly dame who had spoken before. “Who among us was not at the taking of the Bastille? I was, and she went with me.”