Transferred to Sainte-Pélagie, this heroic woman of the people saw herself confounded with women of the town (the descendants of the widow Miramion's Magdalens), thieves, forgers, and assassins. She made the best of the situation, cultivated flowers in a box in the window of her cell, and wrote incessantly. When told that her name had been included in the process against the Girondins, she said: "I am not afraid to go to the scaffold in such good company; I am ashamed only to live among scoundrels." Her friends had contrived a plan for her escape, but could not induce her to profit by it: "Spare me!" she cried. "I love my husband, I love my daughter; you know it; but I will not save myself by flight." When the axe fell on the heads of the twenty-two Girondins, October 31, 1793 (10th Brumaire of the Republican calendar), Madame Roland was removed to the Conciergerie. Knowing well the fate that awaited her, she lost neither her courage nor her beautiful tranquillity; and used to go down to the men's wicket of the prison, exhorting them to be brave and worthy of the cause. In the tumbril, on her way to the guillotine, she was robed in white, her superb black hair floating behind her; and at the place of execution, bending her head to the statue of Liberty, she murmured: "O Liberty! what crimes are done in thy name!"—_O Liberté! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!_ It was not Madame Dubarry's to show this sublime fortitude in death; but after all one dies as one must. Sainte-Pélagie will tell us that poor Dame Dubarry was the feeblest and most faint-hearted of its recluses of the Revolution. She wept, and called on heaven to save her, and shuffled and cut her cards, and consulted the lines in her hand; and when her name was called at the wicket on the fatal morning, she swooned on the flags of the prison, and was carried scarcely animate to the tumbril. ------- The story of governor Bouchotte, who had charge of Sainte-Pélagie at this terrible epoch, is a noble one. The September massacres had begun, and the red-bonnets in detachments were sharing the butchery at the prisons. The Abbaye, the Carmes, the Force, and the Conciergerie had given them prompt entrance; the turnkeys saluting the self-styled judges, say MM. Alhoy and Lurine, as the grave-digger salutes the hangman. Not so governor Bouchotte of Sainte-Pélagie. The mob swarmed at the doors, but to their clattering on the panels no answer was vouchsafed. Pikes, hammers, and axes resounded on the solid portals, but silence the most complete reigned behind them. "Can citizen Bouchotte have been beforehand with us?—_Le citoyen Bouchotte, nous aurait-il devancés?_" cried one. "Not an aristocrat voice to be heard! Bouchotte has perhaps finished them off himself."