The Red Virgin : Memoirs of Louise Michel

Epilogue
Epilogue Much against her wishes, Louise Michel was pardoned and expelled— there is no other word for it—from prison in January 1886. By now, she was legendary. Or as Paul Verlaine put it in his “Ballade en l’honneur de Louise Michel,” she was “nearly Joan of Arc.” She was “Saint Cecilia / And the harsh and slender Muse / Of the Poor, as well as their guardian angel.” Now in her late fifties, Michel was indefatigable; she produced poetry, wrote several involuted novels, and marched incessantly to the speaker’s platform. And the summer following her release she was indicted once again, this time in company with Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue, and Susini, for “instigating murder and looting.” She was accused of saying that the government was composed of “thieves and murderers. Thieves are arrested and murderers are killed. Throw them in the water!” Although Michel denied saying those... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 24 : Final Thoughts
Chapter 24. Final Thoughts I come to the end. Now that the black bird of the fallow field has sung for me, I want to explain what it means when a person no longer has anything to fear, when a person no longer has anything to suffer from. From the other side of sorrow, I can watch events coldly, feeling nothing more than the indifference a trash man feels as he turns over rags and tatters with his spiked stick. People wonder how all these things could have happened during the fifteen years which have just passed. When we are crushed, it only removes the last obstacle to our being useful in the revolutionary struggle. When we are beaten down, we become free. When we are no longer suffering because of what happens to us, we are invincible. I have reached that point, and it is better for the cause. What does it matter now to my heart, which has already been torn bleeding from my chest, if pen nibs dig into it like the beaks of crows? With my mother dead, no... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 23 : My Mother's Death
Chapter 23. My Mother's Death For a while during my deportation my mother lived with a relative she had always been very fond of, at a little woolens shop opposite the Louver stores in Paris. After a time she went to live with other relatives in Lagny, and she was living there when I returned from New Caledonia. Four months after my return she moved back to Paris where we lived at 24 [sic: 36], rue Polonceau, and at that place we had fleeting moments of joy. With my mother and Marie near me, I was almost afraid, because happiness is such a fragile branch, and we break it when we rest on it. Two old women, friends of my mother, came to see her every day, and they gave her those little attentions old people love so much; my dear Marie stayed with her while I was away at meetings. My mother’s last home was at 45, boulevard Ornano on the fifth floor. There she underwent the long torture of two years without me before her death. In the middle room her bed was... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 22 : Prison
Chapter 22. Prison There’s no party without a morning after. Two years ago on July 14, I was taken to the Centrale Prison at Clermont. Women’s prisons are less harsh than men’s. I did not suffer from cold or hunger or any of the vexations our male friends underwent. As far as I am concerned, my stay in prison was as easy as it would be for any other schoolmistress. Solitude is restful, especially for a person who has spent a great part of her life always needing an hour of silence and never finding it, except at night. That is the case with a great number of schoolmistresses. In those silent hours of the night, she hurries to think, to feel alive, to read, to write, to be just a little free. At the end of the day, at the last lesson, she feels herself becoming an overworked beast of the fields, but a beast that is still proud, still lifting its head to go to the end of the hour without breaking down. When the hour is ended, silence sur... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 21 : The Trial of 1883
Chapter 21. The Trial of 1883 Several weeks after the trial at Lyon, it seemed to me that I would have been an accessory to cowardice if I did not use the liberty I was allowed—I don’t know why—to call up a new and immense International which would stretch from one end of the earth to the other. On 9 March 1883 there was a mass demonstration at the Esplanade of les Invalides, after which Louise Michel led a number of demonstrators across Paris. For that, she was accused of rioting and looting. A massive police hunt for her in Paris and throughout Europe ensued while she remained comfortably hidden at the home of the editor of L’Intransigeant, M. Vaughan. On March 30 she surrendered herself in a farce designed to make the police look as foolish as possible. I stayed in hiding for three weeks. While certain reporters claimed they were chatting with me in a house where I wasn’t present, others saw me at a pleasure par... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

After the Commune
Chapter 10. After the Commune Somehow I managed to escape from the soldiers trying to arrest me. Finally the victorious reactionaries took my mother and threatened to shoot her if I wasn’t found. To set her free I went to take her place, although she didn’t want me to do it, the poor, dear woman. I had to tell her a lot of lies to convince her, and as always she ended up believing me. Thus I saw to it that she returned home. They took me to the detention camp in the 37th [sic: 43rd] Bastion, near the Montmartre railroad. Even that far out, fragments of paper ash coming from the burning of Paris blew like black butterflies. Above us the lights of the fire floated like red crepe. And always we could hear the cannon. We heard them ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Decaying Empire
Chapter 7. The Decaying Empire The city of Paris condemned our school building on the rue du Chateau- d’Eau. Mme Vollier hoped in vain that after its demolition we would get an indemnity which would let us establish a day school in the suburbs. Julie had received a small sum from her family, and she struck out on her own. Relinquishing her share in the partnership to us, she bought a day school in faubourg St. Antoine; I chose not to go with her, but on holidays we got together, and on Thursday evenings I gave music lessons at her school. My mother sold all her remaining land except the vineyard to give me enough money to buy a day school in Montmartre. The poor woman, how little she got back for that money, and what sacrifices she an... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Schoolmistress in the Haute-Marne
Chapter 5. Schoolmistress in the Haute-Marne When my grandparents died and I had to leave the Tomb, I began to prepare for my examinations as a schoolmistress because I wanted to make my mother happy. There was little money, but the arrangements for my legal protection were complex. My mother served as one guardian and M. Voisin, a former magistrate, was another, just as if they were administering a fortune. The attorney, Maitre Girault, notary at Bourmont, served as surrogate of the court. People said that all this wasn’t enough to keep me from immediately wasting the eight or ten thousand francs in land that I had inherited. For the moment, however, I devoted myself to my education. Except for three months at Lagny in 1851, my whole... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Making of a Revolutionary
Chapter 4. The Making of a Revolutionary Above everything else I am taken by the Revolution. It had to be that way. The wind that blew through the ruin where I was born, the old people who brought me up, the solitude and freedom of my childhood, the legends of the Haute-Marne, the scraps of knowledge gleaned from here and there—all that opened my ear to every harmony, my spirit to every illumination, my heart to both love and hate. Everything intermingled in a single song, a single dream, a single love: the Revolution. As far back as I can remember, the origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror at the tortures inflicted on animals. I used to wish animals could get revenge, that the dog could bite the man who was merciless... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Schoolmistress in Paris
Chapter 6. Schoolmistress in Paris When I left the Haute-Marne to become a schoolmistress in Paris, I had to leave my mother and grandmother behind. Being separated from them made me suffer deeply, but I hadn’t yet given up the hope of making a happy future for them, and I held tightly to that illusion. I became a teacher in Mme Vollier’s school at 14, rue du Chciteau- d’Eau in Montmartre. From the time I went to Paris until Mme Vollier died in my own school four years before the Siege, we never left each other. Her portrait is among my most precious souvenirs that my mother preserved carefully for me—half-faded portraits, worm-eaten books, bunches of yew and pine, and withered red carnations and white lilies. Today ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)