Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/232

Fournier of St. Omer to her son." She was executed at Arras, and Leroulx, who speaks of her as a fine tall woman of thirty-six, says—"She did not show the slightest concern at the sentence, but on her way in the cart was laughing like a diablesse." Elizabeth Plunkett, one of twenty-nine victims furnished by the small town of Aire, was executed at Cambray, June 13th, 1794. She was born at Montreuil in 1758, but her name bespeaks Irish extraction. Imprisoned for nearly two years as a royalist, she was acquitted, but the very next day, when she had scarcely rejoined her mother, was rearrested, for it had been discovered that in 1791 she had carried round for signature an address thanking Louis XVI. for vetoing the bill against recusant priests, and asking that one of the churches might be assigned them. She had prepared a written defence, still preserved, in which she argued that the act was not at the time criminal, and could not be retrospectively so, but she was not allowed a hearing. When Lebon was brought to justice, one of the documents against him was a letter addressed to him by a juror, who, speaking of five executions, said—"The first of the five is a scélérate whose anti-revolutionary sentiments it would be impossible to describe. Suffice it to say, that since I have been on the revolutionary tribunal I have never known effrontery approaching hers. Her anti-revolutionary principles were shown not merely in