1888] Louise Michel 5 



is that he is honest, that he is able, and that, the circumstances of 

 France being what they are, he will succeed." 



I had called at the Embassy on arriving in Paris, hoping to find 

 Lytton, who had just been named Ambassador there, but he was 

 unfortunately away delivering his Rectorial Address at Glasgow. 

 " Bitters tells me that Lytton is doing very well here, having made 

 friends with the Press and leaving all real business to Austin Lee." 



Another interesting new acquaintance whom I made during my few 

 days at Paris was Louise Michel, then so popular with the extreme 

 Socialists, almost as notoriously so as Boulanger with the army. This, 

 too, I owed to Lacretelle and his wife and to a certain Madame Dorrian 

 (nee Princess Merstcherska), who took me with her to call upon 

 Louise, with whom she is great friends — a most interesting visit. This 

 is the account of it : 



" 14th Nov. — We drove to Neuilly where Louise lives in a miserable 

 house on the fifth floor. Her apartment consists of two very small 

 rooms only, without even an ante-room, and when we opened the door 

 I thought we must have come to the wrong place. It resembled a 

 concierge's box both in appearance and smell, crammed full with four 

 people, three dogs, five cats, a cage of monkeys and a parrot, all scream- 

 ing at the tops of their voices, and though the rest were silenced the 

 parrot continued its shrieking the whole time we were there. The 

 family party consisted of Louise and another woman, a young man' 

 and a fourth person whose sex I forget. They were engaged as we 

 entered on a meal. A deal table, without cloth plates or utensil of 

 any kind but a bottle of wine and some glasses, was covered with roast 

 chestnuts which they were peeling and eating. Louise rose to receive 

 us, a gray-haired woman of about fifty with a wild but honest and 

 kindly face, dressed in a ragged gown of rusty black, guiltless of linen. 

 Her forehead is retreating, her features large, her face colourless, its 

 expression that of a ' believer.' It might have been a French country 

 priest's. She spoke hurriedly, with an excitement which was evidently 

 habitual and was not altogether coherent. She seemed not to hear the 

 fearful screams of the parrot or the yelping of the dogs, or perhaps 

 these excited her, as noise excites the hearing of some deaf people. 

 The Princess kissed her, calling her by her Christian name, and Louise 

 seemed pleased to see her. When Louise was in prison the Princess 

 used to visit and read to her. She tells me Louise is the best of 

 women, giving away everything she possesses to the poor, and serving 

 as midwife to the women of her quarter. She is certainly not a prophet 

 of the sort that goes clothed in purple and fine linen. The Princess 

 explained who I was and how I, too, had been in prison in Ireland, 

 and Louise began to talk about the prospects of Socialism. She said 

 a revolution was certain and near in Germany, and next year would 



