6—
Citoyenne Midwives and the Revolution

59—
As the Bastille Falls:
Castillonès, 14 July 1789

Today, while Paris mobs storm the Bastille, Mme Coutanceau is preparing to give a course in this bastide , one of many fortified walled towns constructed throughout southwest Aquitaine during the Franco-English wars. She has just come from a course up north in Pauillac, center of the wine trade of Médoc. There she had nearly frozen, and her wood provider had made a special petition imploring the town authorities to furnish her with additional logs so she would not take sick.^[1] The carriage to come to Castillonnès, privately hired this time, was expensive, but she must conserve her health.^[2] Her class is to start tomorrow morning, and of course the payments from Versailles haven't come. Dismally familiar, all of this.^[3] Yet she, like her aunt, has always counted on this system of funding, however imperfectly it sometimes functions.

Now, however, the monarchy is much closer to bankruptcy than ever before. Calonne was unable to resolve this fiscal crisis, and he was exiled to his lands in Lorraine, whence he fled to England. His short-lived successor, none other than Loménie de Brienne, whom Mme Coutanceau had been cultivating, was equally unsuccessful in persuading the privileged orders of nobles and clergy to relieve the tax burden that fell almost exclusively on the poor, and last summer in Paris he was burned in effigy as angry crowds cheered. Fresh acts of disobedience have been erupting all over France ever since. Intendants throughout the provinces have been warning that popular agitation will soon turn into full-scale civil war. A decision was made to summon the Estates General, an elected representative assembly that had not been convened since 1614, in the hopes that it could resolve the nation's problems, and the popular Necker was reappointed.

The estates in each area have been invited to draw up lists of grievances and suggestions for reform called cahiers de doléances . These, drafted in a spirit of great hope, are full of requests for more equity and liberty, for standardization of laws, for an end to government wastefulness. In April the deputies traveled to Versailles to meet. The Third Estate broke away, declaring itself the National Assembly, and many members of the First and Second Estates, clergy

and nobles respectively, have since joined them. Louis XVI turned in alarm to the army, sending troops to surround Versailles and Paris. Then, just three days ago, he fired Necker, who seemed to be championing the cause of the commoners; this dismissal added to the already great distress in Paris, where garrisons of mercenaries have been converging in a menacing buildup. There is widespread fear that the price of bread, which has risen sharply in recent weeks, will shoot still higher in Necker's absence. Results of the disastrous harvest of 1788 are being felt now, and there is rumored to be a plot to starve the people for the benefit of grain speculators.

Suddenly Paris has exploded. Attempting to arm and defend themselves, mobs have attacked the Bastille, the ancient fortress, symbol of an increasingly unresponsive, intolerable regime. Misunderstandings, mounting rage, mutilations, and slaughter are rampant. Bleeding heads are being paraded around on pikes, to wild applause in the streets. Some voices in the celebrating crowds are urging a march on Versailles to demand the recall of Necker. The tocsin rings constantly. Everywhere in the capital barricades are being built as mistrustful people wait to see what the king will do next.

How much news of this ferment, mounting over these last weeks and escalating these last days, has filtered south to Castillonnès? Mme Coutanceau's region has seen its share of flaring political tempers. In Pau, near Dax where the midwife recently taught, violent popular disturbances erupted last summer, when bands of mountaineers were incited to invade the town on the belief that the king, in a "pacte de famine," was planning to tax them still more harshly. Riots broke out in Bordeaux and Toulouse as well. Mme Coutanceau is thus aware of the problems, but probably not of their severity, and certainly not of the extreme form they have taken in the capital. As she prepares for this next teaching stint, she can have no inkling that the revolt of Paris will lead to the collapse of the royal administration, that crowds of artisans and journeymen from the faubourg St. Antoine have, this very day, dealt the regime she knows and the purse she relies on a mortal blow.

60—
The Lafayette Connection:
Paris, Fall 1790

The scene is the National Assembly. Mme Coutanceau has hastened here to appeal to the deputies because her whole enterprise in Bor-

deaux is in jeopardy. The money has dried up. Wherever she turns officials now tell her "circumstances are not favorable" for her teaching.^[1] With the administrative reorganization of France, old provincial boundaries have given way to new départements , resulting in great bureaucratic confusion. The Assembly has issued treasury notes called assignats based on the value of nationalized church property, but no one seems to know whether to trust this new, already depreciating currency. Events occur with such alarming speed that it is never clear who is really in charge of France.

A rapid succession of ephemeral leaders and lawmakers in the capital have almost surely lost track of her mission, for in the political turmoil following 1789 midwifery is clearly not a top priority. She has heard the Friends of the Constitution, meeting in Bordeaux's Jacobin monastery, debate with passion many political issues. Women stand in line waiting as long as three hours to be admitted to the public galleries, thirsty for political education, full of zest for reform. But even in her own town's clubs and popular societies, midwives are scarcely mentioned. The current authorities in Paris probably do not even know who she is. She had best remind them; but how should she present herself? Since the women's march on Versailles in October 1789 the king has been in a strange position, a virtual prisoner in the Tuileries yet still the head of the country. Sovereignty has been transferred to the people, but Louis XVI continues to claim the throne. For the time being, although she must recognize the new realities, Mme Coutanceau can still speak proudly of her mission's royal origins. The rhapsodic apologia she now delivers for her famous aunt is designed to do just that.

Her Mémoire has been presented to the National Assembly's Committee for the Extinction of Mendicity, whose purpose is to replace voluntary charities for poor relief and put all public health services on a national footing. In this Mémoire she explains first the accomplishments of du Coudray, who among other claims to fame saved the life of the infant Lafayette, hero of the American expedition, popular idol, presently general of the National Guard of Paris, and one of the most powerful men in France. By mentioning this early on, she no doubt hopes to have Lafayette use his influence to protect her enterprise, but he is far too busy suppressing mutinies in the army at Nancy and trying to maintain his loyalties to both the Assembly and the king. Also, his feud with Mirabeau is already beginning to undermine his standing. If Mme Coutanceau knew that

Lafayette would soon be denounced by the Revolution as a traitor, flee the country, and spend the next many years in an Austrian jail, she might not be so quick to credit du Coudray with his very survival.

After reviewing the history of the traveling midwifery mission, the king's endorsements, the superb teaching record, and the invention of the "phantom" with its stamp of approval from the Academy of Surgery, she introduces her favorite theme: the paramount importance of the female teacher. "The sensitivity of women, their relations among themselves, their smaller and more delicate hands making them preferable, a great number will find in the vocation and exercise of midwifery an honorable and useful profession." Perhaps she is trying to counter here the new Comité de Salubrité just formed by the Royal Society of Medicine's Vicq d'Azyr, which intends to replace midwives with male professors. In any case, she makes much of the female aspect of birthing, stressing not only the role of the midwife but also the importance of motherhood. Du Coudray had never explicitly credited mothers as civilizing forces, educators in the household, moral backbones of society; to her, women were more childbearers than childrearers. But Mme Coutanceau is better attuned to the Revolution's arguments about civic, republican motherhood as a national obligation and sober responsibility. She is a mother herself, after all. In a nod to the newly fashionable language of classes, groups, constituencies, she ends by assuring the Assembly that she is totally devoted to "procuring assistance for the class of mothers, [which is] of such interest to the state."^[2]

Unbeknownst to her, this valiant plea has been challenged by another urgent report to the Assembly, this one from none other than du Coudray's nemesis Alphonse Le Roy, casting aspersions on midwives and on most of what they have written about the subject of delivery, and zeroing in especially on Mme Coutanceau's aunt, who he says has led the nation astray with her books and mannequins. "As for midwives, they know neither the art nor the science [of obstetrics] . . . if their ignorance is enterprising, they themselves create dangers. The old government . . . set up a spinster [demoiselle ] as the evangelist of delivery . . . but a figure of a doll was her whole instruction."^[3] Le Roy, who ignores the matter of educating midwives throughout France and fails to grasp the sheer magnitude of that task, wants to have doctors and surgeons in Paris take over all instruction, setting up at the Salpetrière hospital a clinic for delivering

poor women while others watch and learn.^[4] He is trying to appeal to the new order, but his report oozes with elitist disdain for the masses. Professionals in Paris are his only real concern. He appears, characteristically, to care not at all about what, if anything, the rest of the nation learns on the subject of obstetrics.

Whom will the Assembly favor? Mme Coutanceau's Mémoire stresses links with the past, whereas Le Roy mocks the teaching of accouchement in the ancien régime. And the deputies might take exception to her claims for women. In fact, however, much more aggressive and angry feminist complaints have already been presented to the Assembly, one by a midwife in Clermont who feels rebuffed and wronged as a woman because she lacks "a brain crowned by a doctoral bonnet, which is the only thing to confer the prerogative of assassinating the human race with impunity. . . . I am not a person of letters: I have not grown white sitting on benches like the majority of messieurs the academicians." She concludes by arguing that her vast experience is as "worthy" as all their "oratorical discourses." This midwife's railing against intellectual and professional "despotism" that "casts its general oppression over all human faculties" is aimed, of course, at men, but also at their elite theoretical schooling.^[5] Maybe she is inspired by the current discourse on women's rights and the need to protest disenfranchisement. Compared to this, the request from Mme Coutanceau must sound measured and reasonable.

Temporarily at least, she is given approval and told somewhat vaguely to continue her teaching with the endorsement of the new government.^[6] That she will actually be paid is unlikely, but at least she has put the need for provincial midwifery instruction once again before the Assembly. The cahiers de doléances of 1789 were full of complaints about childbirth practices and pleas for better training. Forty grievances classified under public health and twenty-two under education—all but ten from towns and areas where du Coudray had never taught—explicitly bemoaned the fact that provincial women are not taught the rudiments of this art.^[7] The Assembly should have been paying close attention to the cahiers on this subject, but it was not. At least not until Mme Coutanceau's Mémoire .

As her aunt had done a few years ago, she now raises awareness of the problem; she may even catalyze yet another survey of accouchement in the countryside, for shortly after her departure from Paris Vicq d'Azyr's new committee initiates its own extensive examination

(enquête ) of rural medical practice. Six questions are specifically aimed at sages-femmes . Here, as in the Royal Society of Medicine's study of 1786, Mme du Coudray's teaching team and method are the only ones designated by name, and once again the astonishing impact of both aunt and niece is measured in depth and breadth. Responses pour in from all the départements in the hope that their voices, ignored in the cahiers , will this time really be heeded and will contribute to decision making and policy reform.^[8]

A few replies to this new enquête are negative or critical. Narbonne, Toulouse, and Castres boast that they never needed du Coudray—but of course, this is the area that consistently refused to let her come, stubbornly insisting that whatever teaching took place be done by men.^[9] The surgeons of Belley complain that because du Coudray's original students received their own certificates and thus bypassed the usual examination by the surgical community, the precedent was set for later widespread indulgence of irregular practitioners and for general laxness of standards.^[10] Angoulême, Agen, and Rochefort report that the follow-through on du Coudray's teaching has been inadequate, that interest in the subject could not be sustained after her departure.

The vast majority of regions, however, either realize their deprivation if the famous midwife has never passed their way, lament that her stay was too short, or glory in the triumphant success of her mission in their midst. Crest explains how doctors fought to be chosen to learn from her.^[11] Mont-de-Marsan in the Landes area mourns the fact that it never benefited from her teaching, as does Villeneuve-de-Berg north of Nîmes, where the local health officials blame the former intendants for being deaf to du Coudray's talent and usefulness. As a result, now "there is an infinity of women who pretend to be midwives and who, without the slightest knowledge of this important art, benefit with impunity from the public credulity and blindness." The author of this report is single-handedly battling the frightening trend, in the process making himself "a mob of enemies"^[12] Once again, this southern area of Vivarais was one where du Coudray tried and failed repeatedly to penetrate. Laon, another region that spurned the fabled midwife, favoring instead the doctor Augier du Fot, now regrets that du Fot's teaching was purely theoretical, not based on experience or tactile training and consequently entirely useless to unschooled country women. Only

du Coudray understood how to reach these women, and, sorry that she herself can no longer come, Laon is now hoping at least to secure some of her machines and some surgeon-demonstrators trained in her method. Better late than never.^[13] What sweet revenge it would be for her to know that she is admired and missed even in enemy territory.

All the other replies to the questionnaire sing the praises of the great midwife and her team. Her influence is still marked in Châtel, St. Dizier, St. Dié, Ste. Menehould, Lyon-la-Forêt, Nérac, Dur-le-Roi, Nuits, Ussel, Tartas, Vouvans—towns where she never taught but to which her trainees radiated out and instructed others in her method. And of course many cities where the courses actually took place—Montauban, Poitiers, Moulins, Bourges, Tours, Issoudin—bear du Coudray's imprint still more strongly and express real nostalgia for her.

It is a proud legacy, though in all probability the two women never learn of this questionnaire. Surely they get no thanks in the form of remuneration. And as the pace of the Revolution escalates, the responses to this enquête , like the cahiers before them, are forgotten. No attempt is made on the national level to redress midwife shortages in needy areas, to strengthen and encourage regions where things are going well, to institute overall rigor and standardized examinations, to show gratitude to the impassioned pioneers. On the contrary, during the whole revolutionary decade all legal distinctions between professional and charlatan, all entry qualifications for practice, will be swept away, and a medical free-for-all will ensue with everyone, licensed or not, claiming to be an officier de santé .^[14] Du Coudray's high standards become, in most areas of France, a thing of the past, to be revived only in the next century.

And Lafayette, the hoped-for ally, could not care less.

61—
What Treasury Will Pay?:
Bordeaux, 1 July 1791

Du Coudray, who has been living in this port city with her niece's family at the Collège de la Magdeleine for several years, is no doubt alarmed by news of the king's flight and ignominious capture at Varennes just now. For the third time in two years, Louis has been

brought back to Paris as a prisoner. The Assembly has suspended the king's authority until further notice, and people sense that this is a major turning point in the Revolution. Before the king has even signed the constitution, the constitutional monarchy appears to be ending; his apparent betrayal fans the flames of suspicion about internal conspiracies and the fear of external invasions by armies of émigrés. Republicanism is in the air, "Ça Ira" on everyone's lips, male and female alike. The Gazette universelle reports on the activities of Bordeaux's revolutionary women, about four thousand of whom are assembling to parade. France is in a swirl of passions.

This afternoon the old midwife, calling herself Demoiselle Angélique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray, summons her notary, Trimoulet, to her home to draw up a document. The king's new powerlessness means that her retirement pension is more seriously imperiled than ever. But then, all around her she sees that the Revolution has plunged many others into poverty as well.

Since her first visit to Bordeaux in 1770 the city had prospered and enjoyed a building boom. Its population doubled, and until recently it was all abustle with merchant shipping, factories, sugar refineries, tidal corn mills, ropeworks, and of course the wine trade. Firms from Germany, Ireland, and Holland had offices here in beautiful new structures. Du Coudray had seen Bordeaux become a thriving, diverse metropolis.^[1]

The scene is dramatically different now; some noble families are in ruins, many priests are in jail, merchants are in shock, common people are starving. Activities in the once-vigorous seaport and commercial center have virtually ground to a halt. Bad harvests several years running have yielded little wine for trade. Foreign goods are not coming in, there is no sugar, coffee, tobacco, or indigo from the colonies, grain is terribly short. Artisans and day workers cannot find jobs. Meat has gone up four times in price; bread, once 4 sous a pound, today costs 1 livre 5 sous.

Du Coudray and her family are badly in need of funds, yet the payment of pensions has been disrupted already by all the upheavals. Now, with the king's botched escape, things will only get worse. Far from the capital as they are, they cannot continually journey there to argue their cause in person. So du Coudray designates her acquaintance, the well-known master-apothecary Noel Seguin, as her proxy in Paris, authorizing him to "claim and receive, from all trea-

suries, accountants, and other bookkeepers, previously for his majesty and now for the nation, the payment of arrears due or coming due, of annuities, pensions, bonuses, and other graces which have been bestowed upon her, or which might be granted to her in future by whatever title or denomination it might be, earmarked from the former royal treasury or others, and for all that is received to furnish receipts and letters of discharge to all involved, and generally to succeed in getting paid in full, as said demoiselle constituente would herself do in person."^[2] In other words, he is to collect her overdue back pay and what is currently accruing as well. Wishful thinking!

The language of this notarized act reflects the confusion of du Coudray's household in dealing with the changing revolutionary governments, but also their desire to understand and change with the times. Is the Treasury His Majesty's? Is it the nation's? Is it royal or "others' "? Authority is so ephemeral, so dislocated. Traditions offer more risk than security; the country seems thrown into a kind of amnesia where old names mean nothing any longer and new ones never last long enough to ring true. Seguin's notary will register this document in Paris nearly two months later,^[3] and shortly after Seguin will try to obtain the money. The Constituent Assembly is then in the process of dissolving, to be replaced by the Legislative Assembly, and is perplexed regarding the actual status of this legendary midwife who now is old and useless. Why honor her retirement salary? Embarrassed, they refer her request for payment to the Committee on Pensions, where it is shelved indefinitely. Approval is given though, at least in principle, for Mme Coutanceau to be paid, because she is still active.^[4] It is not clear if the whole 8,000 is now promised to Mme Coutanceau, or only the 2,000 originally designated to her. But it makes no difference because the funds, whatever the amount, do not arrive. On 22 December the niece follows suit and empowers Seguin to fight also for her money,^[5] but his efforts in her behalf are equally fruitless.

Mme Coutanceau will declare on 6 April 1793 to her notary in Bordeaux that, despite all assurances and her highest expectations of good faith, she has been paid absolutely nothing by the state for her labors during the three and a half years since her appearance before the Assembly in 1790. She seeks at that point someone else to represent her interests more successfully in Paris.^[6] But clearly, her

advocate is not the problem. By then France is at war; Lafayette and Dumouriez have deserted; the king has fallen, been imprisoned in the Temple, been renamed Citizen Capet, and lost his head; the Girondins who have dominated the National Convention, many of them from Bordeaux, are slipping from power; and the new republic is putting all of its energies into militarily "exporting" liberty, equality, fraternity to other oppressed peoples of Europe. There is great scarcity throughout the land, famine and food riots everywhere.

Paris cannot be bothered right now. That salary from the capital is never to be seen.

62—
Mme Coutanceau's Clinic:
Bordeaux, 30 August 1793

Much has happened these last two months to enmesh the midwife's family in the revolutionary fray. The Coutanceaus have somehow finally gotten their maternity hospice, assigned to them on the very day that Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat in his bathtub. France's situation in the international war has meanwhile been deteriorating. Valenciennes has fallen in the north, and Toulon in the south. Now, on top of the threat of foreign invasion, Marat's murder has initiated a purge of internal traitors and anybody else suspected of moderate views. Everyone must show total devotion to the patrie . The National Convention, exactly one week ago, called for general conscription, a levée en masse requiring all young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to "report without delay to the chief town in their district where they shall train in the use of arms each day while they await the order to depart."^[1]

The Coutanceaus' son, Godefroy Barthélémy Ange, a medical student and only seventeen, has studied with his mother and has dedicated himself to "the art of healing" since 1790. He has been working as a chirurgien externe at Bordeaux's Hôtel Dieu since 1792. This call to "rise up against tyranny" changes his life. He will respond to it even though he is underage and must lie about his years, stating on an official form that he is twenty-one when he enlists as a surgeon in the Army of the Western Pyrenees.^[2] Does he do this out of a genuine sense of commitment? Or is it perhaps a gesture to prove the family's patriotism? Mme Coutanceau will later say that she

meant her son to become part of her teaching and birthing operation at the new hospital, but starting now he takes a very different course.^[3]

Meanwhile, the senior Coutanceaus have continued to work feverishly. Somehow, almost miraculously, despite the lack of funds from the central government, they proceed to teach and train midwives year in and year out. The balance of power in the household is shifting in interesting ways. The annual Bordeaux almanac always advertises the courses, dominated now very much by Mme Coutanceau (fig. 13) rather than her husband.^[4] The municipality has put her in charge of an extra pavilion in the Collège de la Magdeleine to use as a maternity ward. The General Council of the commune of Bordeaux officially established on 13 July 1793 a new "hospital for women where they may deliver and to which will be admitted without discrimination unwed mothers and the poor." The clinic, on the street renamed Fossés de la Commune, has twelve beds, and the city council "names the citoyenne Coutanceau director of this hospice and . . . her husband accoucheur ." The couple must apply their talent and patriotic zeal to the task of delivering babies, but also to keeping them healthy and strong "by supplementing mother's milk with another food." Despite the lamentable fiscal state of the municipality, a promise is made—3,000 livres for her, 1,000 for her husband—and Bordeaux will continue to provide them with free lodging, wood for heat, and candles for light.^[5] Although the city cannot keep its word on the money, it continues to give the clinic its moral support.

A midwife established as founder and director of a permanent clinic is a historic first in France. Mme Coutanceau has far surpassed her husband in importance, fame, and administrative responsibility. Once he had written in his hand the letters she dictated, and she had been quite dependent on him.^[6] Now this accomplished woman is the boss, and he her underling. Although he continues to work alongside her for some time longer, he will branch off into other businesses, taking over some émigré property for example, to earn extra money. Meanwhile, du Coudray's niece is well on her way to becoming another great, famous midwife. Her aunt's taste for success and recognition, inexorably transmitted to her over years of training but latent until now, has really kicked in. She is almost forty, as was her aunt when she left Paris, striking out on her own, deciding to be separate and strong.

Figure 13.
This drawing of Mme Coutanceau is the only one of Mme du
Coudray's "niece" I have been able to locate. It is in an unpublished book
of illustrations by the Bordeaux artist Bouthenot in the Val-de-Grâce
Hospital in Paris. The printed volume, with planned engravings based on
these drawings, never appeared.
Photograph courtesy of the Val-de-Grâce
Hospital Library, Paris; may not be reproduced elsewhere.

It is not clear what role du Coudray plays in all this. Perhaps she is still healthy and dexterous enough to assist a bit with the teaching, or even to deliver babies privately for some extra money. Almost certainly she has been providing financial support for the household and clinic operations. Probably she has paid for everything. How else could they have stayed afloat? There were no other sources of philanthropy. The niece, as we saw, claims not to have been paid a single sou from Paris in the last three years, and Bordeaux, gallant intentions notwithstanding, cannot make good on its obligations. But the grand old lady has kept the valuable gifts she collected during three missionary decades, and has probably been melting them down and selling them off for several years already. Although there is no direct evidence of this, what else explains how, in the absence of all promised pensions from either state or city, the Coutanceau enterprise continues to thrive?

63—
Du Coudray, Casualty of the Terror:
Bordeaux, 28 Germinal an II (17 April 1794)

The citoyenne du Coudray is dead. Not guillotined, but a casualty of the Terror nonetheless. Today two men from the Bureau of Tax Collection report to the authorities that she expired during the night, at 11:30.^[1] Why are these total strangers, rather than her relatives, the bearers of this news? (This is not the pattern for other entries in the same register, where either friends, neighbors, or kin report the deaths.) And what have the midwife's last months, last days, last moments of life been like? How, before finally succumbing, has she felt the impact of Robespierre's regime? Though spared execution, she has certainly not been allowed to pass peacefully away.

Bordeaux has always had a history of disobedience and insubordination. Its particularist character can be traced back to medieval times, and during the Fronde it had negotiated with Cromwell and nearly broken from France to form a republic. Early in the Revolution this region, now called the department of the Gironde, had lent its name to a federalist revolt against the Jacobin dictatorship in Paris. When the Girondins were expelled from the National Convention for their too-moderate views, a provincial armed force had drilled and prepared to march on the capital in protest against

the tyranny of the radicals. The revolutionary authorities decided to starve Bordeaux, as punishment for its defiance, by means of a grain embargo. More recently Robespierre has threatened to invade it. The feeling has been that this city, with its record of glaring disloyalty in the history of France's statebuilding, will need to be subdued, even purged. Why, the local officials might themselves be mutinous traitors!

On 23 October 1793, the beginning of the revolutionary month of Brumaire, with the erection of a guillotine on the Place Nationale, the Terror came to Bordeaux. Before it is over many will flee or go into hiding, several thousand will be tried or incarcerated, and more than three hundred will be beheaded by the "national razor," the "blade of the law." A military commission and surveillance group has already instituted severely repressive measures even against the Third Estate, jailing actors who utter any word with a taint of royalism in a performance, arresting businessmen to "bleed" their purses and "purify" them. M. A. Jullien, the "eye" of Robespierre, a Jacobin fanatic only nineteen years old, was sent to Bordeaux to tighten the vise still more on this hotbed of "incivisme." He made his first inspection just twenty-five days ago, leaving a terrible fear in his wake. On his orders alone, 217 inhabitants of this city will be guillotined within a few short months in the name of "public safety."^[2]

But Bordeaux had become nightmarish even before Jullien's arrival. A winter more bitter and brutal than any in memory had left city and countryside on the brink of famine, and, although it is now spring, breadlines and riots are still common. Ice made the river unnavigable for a while, boats were lost, people stole benches, cut down trees from public promenades, and in desperation pillaged the wood frame of an old church to burn so they could cook soup and thaw their half-frozen bodies. Fields and shipyards were totally deserted. In the words of a visitor, it was a scene everywhere of "men and women dead from starvation, others, of a more robust temperament, all bloated, still others expiring in the middle of the streets and roads; there is reason to believe that without the pains, the care, the solicitude of the representatives sent to Bordeaux, half of the people would have perished."^[3]

The "representatives" referred to, erroneously credited in this Jacobin account with ameliorating the terrible situation, have been dispatched from Paris by the Committee of Public Safety to impose,

incongruous as it may seem, yet another new tax on the already devastated city. Into the midst of confusion and agitation caused by internal economic and health problems have come a group of officials to oversee the city's political "regeneration" or re-Jacobinization. This "forced loan of the Year II"—one more attempt on the part of the revolutionary government to raise money for its war against Europe and the Vendée—is designed to support the "fatherland in danger" against both external and internal foes.

Incivisme , the absence of patriotic devotion, is a new category of offense invented by the Terror and punishable by death.^[4] It means indifference to "virtue," and consequently enmity to the patrie . Simple denunciation by one person of another can warrant execution, so now everyone is in danger—bourgeois, peasants, and workers as much as nobles. One way of being a "good citizen" and escaping accusations of apathy is by making a monetary donation to the state. The call for contributions had originally been issued on a voluntary basis, and all were encouraged to keep receipts enumerating their presents as evidence of their loyalty to the republic. But the pressure to feed the coffers increased daily. Soon bureaus were set up throughout Bordeaux, and the names of all citizens who failed to contribute were posted for everyone to see. Shame and guilt are very public matters, suddenly. Newspapers and church sermons have been urging everyone to comply and donate. "Gifts" have now become essentially obligatory, and households are searched by special commissioners checking to see if the declarations made by each inhabitant of his or her worth, on the basis of which the tax is calculated, are true and accurate. Artisans, doctors, clerks, merchants, and lawyers can no longer evade the impost.^[5] Nor can bachelors or widows with more than 1,000 livres of revenues. Payments were to have been made between December 1793 and February 1794 to any of a growing number of tax collectors, inspectors, assistants, and "verifiers."^[6] Now, though, the hunt for more goods has been extended.

For du Coudray and Mme Coutanceau all this has been harrowingly tense. Over the last half year, since all citizens feel it is their duty to denounce suspects, the threat of decapitation has filled everyone with uncertainty and dread. In theory, according to the books, the two women are the recipients of government pensions far in excess of 1,000 livres. Yet it is not clear who, if anyone, has paid them

these salaries during this period of national turmoil and bankruptcy. How do they explain this discrepancy? Just a few months ago, on 1 Pluviôse An II (20 January 1794), note was made of the "deliverance of certificates of civisme to the citoyennes Coutanceau and du Coudray."^[7] At that point, anyway, they had either satisfied the collectors of the forced loan by making some contribution, or persuaded them that they honestly had no means to make one, had nothing left to donate. Chances are that the gifts du Coudray had amassed during her travels—trays, plaques, boxes, coffeepots, gold and silver pieces bearing the coats of arms of two kings and the royal intendants—have been cashed in over the last few years to provide for the Coutanceau hospice. But are they exhausted? Trafficking in goods so redolent of the Old Regime has become increasingly risky in an atmosphere that abhors anything smacking of royalism. Just as early in the Revolution it had been prudent to dispose of them, perhaps even conspicuously, the way women in Paris donated their jewels to the National Assembly, it would be still more prudent now to hide them. That is, if there are any left.

Is that what the tax men are thinking? Do they suspect the old midwife is holding out on them? Why are they back bothering du Coudray on the night she dies? Why do they give her no peace or privacy? This is surely not an innocent, friendly visit. The Law of Suspects virtually assumes the guilt of all former employees of the nobility. She is something far worse, a once-trusted agent of the dethroned, beheaded, and vilified king. The midwife, seventy-nine years old, is for some reason alone. Have the tax men deliberately taken advantage of her solitude to hound her, to confront her with suspicions that, despite the prevailing austerity, she is still harboring some treasures? The obsession with frugality is such that even wearing clean linen can be cause for denunciation. Is it the strain caused by their interrogation that finally breaks her spirit? That kills her? And where are her people? If her niece and nephew had been with her, they, and not two complete strangers, would have been the witnesses to report her death. That they have left her that evening suggests she is not particularly ill or feeble. Either they are momentarily away with no thought that their aunt is in danger, or they have been forcibly separated from her while she endures the examination. They themselves do not appear to be suspects. Indeed, just before the Terror the Coutanceaus were commended for their ser-

vice to the "French Republic one and indivisible."^[8] They have, after all, contributed their precious boy to the revolutionary cause, and he is presently defending his country and healing soldiers on the Spanish frontier.^[9] Huge posters advertise their midwifery courses, to begin next month on 15 Floréal.^[10] The couple would seem to be in good standing. It is evidently du Coudray the authorities are after. But why? Questions abound.

Perhaps it is fitting that the end finds her by herself, that she exits, as she entered, alone and mysterious. Her grave, like her birthplace, will remain unknown and unvisited. She has left, apparently, no testament or succession; at least the notaries of Bordeaux have no record of such. It is true that notarial offices are extremely disrupted during the Terror. It is also true that death inventories have gone out of style; they are in bad taste, and politically dangerous. It is not public-spirited to make official lists of one's possessions at a time of such deprivation and want, at a time when the private self is all but obliterated. Most plausibly, however, du Coudray simply has nothing material left to pass on. The tax officials have almost surely wrested from her whatever last valuables she may have tried to salvage for her niece and nephew. Her legacy to the Coutanceaus will instead be of an intangible kind. In fact, she has given it already, bit by bit, over the last decades, bequeathing to them her knowledge and technique, her sense of purpose, her wholehearted belief in the bien de l'humanité .