LOUISE MICHEL AND HER INTERROGATOR.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1148, 13 September 1883, Page 1

LOUISE MICHEL AND HER INTERROGATOR.

Mdlle. Louise Michel showed much 1 coolness and.skill in answering the interrogatories of the Judge at her trial. Asked if she had not planned a ' demonstration' on her own account, the ' grande citoyenne' said that her demonstrativeness had only gone as far as waving a black rag fixed on the end of abrocmstick—which, if a peculiar, is not a very dangerous amusement. As to the plundering of bakers' shops, she denied rill knowledge of it, and adopted the convenient hypothesis ,of the Continental Republican that it was got up by the police. It must be admitted that the presiding Judge showed some want of tact in his questions. ' You have,' he said, ' a theory as to bread .?'■ This, of course, instantly ' let in ' (to use a sporting phase) Mdlle. Michel, who promptly answered, ' Yes, for others! But for myself I shall fling away my life in its decline, and never ask for bread.' Again the Judge aaked rather absurdly whether the prisoner had not 'smiled' at seeing the bakers' shops pillaged? , haid the revolutionist ; what had .I to smile at ? One does not smile at human misery.' Some remarks such as these and some telling references to the events of 1871 are not likely to diminish Louise Michel's popularity among certain classes. One incautious observation she made may, however, tend to produce some little unpleasantaess in the leading Anarchist circles of Paris. Asked if she knew anything of the pamphlet of Pouget, hei fellow prisoner, she said she did not, 'I do not,' she candidly admitted,' read the pamphlets of my friends, any mow than they read mine.' This is a pecu liarity which has been in othei literary persons besides the heroine of tin Commune.