it were, miraculously preserved us, would, she was confident, not desert us now.”  It is the unmistakable accent of the woman.  She is quivering as she sends him forth, but the spirit in her eyes would put a trembling man to shame—­a spirit that her peerless husband matched but no man could surpass.  Her fortitude was to be more terribly tried in the terrible after-time, when the Cause went down in disaster and Tone had to answer with his life.  No tribute could be so eloquent as the letter he wrote to her when the last moment had come and his doom was pronounced:  “Adieu, dearest love, I find it impossible to finish this letter.  Give my love to Mary; and, above all, remember you are now the only parent of our dearest children, and that the best proof you can give of your affection for me will be to preserve yourself for their education.  God Almighty bless you all.”  That letter is like Stephens’ speech from the dock, eloquent for what is left unsaid.  There is no wailing for her, least of all for himself, not that their devoted souls were not on the rack:  “As no words can express what I feel for you and our children, I shall not attempt it; complaint of any kind would be beneath your courage and mine”—­but their souls, that were destined to suffer, came sublimely through the ordeal.  When Tone left his children as a trust to his wife, he knew from the intimacy of their union what we learn from the after-event, how that trust might be placed and how faithfully it would be fulfilled.  What a tribute from man to wife!  How that trust was fulfilled is in evidence in every step of the following years.  Remembering Tone’s son who survived to write the memoirs was a child at his father’s death, his simple tribute written in manhood is eloquent in the extreme:  “I was brought up by my surviving parent in all the principles and in all the feelings of my father”—­of itself it would suffice.  But we can follow the years between and find moving evidence of the fulfilment of the trust.  We see her devotion to her children and her proud care to preserve their independence and her own.  She puts by patronage, having a higher title as the widow of a General of France; and she wins the respect of the great ones of France under the Republic and the Empire.  Lucien Buonaparte, a year after Tone’s death, pleaded before the Council of Five Hundred, in warm and eloquent praise:  “If the services of Tone were not sufficient of themselves to rouse your feelings, I might mention the independent spirit and firmness of that noble woman who, on the tomb of her husband and her brother, mingles with her sighs aspirations for the deliverance of Ireland.  I would attempt to give you an expression of that Irish spirit which is blended in her countenance with the expression of her grief.  Such were those women of Sparta, who, on the return of their countrymen from the battle, when with anxious looks they ran over the ranks and missed amongst them their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed, ’He