Paris: The Novel

woman, standing below the guillotine, reach into the basket, seize the head and, holding it by the hair, raise it high, in triumph.

    The week that followed was hard for Dr. Blanchard. Sometimes, because he always shared everything with her, he wanted to tell his wife. Part of him was too ashamed to do so. What would his poor family feel when they discovered that he had so carelessly given up his life, their home and their security? Had he given no thought to them, before he put everything at risk for Sophie de Cygne? What kind of husband and father was he? Even worse: the gesture was completely useless. Sophie was going to die anyway. It was all for nothing. He was a fool.
    So he said not a word.
    He told himself that he was protecting them. Why plunge his family into despair months before it was necessary? Let them all enjoy the time remaining before the world came crashing down around them. He would dedicate himself to making these the best, the happiest, months of their family life.
    And up to a point, he thought he was succeeding. On the very first evening, when his daughter asked him to play cards—and when he would normally have told her that he had work to do—he had sat down and played the foolish game for over an hour. When his son had carelessly torn his best coat, he had smiled sympathetically and told him it could have happened to anybody. With his wife, he was loving and solicitous. After three days, he was feeling quite proud of himself. Whatever his faults, he considered, he was at least showing grace under pressure, and in the terrible times to come, this would be remembered. So he was rather taken aback that very evening when, once they were alone, his wife turned to him and asked: “What’s the matter?”
    “Why, nothing,” he answered. “Why do you ask?”
    “You seem tense. You look unhappy.”
    He had almost broken down and told her everything that moment. But instead he had cried: “Not at all,
ma chérie
. These are difficult times, certainly. But my greatest comfort is my wife and family.” And he had redoubled his efforts the following day.
    Another day had passed, and another. Each day more instigators of plots, real or imagined, were brought to trial, and the tumbrils rolled. But Dr. Blanchard continued on his way, maintaining his outward cheerfulness, and concealing his private hell.
    Nearly ten days had passed since the execution of Étienne de Cygnewhen news came from the Convention. After a month’s absence, Robespierre had returned to speak. But instead of the usual rapturous reception of his every word, an extraordinary thing had occurred. Blanchard heard it from a lawyer who had witnessed the scene.
    “They shouted him down,” the lawyer told him excitedly. “They’d had enough of him. He’s gone too far. It’s got to the stage that nobody knows who he’s going to turn upon next. After he presided over the Supreme Being Festival, some of the Convention are saying he thinks he’s God. And Danton had a lot of friends, you know. They didn’t dare speak before, but they’ve never forgiven Robespierre for destroying him.”
    “All the same,” Blanchard cautioned, “Robespierre’s a formidable opponent. The people who shouted him down may live to regret it.”
    But he was wrong. For the next day came news that was even more startling. Someone with a grudge had tried to shoot Robespierre and wounded him in the face.
    And then it happened. Perhaps the resentments that had been secretly brewing would have burst out soon in any case. Blanchard didn’t know. But now, seeing Robespierre defied and then wounded, like a pack of wolves turning upon their leader when they see him falter, the Convention suddenly turned upon him with an animal ferocity. It was the speed of the savagery that was so breathtaking. He had been denounced and sentenced. Then, his jaw tied up and bleeding still, the indomitable, the incorruptible, the Jacobin High Priest of the Revolution was taken in a tumbril, as so many of his victims had been before, and guillotined on the Place de la Révolution while the crowd roared.
    Within a day, dozens more of his closest followers had gone the same way.
    The guillotine had claimed the Terror itself. The Terror was at an end.

    But what does that mean for me? Émile Blanchard wondered. Sophie de Cygne was still supposed to be pregnant. When it was finally discovered that she was not, would they carry out the execution to which the Tribunal had sentenced