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Safety might decide at any time to resume operations. The house in town would be deserted anyway. Her mother had died years ago, and all her other relatives were either dead or absent. Melanie was reluctant to give a firm estimate of the number of days it would take them to get to Paris. In these troubled days, travel times were hard to estimate. Chapter Sixteen For some five years now, ever since the fall of the Bastille, Paris had served France and the rest of the world as a seemingly limitless source of news. Tremendous events were reported from the capital almost every day and the passage of time proved that some of them, including many of the most improbable, had actually occurred. For example, it had to be accepted as a matter of sober, historical fact that the king and queen or rather, the individuals who had formerly borne those titles had indeed been arrested, bullied, and locked up by mere commoners. And that some months later, by decision of the people, the royal couple were both dead. Their heads had rolled into the basket as easily as those of ordinary criminals. Yes, it was still hard to credit. Citizen Louis Capet the man who had once been called by the title King Louis XVI, who had been the ruler of all France by divine right, anointed by the Church and all but worshiped by vast numbers of the people that man had been beheaded, slaughtered in public like an Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html animal, in January of 1793. His queen, Marie Antoinette, had followed him to the scaffold in October of the same year, after she had been proven (at least to the satisfaction of her enemies) to be in treacherous league with the rulers of her native Austria, sworn enemies of all revolutions. Once everyone understood that those events were really true, it was hard to set any limit at all on miracles. Other unbelievable stories, which it would have been easy to dismiss as wild rumor, were actually confirmed: The tide of war, the real war of armies, had turned again in favor of Prance, riddled though her armies were with desertions, political harassment, and executions. But meanwhile the majority of citizens, at least in Paris, were convinced that the most dangerous threat to their lives and happiness lay close to home. Wild rumors, heard everywhere, declared that bands of brigands, in the pay of royalists and foreigners, were scouring the countryside, raping and pillaging. Still, according to the latest word from the frontiers, the Austrian and Prussian armies, commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, appeared able to make little headway against the armies of the people of France. Philip's private opinion was that the war might now be going better for France only because her enemies, watching the revolutionary turmoil, were content to wait for her to tear herself to pieces. In rapid succession, one generation after another of Revolutionary leaders had risen to power and fallen again. The time of turnover was now measured in mere months instead of years, and each new faction on achieving mastery exhibited more savagery than the last. Each was more fanatically dedicated to the ruthless repression of treasonous plots. And the more .plots were discovered, and their fomenters executed, the more new examples of treason sprouted into light. Dan-ton, once the unchallenged champion of the people against their aristocratic oppressors, more lately Robespierre's rival, had been arrested on March 30, 1794 (10 Germinal, Year Two, of the Revolutionary Calendar), charged with excessive moderation, and taken to the scaffold on April 5. On May 7, Robespierre the Incorruptible, the newest and seemingly invincible leader, disturbed by the atheistic tendencies shown by his colleagues and their spread among the people in general, had introduced worship of the Supreme Being. June 8 (17 Floral, Year Three) was officially proclaimed the Festival. On June 1, British warships commanded by Lord Howe defeated the French fleet in the English Channel. Amid the strains and excitement of the journey, and the disturbing joy of Melanie's presence, Radcliffe almost forgot about the mysterious stranger, calling himself Legrand, whose life he had saved. For several years now, the routines of planting and harvesting across much of France had been neglected, and the distribution of food had been disrupted, while armed peasants and other workers gathered to exchange inflammatory ideas, fears, hopes, and plans. Lying athwart the travelers' most direct route to Paris were certain towns and villages around which Melanie thought it wise to detour, whole districts she preferred to avoid because of their reputation for fanatical enforcement of Revolutionary decrees upon strangers. The American deferred to her judgment [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |