He was sorry that he had been born too late to take part in La Fayette’s American adventure. But perhaps some great advancement of the human spirit was about to begin in France, and if so, he hoped that he might play some modest part in it.

With all of this, his young wife was in perfect agreement. Sophie had a round face, rosy cheeks, red lips, and big brown eyes. Her hair was dark. Her father had been a general; and although Sophie had never harmed anyone in her life, when she believed a thing was right, she would dig in and defend her position with a determination her father would have been proud of.

For Sophie, it was all about justice. It couldn’t be right, she declared, that her own class had so many privileges, when ordinary people had none; or that poor people could starve in the rich land of France. One of the first things that had made her fall in love with her husband was his desire to do good. Her dream was that one day the ordinary people of France should elect men to a parliament and, perhaps with a kindly king as figurehead, the elected parliament would rule the land. She felt quite sure that the people in the area around the family château would gladly elect her handsome husband to represent them, and she was probably right.

So it was hardly surprising that when, in July of the year 1789, news came that the Bastille had been stormed, and the French Revolution had broken out, the young de Cygnes were excited.

They had been spending the midsummer months down at the château. Étienne had immediately gone to Paris, passing through Versailles, to discover all he could.

“Nothing is decided yet,” he told Sophie on his return. “La Fayette and his friends believe there will be a constitutional monarchy.”

“And the king and queen?”

Étienne had shrugged. There had been scandals at the court in recent years. Most were invented by mischief makers, but his opinion of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was not high.

“They mean well,” he said, “but I don’t think they know what to do.”

It had seemed to both Sophie and Étienne that they should return to Paris as quickly as possible.

“We don’t want to miss anything,” Sophie had said excitedly.

How naive they had been, Étienne thought, as he looked back now. Many nobles had fled the country right at the start. Étienne knew of plenty of men whose property had been confiscated, and who’d been condemned to death in absentia. But he and Sophie had believed in the ideals of the Revolution, and had faith that a workable new government could come out of it.

And perhaps a transition to limited monarchy or to a republic might have been possible. But it seemed to him now that none of the parties in France were ready. Perhaps Europe itself wasn’t ready.