Etienne, deciding that he would attend to the furniture, had gone to a local restorer to learn how the fine old tables and fauteuils from the reign of the Sun King should be properly cleaned and waxed. Having learned that, he decided to try his hand at carpentry. His first efforts were clumsy enough, but by now, he could make quite a creditable kitchen table or chair, and he was amazed to discover the sense of achievement and peace this simple craftsmanship brought him.

“I can do things,” he laughingly told Sophie. “I’m not an aristocrat anymore.”

And during the long summer evenings, they would sit together very contentedly, and read to each other, as the sinking sun made the polished wood of the old chairs and tables gleam softly, like ancestral friends, in the high salon.

But one other thought was troubling Étienne that evening.

“Sometimes, you know,” he said, “I wonder if I made a mistake. Perhaps we should have gone down to the château long ago, instead of staying here in Paris. At least we could have walked in the park.”

“I don’t think we made a mistake. I think we are safer here, Etienne,” Sophie replied.

“Why?”

“The château is too near the Vendée. At the moment the rebellions there have mostly been crushed, but they could start again. What if the fighting came to the château? I think the local people would all join the rising. They love their religion. And they don’t hate us. Then we’d either have to oppose our own workers and tenants, or be called traitors to the Revolution.”

“That is true. All the same …”

“We are quiet as mice.”

“I feel we are alone.”

Sophie held out her hand.

“At least,” she said sweetly, “we have each other.”

And so it was that evening that they sat together quietly. But before the sun sank, as the room filled with a warm, red light, Étienne put his arm around his wife, and in no time at all they were in a close embrace, only disengaging from each other enough to reach their bedroom, where their embrace became complete.

The battering at the outer door soon after dawn took them completely by surprise.

Dr. Émile Blanchard rode along the edge of the big open square. In its center stood the guillotine. The Place du Trône was just one of several sites where guillotines had been set up. Or to be precise, since the Revolution had changed the name of the old ground to the Place du Trône-Renversé—the square of the overturned throne. Its guillotine had devoured sixteen Carmelites the day before, and the grim blade had been kept busy for weeks. Thirty, often fifty, heads a day had fallen to its rattle and thud.

Ahead of Blanchard lay the cheerless prospect of the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, like a long stone furrow, leading westward from the poor quarter toward the distant Louvre.