The question was obviously dangerous, but it would be unwise to be caught out in a lie. Robespierre seemed to be satisfied.

“Is there room at the Temple prison?” he asked the judge, who nodded.

“De Cygne has been sentenced to death. Let it be done at once, then. I think his wife should go to the Temple … for the moment.”

Blanchard saw the judge make a note.

Robespierre turned to leave. Then he seemed to think of something.

“Citizen Blanchard: You have said that you are sure this woman is pregnant. Very well. In a little time, we shall see.” He paused, and raised his hand in admonition. “But, should it turn out that you have lied, that you have made this claim in order to pervert the course of justice, then you yourself will go before the Tribunal. I shall see to it myself.”

He turned, and left the courtroom without another word.

Later that afternoon, Dr. Émile Blanchard stood in the huge open square between the Tuileries Gardens and the great avenue of the Champs-Élysées. The Place Louis XV, it had been named, but now it was called the Place de la Révolution. And in its center stood the guillotine.

He knew the route that the tumbrils followed. From the Conciergerie, across the river and around the streets where the crowds could watch, and curse, or mock, as they chose. The tumbril which bore Étienne de Cygne was the last of the day. Blanchard caught sight of his young friend as he entered the square.

The crowd made little sound as the tumbril entered, probably because they did not recognize its occupants. And perhaps, Blanchard supposed, they could even be growing tired of the endless bloodletting enacted before them each day. However that might be, Étienne entered the Place de la Révolution with no particular indignity. He was staring toward the guillotine, high on its scaffold, and looking very pale.

It was ironic, thought Blanchard, that the great engine of death should have been invented by a medical man—the good Dr. Guillotin—as a more humane way of executing criminals. For as the great blade fell, death was instant, and clean. And for that reason, many had objected to its present use, saying that the enemies of the Revolution should be made to suffer more, and that they should be torn apart as traitors in the good old way, to give the virtuous onlookers more pleasure.

But as he watched, Blanchard was filled by another, terrible realization. In a month or two, or three at most, he himself would be passing that way.

Robespierre had seen through him. In his desire to save a life, he had diagnosed a pregnancy that was not there at all.