Sophie herself had not wanted to accept this subterfuge. “I will die with you,” she told Étienne. But he would not hear of it, and told her that she must at least take the chance that Blanchard had provided. “If you do not,” he told her, “you make my death still harder for me to bear.”

So she would live a short while more, in prison. Then the truth would be known, and she would be executed anyway. And Blanchard, too, would be taken before the Tribunal and placed on a tumbril, and brought, like as not, to this very place, and go under this same terrible blade. And his wife and his children would be left without a protector.

A single act of kindness, a single act of folly. A well-meant but horrible miscalculation that would cost him his life. How could he have done such a thing? He cursed his stupidity. And it seemed to Blanchard, at that moment, that there was no justice, no purpose in the world at all, but only the operation of strength and caution, speed, concealment and chance, to cheat extinction for a little while, no different from the animals in the forest or the fishes in the sea.

So he watched, both with sorrow, and pity, and great fear, as they took Étienne de Cygne up onto the scaffold, and laid him down flat, far under the fearsome diagonal blade which, in no time at all, rattled down.

He saw Étienne’s head fall down into a basket below. And then he saw a big, black-haired 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.