It was a fine day in early September when Dr. Blanchard went up to the Temple. By now he had made friends with the prison warders. A few small presents, the speedy and effective lancing of a boil from which the chief warder was suffering, for which Blanchard refused any payment, and the good doctor was greeted with smiles. No objection was made to the small posy of flowers he brought Sophie that day, as well as the usual sustaining provisions—and a bottle of brandy for the warders themselves, of course.

But he found Sophie in a somewhat distracted mood.

How did she feel? he asked.

“You remember I was still a little nauseous last week,” she said, “and you gave me a potion for it.”

“Indeed. Is it better?”

She shook her head.

“There is something else. You remember I said that nothing seemed right with me at first, and you told me these things would gradually pass. And it is true that I am better. But something is still not right.” She paused. “My time of the month has not come. This is the second time.”

He stared at her.

“I will examine you,” he said.

Some doctors and midwives swore that they could tell from a woman’s urine. He would make the inspection if the patients seemed to want it, to keep them happy. But Blanchard was never entirely convinced by this test. If a woman had missed two periods, however, he considered it highly likely that she was pregnant. False pregnancies could occur, occasionally. But he had developed an instinct, which he could not explain himself, which he had come to trust. A few minutes later, therefore, he told her:

“It seems, Madame de Cygne, that after all, you are going to have a child.”

The months that followed were strange times. The moderate Girondins were in the ascendant now, the Jacobins reviled. Even when gangs of gilded youths, some claiming to be royalists, attacked Jacobins in the streets, no one seemed to care.

True, the Committee of Public Safety and the Tribunal were still in existence, but their power was much muted now. Some of the unfortunates that the Jacobins had thrown in jail remained under lock and key, but others were released. Even some aristocrats who had fled abroad were allowed to return.

And as 1795 began, some of the churches—so long as they rang no bells and displayed no crosses—were being allowed to operate discreetly again.

They were times of confusion, and contradiction. But at least they were not the Terror anymore.