This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...on, workmen in corduroy coats, women carrying the evening meal. Not one of them raised a head, scornful or ignorant of the unknown trench, of the last charnel-house of the Terror. MME. TALLIEN "The police administrator is just leaving here. He came to tell me that I was to go up to the Tribunal to-morrow, that is to ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...on, workmen in corduroy coats, women carrying the evening meal. Not one of them raised a head, scornful or ignorant of the unknown trench, of the last charnel-house of the Terror. MME. TALLIEN "The police administrator is just leaving here. He came to tell me that I was to go up to the Tribunal to-morrow, that is to say, to the scaffold. It does not seem much like the dream I had last night: Robespierre no longer existed, and the prisons were open But, thanks to your conspicuous cowardice, there will soon not be a single person in France capable of realising it." Tallien found this note slipped under his door one night in Thermidor on returning to his house, 17 Rue de la Perle. The note came from the prison of La Force, and had been written by Ther6sia de Cabarrus, formerly Countess de Fontenay. She was arrested at Versailles in Prairial, and had been taken away as a prisoner in a hackney carriage. As they passed the Place de la ReVolution, alongside of the guillotine, which had been permanently fixed up, she had been compelled to put her head out of the window, whilst she was told: "In three days you will yourself play in that piece!" On arrival at the Petite Force she undergoes the operation known as rapiotage: she is stripped naked before eight jeering men, she is searched; then, after restoring her chemise to her and giving her a rough, coarse, canvas dress she is locked up.1 Why is she there, that Th6r6sia who almost yesterday reigned all-powerful by the side of handsome Tallien at Bordeaux? And why did Tallien himself, a proconsul with unlimited powers, wander about during this month of Thermidor, frightened, restless, anguished at heart, through a hostile Paris, where doors were shut to him, where friends looked aside as he passed...
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