Saint Michael’s Gold

Last days in Paris are always eventful, but mine were to be more eventful than most. I knew it when I wakened, at a late hour, and found the curt note from Laurent Basse telling of my denunciation. “See Robespierre at once and block an arrest,” he wrote. “Meet me at five this afternoon at the Bonnet Rouge.”A glance at the clock and I was out of bed, cursing my heavy slumber. However, there was some excuse for my eight hours of exhausted sleep, the first in two days, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that three more women owed their lives to me. I had been too long under the shadow of denunciation to worry over possible arrest. Ever since we voted against the king’s death, Paine and the rest of us had been in the same boat.I hurried. I had to eat, shave and dress, then stuff my few belongings into my pockets and settle up my bill for lodgings, since there would be no return here. All this behind me, I hastened out to the street. The Rue du Bac showed its usual crawling line of hackney coaches, and I beckoned one. It was past noon of Monday, the twentieth of May—a day I was to remember for its furious happenings. The morrow would be exactly four months since Louis XVI lost his head, in January of this year, 1793.