To anyone returning to Paris in this awful year 1794, after an absence of several months, the aspect of the once gay and lovely city must have been appalling. Streets half deserted; furtive, ill clad figures slouching about the open places; aspects of dire poverty in a blatant contrast with brilliantly lighted restaurants or theatre porticoes; sounds of strident laughter alternating with heart-rending moans. Laughter and tears, and words scarcely whispered lest they be overheard.

This great, this sublime revolution which was to bring universal freedom and universal happiness, how immense has been its toll of misery and of crime! Penury is terrible; certain necessities like soap and sugar are hardly obtainable. Bread is more and more scarce; the queues outside the bakeries line up during the small hours of the morning and last all day.

The wolves of the Revolution are busy tearing one another to pieces. After the Girondins, the Dantonists. Danton, the great Georges Danton, the lion of the Revolution, who for five years has held the snarling, screaming pack on the leash, has atoned for his weaknesses as well as for his crimes, on the insatiable guillotine. Too weak to stem the flood which he himself had let loose, he perished as he had allowed others to perish - his king, his queen, his comrades, his friends. Too weak! The great, the virile Danton, with the resonant voice and tempestuous eloquence, too weak to combat his cunning, slimy adversary, the Sea-green Incorruptible with the ascetic face and the pale eyes! Then what chance had others against the all powerful dictator who with one word hissed through his thin lips could send any adversary without trial to the scaffold?

It was a month and more since the Dantonists had perished on the guillotine, and Maximilien Robespierre was sovereign master of France.

Aurore, sitting inside the diligence which had brought her and the Doctor over from Melun, had no eyes for outward things. Whether Paris was changed or not since last she had been in the city, whether the streets looked dismal and the restaurants lively, she neither knew nor cared. It was a lovely day in May: the chestnut trees in the Tuileries gardens were full of blossom; the sun shone and the sky was blue; but Aurore say nothing of these beauties of nature. Now that the time was so near when she would see her husband her febrile impatience was such that it was only by a mighty effort of will that she was able to sit still in the crowded coach and not allow her fellow passengers to become aware of the state of her nerves. They might have thought her demented. Doctor Mignet sat beside her and now and then gave her hand a slight pressure, which comforted her for the moment.

At last the lumbering coach came to a halt at the Cheval Blanc, the posting inn close to the Pont Neuf. The Quai de la Ferraille was quite close. Aurore elected to walk while Doctor Mignet would look after the luggage. He announced his intention of putting up at the Cheval Blanc, if he could get a room.

"I shall be within five minutes' walk," he said kindly, "so you can call on me, my dear, whenever you want me."

It was then three o'clock in the afternoon. The usual crowd swarmed round the Palace of Justice, waiting to see the prisoners being hustled out after their condemnation, or the well known advocates or members of the Convention sally forth after the grim work of the day was done.

Aurore paid no heed to anything round her; wrapped in her travelling cape with the hood pulled over her head she walked rapidly, looking neither to right nor left. But suddenly the crowd surged along the bridge, and she found herself hustled and pressed against the parapet: a couple of tumbrils surrounded by men in uniform were forging their way through the throng. They were the prisoners who had just stood the mockery of a trial and were being taken back to La Force or the Temple for their final toilette before their ultimate journey to the guillotine. A few tatterdemalions in the crowd shouted: "A la guillotine!" Others hurled insults at the prisoners, but the bulk of the people looked on with a kind of stolid indifference, showing neither joy nor horror.

Aurore, pressed against the parapet, saw the tumbrils pass along quite close to her; she saw the prisoners standing with hands tied behind their backs; and suddenly the full force of the horror which she saw reached her consciousness. She searched those faces in the tumbrils, realizing for the first time that perhaps she had come too late and that André might be standing there in the tumbril - standing there on his way to death.

When the tumbrils had passed and the crowd drifted away in their wake she remained for a long time there, leaning against the balustrade with eyes blind to everything save to the vision that had just passed by, and lips parted by the cries of horror which she had been at such pains to repress. André had not been one of those poor wretches that were being dragged through the streets of Paris for the delectation of the mob: but the vision of that ghastly exhibition had conjured up the possibility of another, so awful, so terrible, so infernal that Aurore was left wondering if she was not indeed going the way of her father and losing her reason at the foresight.

After a little while she recovered herself, and without glancing to right or left she hurried along the quay. Soon she reached the house wherein she had spent the first few months of her married life! What peace there seemed to be in it! Aurore felt it almost as soon as she passed under the porte-cochère and made her way up the familiar stone staircase. She rang the bell of the apartment as she had done so often in the past, and the same pleasant middle-aged woman opened the door to her.

The woman's eyes looked ready to fall out of her head at sight of Aurore.

"But, citizeness...!" she exclaimed, and clasped her hand together in amazement.

"Citizen Vallon? Is he in?" Aurore almost gasped, and staggered into the vestibule.

The semi darkness indoors after the dazzling sunshine of the street dazed her and made her feel as if she were blind. The woman ran to her and put her arms round her.

"You are ill, citizeness," she murmured. "What can I get you?"

Aurore shook her head: "Nothing!... I am not ill.... Where is Citizen Vallon?"
"At the Blind School, citizeness. He does not usually come home before evening."

"You expect him home, then?"

"But of course, citizeness."

The woman, with gentle solitude, relieved Aurore of the heavy travelling cape. She was obviously puzzled and not a little frightened, but tried to speak as unconcernedly as she could.

"We were not expecting you, citizeness," she said: "at least the Citizen said nothing to me."

"No," Aurore replied more calmly: "he does not expect me. I came with Doctor Mignet."

The woman opened the parlour door. How inviting it looked! The bright sunny room with the muslin curtains, the armchair and her own work table beside the window; the books, the footstool, the chessmen ranged on the board. Aurore's tired eyes roamed round the room and, in spite of the agony of dread which was gnawing at her heart, an infinite peace seemed to descend on her soul. With a weary little sigh she sank into the armchair, and a wan smile lit up her face in response to the woman's anxious, puzzled gaze.

"What would you like, citizeness?" the woman asked, a little reassured. "A glass of wine, or some hot coffee?"

"Coffee, please, Marie. Some of that lovely coffee you used to make for my breakfast."

"It won't be quite so nice now, citizeness," Marie said with a sigh; "and we have no milk."

"Whatever it is, Marie, I shall love it," Aurore assured her. The woman went away, and she snuggled down into the big chair. How lovely and peaceful it was! The quay below was half deserted; hardly a sound came to disturb the quietude of this serene abode. Leaning her head against the back of the chair Aurore felt a flood of tears rise to her eyes - tears that were not wholly of sorrow.

She drank eagerly the coffee which Marie presently brought her. After which the kind woman persuaded her to lie down on the sofa and saw her comfortably settled with a couple of pillows under her head. Poor little Aurore! She was so tired, so infinitely weary! Physically and mentally weary. Her limbs ached, and her head. And she had a great big heartache.

And lying there snugly against the pillows she presently fell asleep.