The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That he actually set out to get it. That every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to tim...
The prose, Robespierre said. It’s so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style.
The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them of of their clothes.
Robespierre has never forgiven his friends the injuries he has done them, nor the kindnesses he has received from them, nor the talents some of them possess that he doesn’t.
Provence and Artois will be back. Antoinette. She will resume her state. The priests will be back. Children now in their cradles will suffer for what their fathers and mothers did.' Marat leaned forwa...
May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into permanent session — what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term!
Leases, writes, statutes, all are written to be read and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.
It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters. W...
It is a wan morning, low unbroken cloud; the light, filtering sparely through glass, is the color of tarnished pewter. How brightly colored the king is, like the king in a new pack of cards: how small...
In these matters, the cardinal says, there is no measure of time; these spirits slip from our hands and through the ages, serpentine, mutable, sly.
In England there is no mercy for the poor. You pay for everything, even a broken neck.472
If all the old stories are to be believed, and some people, let us remember, do believe them, then our king is one part bastard archer, one part hidden serpent, one part Welsh, and all of him in debt...
He wants to say, because Anne is not a carnal being, she is a calculating being, with a cold slick brain at work behind her hungry black eyes. I believe any woman who can say no to the King of England...
He has always rated Anne highly as a strategist. He has never believed in her as a passionate, spontaneous woman. Everything she does is calculated, like everything he does.
He feels as if he is floating, and she is weighting him to earth; he would like to put his arms around her and his face in her apron, and rest there listening to her heartbeat. But he doesn't want to...
He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made, no one could circulate their words in a printed book or bill, because printed books we...
As I am a woman, I am the means by which sin enters this world. I am the devil’s gateway, the cursed ingress. I am the means by which Satan attacks the man, whom he was not bold enough to attack, exce...
A shock will do it, he said, or strong emotion, strong emotion of any sort. It can be horror. Or disgust. But, then again, it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, he said, people die laughing.
A pottery outside Paris was turning out his picture on thick glazed crockery in a strident yellow and blue. This is what happens when you become a public figure; people eat their dinners off you.
By the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!