In the latter part of the summer of 1792 she was in Paris, which, in spite of her revolutionary professions, was no safe abode even for her, certainly not for her husband. The slightest sympathy shown to an emigr, a priest, a royalist, or any one marked as a prey by the bloodthirsty monsters who were rapidly showing themselves in their true colours, might be the death-warrant of whoever dared to show it. So would any word or gesture of disapproval of the crimes these miscreants were ordering and perpetrating. Their spies were everywhere, and the least accusation, very often only caused by a private grudge, was enough to bring a person, and perhaps their whole family, to prison and the scaffold. In the early days of the Terror, the well-known actor Talma, hearing an acquaintance named Alexandre, a member of his own profession, giving vent in a benign voice to the most atrocious language of the Terrorists, indignantly reproached him.
If she is guilty she belongs to justice. But you are too magnanimous to strike an unarmed enemy, above all, a woman.Nothing could be worse or more threatening. Revolutionary orators came down to Plauzat and soon the whole aspect of the place was changed. Peasants who before wanted to harness themselves to draw their carriage, now passed with their hats on singing ?a ira. Chateaux began to be burnt in the neighbourhood, revolutionary clubs were formed, municipalities and gardes-nationales were organised, and although the greater number of [222] their people would not join in them; cries of la lanterne were heard among the hedges and vine-yards as they walked out, from those concealed, but as yet fearing to show themselves.The hot weather she used to spend at some house [137] she took or had lent to her in the country near St. Petersburg.