Would you blame me if you knew I spent that last night by his side, giving what little comfort I could? Maxime had enchanted me from the beginning. And then he turned to madness, yet I could not bring myself to abandon him. Even when his magnificent, powerful, deadly voice had been silenced.
France sat beside the agonized Robespierre, the stone dungeon cold even in the oppressive heat of Thermidor. He had tried for hours to ease the wretched man's pain, but nothing would help. The tyrant lay softy moaning late into the night. Death would come tomorrow.
The man was a being full of political paradox. First he had opposed the death penalty, but then he had declared it suitable for the King. And in the final months he had fed to the Guillotine everyone and anyone whom he saw as a threat. And for most of that time, Francis had supported him. It was necessary, it was needed to secure the Republic and the Rights of Man. France, the nation and the man, had tried to believe this. But could it be true, with so many dying every day and the living no better off than before?
Even France himself had to question the Jacobin rule, when the scars began to appear on the back of his neck.
He didn't know what the future held. Another monarch? More chaos and death? Or, maybe, the liberty that had been promised?
But for Robespierre, all that the future held was death. They had both learned that it wasn't always so easy to change the world.
France would be free of his mad ravings and his reign of terror. Yet he still pitied the man, once so strong and now so helpless. So much pain. Hadn't there been enough of that?
Was I fighting for my people, or against them? I cannot tell the difference anymore.
Or was I just watching my own neck?
