The Guillotine | ONC 2022

V

17th October 1793

The warm morning breeze, carrying the smell of freshly baked bread, accompanied me on my way through the empty streets.

It was that precious fleeting moment when night and day shake hands, when it is too late for owls and too early for hens, so the whole world just stops in its rush for a moment, balancing on one toe for a while till it falls headfirst in its busy swirl again.

Enjoying the peace of this indefinite new day, I slowly approached The Pavillion of Equality, the seat of The Committee for Public Safety.

The tall gracious building with walls in the colour of sand towered above my head, as if inviting me to complete the vile quest I had set myself and give in to all my contemplated temptations.

Walking through the arched door, I glanced with a contented smile at the place where a porter used to stand five years ago and where he would have still been standing weren't it for us. We freed him. Or killed him.

With revolutions it's always up or down. We'll kill you or give you everything you yearned for. You just have to stand on the right side of the barricade.

And I was pretty sure Jeanne was not standing on the right side, neither in politics nor in personal affairs.

Thus, as a responsible civilian I came to report this threat to public safety to those, who occupied themselves with eliminating them.

Luckily I knew one man in the Committee…

The one man for whom I'd send the whole world under the guillotine. The one man who awoke a passion so wild and burning in me that I'd gladly place my own neck under the guillotine's blade if I could leave this world with the shadow of his kiss on my lips.

The one to which I should now offer a Troyan horse of my own making, a treat too enticing to refuse, a deliciously looking poisoned apple.

I passed by drunk revolutionaries, who like soldiers after a lost battle, crawled from the sewers into which they had fallen, hoping to better the awkward impression they gave, by bowing to me courteously and then stumbling back onto the ground.

And these men were in the head of our country…

I just smiled at those jolly men politely and knocked on the door that I knew belonged to his office…

Henri once brought me here to show me around. Unfortunately, the venerable statesman wasn't there at the moment… What an inopportune coincidence, or was it?

I straightened my hair and lowered my eyes to the ground, so I could lift them up to him again, showing off my elegant eyelashes, the only part of my body that hadn't been damaged by maternity, matrimony and poverty.

However, when I lifted my eyes in the seductive look of an unchaste goddess, I didn't behold that handsome face of his, veiled in that everlasting arrogance.

"Madame?" The stern looking man asked me, saying more with his judgemental eyes than with his words.

"I came to see Monsieur Fontaine. Who are you?" I asked, slightly annoyed that I had to waste time on this utterly uninteresting person when I could be with him instead.

"I am the personal guard of Monsieur Fontaine. I am not allowed to let anyone in apart from those that have scheduled a meeting with him." He retorted coldly.

"How dare you! You living relic of past times, how dare you deny my rights to me!? Do you know who I am? I am the mother of Henri Lavigne himself!" I gasped indignantly.

"I don't know him." The audacious man answered calmly.

"Then you are scandalously uninformed! Don't tell me you don't know the great revolutionary Henri Lavigne! A respected member of the Jacobin party and a close friend of your boss!" I scoffed, giving him a glance full of disdain.