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 emigré, 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.
“Que tu es bon!” exclaimed Alexandre, drawing him aside. “Do you think I mean all that?”
“Then why say it?”
“Because that Terrorist is listening.”
“Who do you mean.”
“Who? Why that little Bouchiez,” indicating one of the officials of the theatre. “Whenever he is near me I say the same sort of things. I should say more if I could.”
“And why?”
“Because, if I spoke differently, he would denounce me to the Jacobins and have me guillotined.”
“He! Why, I thought you were friends.”