Lucile Desmoulins

Posted by PicasaAs the inner circle of the Revolution began to divide into factions and turn on each other, young Camille Desmoulins and his wife, Lucile, were both arrested on the orders of their former friend, Robespierre, and executed within a short period of each other. Camille had lent his writing talents to the cause of the People, often maliciously, and had been a prominent supporter of that Cause. The sad, tear-stained letters he wrote Lucile during his short imprisonment, prior to his execution, remain. In one of them, he writes, "The shores of life are receding from me! I see you still, my Lucile, my beloved! My bound hands embrace you and my head, as it falls into the basket, will rest its dying eyes upon you." He died, clutching a lock of her hair in his hands. Lucile was arrested shortly thereafter and her mother wrote these frantic words to Robespierre: " It is not enough for you to have murdered your best friend. You must have his wife's head as well. Your monster, Fouquier-Tinville, has just ordered Lucile to be taken to the scaffold. In less than two hours' time she will be dead. If you aren't a human tiger, if Camille's blood hasn't driven you mad, if you are still able to remember the happy evenings you once spent before our fire fondling our Horace, spare an innocent victim. If not, take us all, Horace, myself and my other daughter, Adele. Hurry and tear us apart with your claws that still drip with Camille's blood... hurry, hurry so that we can all sleep in the same grave." Robespierre was little Horace's godfather. Her letter remained unanswered. Lucile, for her part, responded to her sentence with the words, to her judges, "In a few hours I shall see my Camille again. I am therefore less to be pitied than you, for at your death, which will be infamous, you will be haunted by remorse for what you have done."

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