How full of tragedies was this great city, in the last throes of its insane and cruel struggle for an unattainable goal.

And yet, despite its guillotine and mock trials, its tyrannical laws and overfilled prisons, its very sorrows paled before the dead, dull misery of this deformed girl's heart.
A wild exaltation, a fever of enthusiasm lent glamour to the scenes which were daily enacted on the Place de la Revolution, turning the final acts of the tragedies into glaring, lurid melodrama, almost unreal in its poignant appeal to the sensibilities.
But here there was only this dead, dull misery, an aching heart, a poor, fragile creature in the throes of an agonised struggle for a fast-disappearing happiness.
Anne Mie hardly knew now what she had hoped, when she sought this interview with Sir Percy Blakeney.

Drowning in a sea of hopelessness, she had clutched at what might prove a chance of safety.

Her reason told her that Paul's friend was right.

Deroulede was a man who would love but once in his life.