She carried a candle in one hand, and in the other a bouquet of fresh flowers, which she quietly laid among his papers.

Robespierre either had, or affected a taste for flowers, and, as long as they were to be gotten, he was seldom seen without them, either in his hand or on his coat.
"I thought you would want a light, M.Robespierre," said she, for though she hoped to be closely connected with him, she seldom ventured on the familiarity of calling him by his Christian name.

Had she been a man, her democratic principle would have taught her to discontinue the aristocratic Monsieur; but, even in 1793, the accustomed courtesy of that obnoxious word was allowed to woman's lips.

"I thought you would want a light, or I would not have interrupted you at your work." "Thanks, Eleanor: I was not at work, though; my brain, my eyes, and hands were all tired.

I have been sitting idle for, I believe, this half hour." "Your eyes and hands may have been at rest," said she, sitting down at the end of the table, "but it is seldom that your thoughts are not at work." "It is one of the high privileges of man, that though his body needs repose, the faculties of his mind need never be entirely dormant.