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3. Varennes: small city in northeastern France where the Royal family was arrested following their attempt to escape control of the Revolutionary government in Paris.

17. THE MINERS

1. assignats: the paper money issued by the Revolutionary government, backed by the confiscated properties of the Church and emigrés.

18. CLOUDS

1. décadi: the Revolutionary government sought to create a new calendar beginning in the year 1 (1792), when the Republic was established. Décadi was, so to speak, the new Sunday.

19. THE REQUEST

1. boudoir: small drawing room where women received their lovers.

2. savant: here, one who is erudite and well read.

3. he’s shot up … in no time: Santerre’s rise in rank had more to do with politics than with military ability, but rapid advancement of talented officers—Napoleon Bonaparte being the most famous—was common in the Revolutionary armies.

21. THE RED CARNATION

1. “A stone-cutter”: i.e., a mason. There is a possible play on words here. The Freemasons were suspected of all sorts of plots in the Revolutionary era. Dumas himself was suspicious of the Masons.

2. “sneezes in the sack”: one of the many darkly humorous euphemisms for death by guillotine.

22. SIMON THE CENSOR

1. It had disappeared: Dumas based this plan on a real plot involving Rougeville (see note 11, p. 403). Rougeville managed to gain access to Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie (see also Glossary, p. 418)—not the Temple—and hand her a bouquet of carnations with two notes hidden in it, as in the novel. The first note informed the Queen that she would soon receive money with which to bribe her guards, the other detailed the plan for her escape. Marie Antoinette did manage to respond, in pencil, not in pinpricks. The plot was discovered and added momentum to the already determined execution of the Queen. It also led to stricter surveillance for the royal prisoner. Rougeville managed to escape from Paris and then from France.

24. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

1. Conciergerie: prison and former royal palace on the île de la Cité; the prison was the last holding place of prisoners condemned to death. See also Glossary, p. 418.

25. THE NOTE

1. “Ah, things will all … the lampposts”: “Ça ira” was one of the most popular Revolutionary songs; its lyrics celebrated the practice of hanging aristocrats from the lanternes (lampposts) in the streets of Paris.

2. Barbaroux’s: Charles-Henri-Marie Barbaroux (1767–94) had been a radical, but allied himself with the Girondins when the Montagnards became too extreme. He paid with his life, but he did not kill himself, as Roland did.

3. the Princesse Lamballe looming up on a pike: Following her brutal murder during the September massacres, the head of the Princesse de Lamballe was stuck on a pike and taken to the Temple to be shown to her friend Marie Antoinette through a window.

26. BLACK

1. “Aux armes, citoyens! … impur”: Madame Tison sings a verse from “La Marseillaise”; now the French national anthem, the “Marseillaise” was a Revolutionary song associated with troops from the Marseilles region. (See note 8, p. 402.)

27. THE MUSCADIN

1. “no more châteaux”: Dumas is playing with the Revolutionary jargon.

28. THE KNIGHT OF MAISON-ROUGE

1. Cromwell’s: The English revolutions of the seventeenth century were a constant reference point for the Revolutionary and Romantic generations in France. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), leader of the anti-Royalist Puritan faction, was the chief proponent of the execution of King Charles I; he then became the leader of the country with the title of Lord Protector.

29. THE PATROL

1. Racine: Jean Racine (1639–99), one of the greatest playwrights of the seventeenth century. Racine’s verse tragedies (Phèdre, Andromaque) are among the greatest works of the Classical period.

2. Molière: Molière was the stage and pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73), the great comic playwright (Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope) of the seventeenth century.

3. Amadis: Amadis de Gaule was a Spanish medieval