April in Paris

‘When we are all of one mind, no one will need to ask “who is my brother?” For everyone will be his brother!’ ‘Could not these words have been spoken by the apostle Paul, or even by Jesus himself?’ asks Anthony Boulton. ‘But they were not.’

It is a sunny spring late afternoon and a young American, attached to his nation’s embassy, saunters back to his apartment in a quiet part of Paris. As a foreign diplomat he is a rare phenomenon in the Paris of 1794, every other embassy having closed its doors and deserted Revolutionary France as an international pariah. Turning a corner his reverie is broken by a scene of menace! Two ragged sansculottes are threatening a respectably dressed, middle‑aged lady.

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