An excerpt from Prudhomme’s Les Revolutions de Paris, spring or summer of 1793:

The chief assassin has now been struck down. Let us now get rid, by legal means and by our contempt, of his vile secret agents, of his tools, of all the associates of his crimes … His wife, his sister, his children, are still among us. The first two, in the eyes of all men who think and feel, were, without the slightest doubt, of almost equal guilt with him. They were aware of, they were accomplices in all the plots of the assassin of the people of France. To them he confided his plans, to them he went for comfort in his barbarous troubles; he opened his heart to them, and they instilled into it even further evil. But less bestial than he, by their traffic with priests, with minds more agile and sharper than his, they removed all trace of their plotting. Hidden behind the screen, they availed themselves of the political nullity of their sex, and let Louis blunder on and precipitate himself into the abyss.