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revolution and left him unwelcome. Undaunted, he stormed through the palace, excoriating the government for imprisoning Adrienne without formal charges andleaving no doubt about America’s attachment to the family of General Lafayette; the execution of Adrienne Lafayette, Morris warned, would turn Americans against France. Morris’s unrelenting criticisms led the government to declare him persona non grata but left Robespierre well aware of Lafayette’s exalted status as “Friend of Washington.” To avoid creating a martyr who might add the United States to the long list of nations warring against France, Robespierre ordered the tribunal to leave Adrienne in prison, but omit her name from the daily lists of those sent to the tribunal for condemnation to death.
    While Adrienne languished in prison, Paris guillotines chopped almost nonstop during the day. Growing ever more paranoid, Robespierre turned
La Terreur
into
La Grande Terreur
, converting almost every mansion in Paris into a prison and supplementing the guillotine on the place de la Révolution with killing machines on the place de la Bastille and the place du Trône (now the place de la Nation), on the east edge of Paris near Vincennes. Each of the blades lopped off twenty or more heads a day, accommodating “clients” from every segment of the social and political spectrum: the abolitionist Malesherbes; the scientist Lavoisier; and King Louis XVI’s younger sister, the gentle and harmless Madame Elizabeth. The comte d’Estaing, who led the French fleet at Newport, went under the knife for protesting the execution of Marie-Antoinette. “The gods are thirsty,” Desmoulins grinned. 10
    The guillotine even claimed Jourdan Coupe-Tête, the butcher of Versailles and Avignon, who cut off one head too many to save his own. Only renowned foreign prisoners, such as Tom Paine, and a few, select French “friends of America,” such as Adrienne de Lafayette and the comte de Rochambeau, escaped the call to the guillotine—largely to avoid provoking the American government, which, on paper, remained a French ally.
    As Robespierre’s paranoia became the target of Paris satirists, he closed all theaters and made the steady chop-chop-chop of the guillotines the only entertainment in town—a precursor of the short plays of violence, horror, and sadism that became popular a century later at the Théâtre du Grand Guignol. Enterprising innkeepers turned the Terror into a profitable enterprise by setting up outdoor cafés on nearby embankments to sell food and drink to spectators while they watched the performances.
    As prison space grew scarcer, Desmoulins had the temerity to urge the release of women and children. “They have been given the name of suspects,” he declared, “but this is a term completely foreign to the spirit of justice.” 11 Desmoulins’s forbearance infuriated Robespierre: “The Terror
is
Justice,” he thundered, “prompt, severe, inflexible.” 12 He then arrested Desmoulins and Danton, and, in April 1794, they and their followers climbed the steps of death on the guillotine and left the insane Robespierre the uncontested leader of the Revolution. Terrified members of the Convention elected himpresident and, at his command, unanimously passed a decree ending even mock trials for suspects, because they slowed the journey to the guillotine. In the next thirty days, the guillotines of Paris alone claimed more than 1,250 victims, an average of more than thirty a day.
    Early in July, a judge convicted Adrienne’s grandmother, mother, and sister of “planning to dissolve the National Convention and assassinate the members of the Committee of Public Safety.” 13 The family priest followed the cart to the guillotine at the place du Trône (or “place du Trône renverse”—“Square of the Overturned Throne”—as the Jacobins called it by then) and managed to get close enough to give them absolution before watching them die. The old lady was