To Be Remembered as Time of Love Allow...

The Spirit and the Letter of the Law...

By the Spirit and the Letter of the Law…

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“To be granite and to doubt! To be the statue of Chastisement cast in one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart! To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has said to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! To be the watch-dog, and to lick the intruder's hand! To be ice and melt! To be the pincers and to turn into a hand! To suddenly feel one's fingers opening! To relax one's grip,—what a terrible thing!” --Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, upon Jean Valjean’s release of Javert

“The late events have kindled a fire which, tho smothered of necessity for the present moment, will probably never be quenched but by signal revenge. Individuals will in the mean time [have] incurred sufferings which that may not repair.” –Thomas Jefferson to C.W.F Dumas, 9 Dec 1787

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Paris-November 1787, outside the Hotel Dieu and districts surrounding the Ile de la Cite

October 1787- Flashback to Caroline’s arrest and imprisonment

Duc Louis Thiroux de Crosne-- the last Inspector General of Paris Police under the Old Regime

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He stands in the shadows, a gaunt, forbidding figure. Mist hangs upon the darkness where rings of gold shoot out from a single lamp guarding the deserted street-corner.The corona of light floats upon the fog, droplets sparkling fire, only to be swallowed by the shroud of night fallen across the empty square.

His eyes are fastened on where the staircase leads up into the Hotel Dieu’s entrance pavilion. Tracking the movements of a diminutive figure emerged there he sees the silhouette of a taller, thinner form approach just behind.

Concealed by the set of outbuildings serving the immense charity hospital, he is able to decipher, even at his distance, the evident distress communicated in the woman’s body language.How she faces the obviously male figure, a single shake of her head, turns back out toward the broad square fronting the base of the stairs.Adjusting her satchel, she raises her hood, and descends the steep, rain coated steps.

Louis Thiroux de Crosne, Inspector General of Police in service to their Royal Majesties at the Court of Versailles, sniffs softly, leaving a trailing vapor from his breath. He can guess with a certain amount of confidence, the figure left standing, forlorn, at the top of those stairs, is the female physician’s mentor.

Jean-Baptiste Beaulieu is a fellow colleague of the little doctress’ older brother, Dr. Edward Graham, both surgeons in residence to the Parisian establishment of public hospitals.Beaulieu had taken Dr. Graham’s sister under training, three years before, as an assistant physician, scandalizing the phlegmatic board-members of the Royal Academy into a cacophony of choking objections, brows wrinkling in squinty eyed disproval.Gossip-mongers speculated the radical French surgeon had merely been playing to the Enlightenment philosophers’ fascination of bizarre social experiments, entertaining questions of female competence, intelligence and stamina in regards to practicing in formal professions, particularly Medicine.

The more skeptical critics stated bluntly, Beaulieu had other, less elevated designs on Dr. Graham’s gifted younger sister.

It was hard, through the dimly lit night, the fog, to make out the meaning of the deserted man’s posture.The way his hand comes up to the place over his heart, signified theirs had been a conversation of some sentiment.And he’d been left with an answer that caused some pain.