El Dorado

In Paris in January 1794, a crowded theatre brings fashionable entertainment and revolutionary power into the same room. De Batz points out influential officials to his younger companion, Armand St. Just, while explaining the broad authority newly granted to government spies. Their whispered conversation makes the evening performance feel precarious: an impatient official can threaten the people responsible for the play.

Personal attachments complicate this atmosphere of watchfulness. Armand longs for an introduction to the actress Mlle. Lange, despite the competing demands of prudence and duty. Elsewhere, Lady Blakeney leaves a prison visit overwhelmed by fear for the man she loves, with Chauvelin accompanying her through its passages. This historical novel combines public spectacle, political suspicion and private distress. Readers interested in revolutionary France will find scenes that show how ordinary pleasures and intimate loyalties become entangled with the exercise of power.