She had not troubled her pretty head very much about the social and humanitarian aspect of the present seething revolution.
She did not really wish to think about it at all.

An artiste to her finger-tips, she was spending her young life in earnest work, striving to attain perfection in her art, absorbed in study during the day, and in the expression of what she had learnt in the evenings.
The terrors of the guillotine affected her a little, but somewhat vaguely still.

She had not realised that any dangers could assail her whilst she worked for the artistic delectation of the public.
It was not that she did not understand what went on around her, but that her artistic temperament and her environment had kept her aloof from it all.

The horrors of the Place de la Revolution made her shudder, but only in the same way as the tragedies of M.Racine or of Sophocles which she had studied caused her to shudder, and she had exactly the same sympathy for poor Queen Marie Antoinette as she had for Mary Stuart, and shed as many tears for King Louis as she did for Polyeucte.
Once de Batz mentioned the Dauphin, but mademoiselle put up her hand quickly and said in a trembling voice, whilst the tears gathered in her eyes: "Do not speak of the child to me, de Batz.

What can I, a lonely, hard-working woman, do to help him?
I try not to think of him, for if I did, knowing my own helplessness, I feel that I could hate my countrymen, and speak my bitter hatred of them across the footlights; which would be more than foolish," she added naively, "for it would not help the child, and I should be sent to the guillotine.