"The only thing separating us from them is time."

That's what my father told me when we were standing in the doorway leading out of Marie Antoinette's cell in the Concierge. He leaned over my shoulder, as I stared out over the courtyard, feeling the crisp morning air on my cheeks. He whispered in my ear, trying to break the moment. His eyes were far away even as he spoke to me. I thought I understood what he was saying. I leaned into the cold stone wall, watching the scene playing out in my mind's eye.

    I could see the carriage waiting outside in the courtyard, dark and foreboding. It was drawn by massive black horses with glassy eyes. The lead horse shook his head, and tried to gnaw on his steel bit. The driver of the carriage wore a revolutionary pin and had a devilish smile on his sallow face as he waited for the condemned queen.

    Then, Marie Antoinette strode past me. I stepped back to let the figure in my imagination to pass. She had her head held high, despite her disheveled white hair and tattered dress. Her feet were bare as she stumbled across the broken cobblestones. The burly guards held her arms in a bruising grip, leading her roughly out of the prison. They finally pushed her into the maw of the waiting carriage that would carry her to her execution.
   

My imaginary movie came to an end. Everything was back to how it had been before, a forlorn courtyard. I turned back to my father who looked like he was still in rapture in his own imaginings. I shrugged, "I can see it."
   

I callously walked out into the courtyard, straight through my imaginary carriage. Now, I did love the story of Marie Antoinette, the Austrian Spy, the Queen of Deficit, but I didn't understand what my father was saying then by just standing where she had caught the cab to the guillotine.

There was more than time separating Marie Antoinette and myself. If I had been alive in France at the time of the Revolution and the Terror, I wouldn't be in the Concierge. Those guards wouldn't be coming for me. I would've more than likely been outside, shouting for the queen's head, waving a banner and shouting, "Liberty! Justice! Fraternity!" I didn't understand what my father was trying to say until the next day when we visited the Place de Concorde.

The Place de Concorde was a flat, cobblestone, circular expanse of land in the middle of the city. Cars were driving around the outside of the circle, and tourists were buzzing around looking for all they could see. The place where the guillotine had taken the lives of men, women, and children was completely bare, save for a plaque on the ground and an obelisk that had nothing to do with the revolution.

    My parents were looking at a map to see how long of a walk it was from the Place de Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. I stood with the sun beating down on my bare shoulders. I watched a group of Japanese tourists, huddle around their guide and listen to his explanation of the plaque on the ground. They moved away quickly enough, giving me a chance to get a close up look at where the guillotine had been set up.

    I stepped forward to examine the plaque embedded in the ground. It was a humble sort of monument, not decorated or noticeable unless you were looking for it. The plaque was made of some sort of metal and engraved with a few words that were once gold, but now the paint was wearing away. I couldn't read much French, but I knelt down next to the plaque to try to decipher what it said. The best I could figure it said something along the lines of, 'This is the exact spot where Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and countless others lost their lives to the National Blade.'

    A shiver travelled through my body, and I thought of what my father had said the day before. "Only time separates us from them." Once more my mind's eye went to work.

    I was in the image myself this time. I was sitting on a bench with my back directly against the platform on which the guillotine had been raised. Several other women sat on either side of me, some nursing babies, others knitting. Each one of the women held a chunk of hair stained with blood, taken from the dead as a souvenir. Crowds were all around, shouting angrily, with faces like demons. They were all demanding more death, more retribution.

    I turned in my seat, to see a young woman being led up to the guillotine. It was Marie Antoinette. She looked about the crowd with a silent terror before the executioner threw her to her knees. The crowd behind me laughed as her head was forced into the contraption. In less than instant, not long enough for a prayer, the blade bit down on her neck, severing her head from her body. I recoiled as blood splattered my face. I could smell the stench of death so strongly I almost felt sick.  

I drew back from my imaginings, back into the world with sunshine and a humble little plaque. I couldn't understand how there could be such anger in a people. How could a people have been so put down for so long to let their streets run with the blood of people who were just as human as them? Yet, I did understand. If I had been starving, or watching my family starve, while the aristocrats grew fat, I would've killed any one of them for just a loaf of bread. I would butcher every one of them if it meant something would change.

I went over to my father who had just put the map away. "It's two miles walking to the Arc, just up the road."

I took his hand and draped it over my shoulder with a grin. He raised a grey eyebrow at me, even as he held me closer. I stood on tiptoe, and folded my hands on his shoulder so I could reach his ear. "The only thing separating us from being sprayed with blood right now is time." He laughed, tousling my hair, and we began strolling away from the Place de Concorde.