http://estellacat.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] estellacat.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] revolution_fr 2008-01-06 08:03 pm (UTC)

Trust me, you don't want to read any more of it than that. But the "infamous scene" I refer to in this post is one in which Babet accuses Danton of raping her (even suggesting that she might be pregnant with his child instead of Le Bas's) as part of Saint-Just and Le Bas's evil scheme to have Danton killed. Of course, the reader is not supposed to believe her allegations, since in an earlier scene she tried to get Desmoulins to sleep with her and threatened to claim he raped her if he didn't. So there's unfortunately worse in the book that what I posted.

Since Babet was born in 1773, and this takes place in 1793, she's either nineteen or twenty (we don't know her exact date of birth). I'm not sure what to think about the fact that she doesn't really mention Éléonore, but my first inclination would be to say that it doesn't really prove much about their relationship, one way or the other.
Éléonore was five years older than her, but then again, my sister is nearly seven years older than me and that's the sort of thing I talk to her about. But on the other hand, they had sisters between their ages and I don't, so I can't really comment on that. Besides, there are many other kinds of differences that could come into play: those between individual circumstances, or between the 18th and 21st centuries, for example.
So I would say that it's possible that she discussed it with Éléonore, but equally possible that she didn't. Perhaps she thought mentioning something like that would be irrelevant to her narrative or uninteresting to her son, for whom she wrote these memoirs.

You're very welcome. (Et Bonne Année à toi aussi!) It's very sweet of you to do that: after spending so much time translating, it's nice to see what people think in more detail. ^__^

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