whoops from his friends . The quiet reply came anonymously from the crowd , unnoticed
by anyone but her .
“ But only you will last .”
She took it as a minor threat . There were plenty of opposition members
gatecrashing the party , skulking in the darker corners , looking for any opportunity to
decry the excesses of the Exagérés . Pauline had seen the revolution fragment before her
eyes into the moderates who said it had gone too far , this destruction of the old way of
living , and the radicals who claimed it had not gone far enough . She watched for
infiltrators with wary contempt . The Île de la Cité no longer belonged to the Catholic
Church ; tonight it was possessed by something vital , something bigger than the
priesthood could have ever encompassed . To those who wept for five hundred years of
history lost , Pauline thought , let it be lost . Tonight she represented a more ancient
history . As drunkenness descended on the crowd she led her worshippers into the
darkness of the apse , cloaked from the eyes of traditionalists and tyrants who would
make her small with their scrutiny . A wave of people lifted Pauline above a wreckage of
broken choir stalls , girls dressed in green and the retinue of students , orators of renown
mingling with seamstresses and day-laborers . They plied her with food and drink on her
makeshift throne . They presented her with their chosen representative .