« This kind of "useless detail", listed as a splplitch in the skin, reminds us that in France, until at least 1884, the bodies of the tortured could be used as material. When, on April 30 of this year, Michel Campi was guillotined in Paris, his corpse was sent to the Faculty of Medicine, after a detour through the cemetery of Evry for a mock burial. »

« No more than all the perfumes of Arabia will ever be able to wash the blood of Macbeth's hand, all analyses will fail to make it clear that, precisely, the conventionals did not institute a system of terror, but that they tried a compromise, confessed publicly and lost. Like so many other rulers, they resorted to violence, using and channeling the "blood men" common to all times, of which they failed to remain masters. True scapegoats, their heads were thrown to the people and the public, so that the political turn they were about to take would be sanctified by their punishment. »

« Rarely so much solicited, the historian seems paradoxically little listened to. The difficulty in making one's voice heard demonstrates that, at the very least, his message often appears blurred and/or placed on an equal footing with other voices that have other, more powerful and superior means of dissemination, be it the journalist, the witness or even the judge. Finally, at the risk of appearing iconoclastic, there is something to ask: is the mediation of the historian useful (in the "effective" sense)? S. 84 »