To that extent, his greater and greater involvement in Revolutionary politics is born of his belief that the Revolution will not last. At a certain point, however, he discovers that his carefully crafted role of Danton the revolutionary has become his real nature, all that he has to show for himself. As these examples suggest, Mantel finds things both to deplore and admire in her characters. She is not, however, interested in issuing moral report cards on them, so much as she is in observing the process of moral definition within them and within the Revolution. And yet, at some point, one runs out of luck or energy or ideas.
Exhilaration gives way to exhaustion.
Suffering and care will always come to circumscribe our endeavors. It's worth the trouble. Her most brilliant and nuanced treatment of the problem of moral limitation and definition is, however, her portrait of Robespierre. Robespierre is a notoriously intractable likeness.