A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 3

Maximilien: Life and Times

Mercure de France, June 1783: “M. de Robespierre, a young barrister of great merit, deployed in this matter—which is in the cause of the arts and the sciences—an eloquence and wisdom that give the highest indications of his talents.”

I see the thorn that’s in the rose

In these bouquets you offer me …

Maximilien de Robespierre, Poems

The cutting was growing yellow now, worn from much handling. He had been trying to think how to preserve it and keep it clean, but the whole sheet was curling at the edges. He was certain that he knew it by heart, but if he simply repeated it to himself, it might have been something he had made up. But when you read it, held the paper in your hand, you could be sure that it was another person’s opinion, written by a Paris journalist, set up by the printers. You could not say that it had not happened.

There was quite a long report of the case. It was, of course, a matter of public interest. It had all begun when a M. de Vissery of Saint-Omer got himself a lightning conductor and put it up on his house, watched by a dour crowd of simpletons; when the work was finished they had clumped off to the Municipality and claimed that the thing actually attracted lightning, and must be taken down. Why would M. de Vissery want to attract lightning? Well, he was in league with the devil, wasn’t he?

So, to law over the subject’s right to have a lightning conductor. The aggrieved householder consulted Maitre de Buissart, a leading figure at the Arras Bar, a man with a strong scientific bent. Maximilien was well in with de Buissart, at the time. His colleague got quite excited: “You see, there’s a principle at stake; there are people trying to block progress, to oppose the dissemination of the benefits of science—and we can’t, if we count ourselves enlightened men, stand idly by—so would you like to come in on this, write some letters for me? Do you think we should write to Benjamin Franklin?”

Suggestions, advice, scientific commentary poured in. Papers were spread all over the house. “This man Marat,” de Buissart said, “it’s good of him to take so much trouble, but we won’t push his hypotheses too strongly. I hear he’s in bad odor with the scientists of the Academy.” When, finally, the case went to the Council of Arras, de Buissart stood aside, let de Robespierre make the speeches. De Buissart hadn’t realized, when the case began, what a strain on his memory and organizational powers it would be. His colleague didn’t seem to feel the strain; de Buissart put it down to youth.

Afterwards, the winners gave a party. Letters of congratulation came—well, pouring in would be an exaggeration, but there was no doubt that the case had attracted attention. He still had all the papers, Dr. Marat’s voluminous evidence, his own concluding speech with the last-minute emendations down the side. And for months when people came calling, the Aunts would take out the newspaper and say, “Did you see about the lightning conductor, where it said Maximilien did so well?”

Max is quiet, calm and easy to live with; he has a neat build and wide, light eyes of a changeable blue-green. His mouth is not without humor, his complexion is pale; he takes care of his clothes and they fit him very well. His brown hair is always dressed and powdered; once he could not afford to keep up appearances, so now appearances are his only luxury.

This is a well-conducted household. He gets up at six, works on his papers till eight. At eight the barber comes. Then a light breakfast—fresh bread, a cup of milk. By ten o’clock he is usually in court. After the sitting he tries to avoid his colleagues and get home as soon as he can. His stomach still churning from the morning’s conflicts, he eats some fruit, takes a cup of coffee and a little red wine well diluted. How can they do it, tumble out of court roaring and backslapping, after a morning shouting each other down? Then back to their houses to drink and dine, to address themselves to slabs of red meat? He has never learned the trick.

After his meal he takes a walk, whether it is fine or not, because dog Brount does not care about the weather and makes trouble with his loping about if he is kept indoors. He lets Brount tow him through the streets, the woods, the fields; they come home looking not nearly so respectable as when they went out. Sister Charlotte says, “Don’t bring that muddy dog in here.”

Brount flops down outside the door of his room. He closes the door and works till seven or eight o’clock; longer, of course, if there is a big case next day. When finally he puts his papers away, he might chew his pen and try some verse for the next meeting of the literary society. It’s not poetry, he admits; it’s proficient, unserious stuff. Sometimes more unserious than others; consider, for example, his “Ode to Jam Tarts.”

He reads a good deal; then once a week there is the meeting of the Academy of Arras. Their ostensible purpose is to discuss history, literature, scientific topics, current affairs. They do all this, and also purvey gossip, arrange marriages and start up small-town feuds.

On other evenings he writes letters. Frequently Charlotte insists on going over the household accounts. And the Aunts take offense if they are not visited once a week. They have separate houses now, so that takes up two evenings.

There had been many changes when he returned to Arras from Paris, with his new law degree and his carefully modulated hopes. In 1776, the year of the American war, Aunt Eulalie to the general amazement announced that she was getting married. There is hope for us all, said the spinsters of the parish. Aunt Henriette said Eulalie had taken leave of her senses: Robert Deshorties was a widower with several children, including a daughter, Anais, who was almost of marriageable age. But within six months, Aunt Henriette’s sour grapes had turned to secretive pink blushes and an amount of unbecoming fluttering and hint-dropping. The following year she married Gabriel du Rut, a noisy man, aged fiftythree. Maximilien was glad he was in Paris and could not get away.

For Aunt Henriette’s godchild, there was no marriage, no celebration. His sister Henriette had never been strong. She couldn’t get her breath, she didn’t eat; one of these impossible girls, destined to be shouted at, always with her nose in a book. One morning—this news came to him a week old, in a letter—they found her dead, her pillow soaked in blood. She had hemorrhaged, while downstairs the Aunts were playing cards with Charlotte; while they were enjoying a light supper, her heart had stopped. She was nineteen. He had loved her. He had hoped they might be friends.

Two years after the amazing marriages, Grandfather Carraut died. He left the brewery to Uncle Augustin Carraut, and a legacy to each of his surviving grandchildren—to Maximilien, to Charlotte and to Augustin.

By courtesy of the abbot, young Augustin had taken over his brother’s scholarship at Louis-le-Grand. He’d turned into a nice unremarkable boy, reasonably conscientious but not particularly clever. Maximilien worried about him when he went to Paris—whether he would find the standard too exacting. He had always felt that someone from their background had little to recommend him unless he had brains. He assumed that Augustin was making the same discovery.

When he arrived back in Arras he had gone to lodge with Aunt Henriette and the noisy husband—who reminded him, before the week was out, that he owed them money. To be exact, it was his father François who owed the money—to Aunt Henriette, to Aunt Eulalie, to Grandfather Carraut’s estate—he dared not inquire further. The legacy from his grandfather went to pay his father’s debts. Why did they do this to him? It was tactless, it was grasping. They could have given him a year’s grace, until he had earned some money. He made no fuss, paid up; then moved out, to save embarrassment to Aunt Henriette.

If it had been the other way around, he’d not have asked for the money—not in a year, not anytime. And now they were always talking about Francois—your father was like this, he was like that, your father always did such-and-such at your age. For God’s sake, he thought, I am not my father. Then Augustin came back from Louis-le-Grand, amazingly and suddenly grown-up. He had an incautious mouth, he wasted his time and he was an avid though inept chaser of women. The Aunts said—not without admiration—“He really is his father’s son.”

Now Charlotte came home from her convent school. They set up house together in the rue des Rapporteurs. Maximilien earned the money, Augustin lounged about, Charlotte did the housekeeping and thought up cutting remarks about them both.

During his vacations from Louis-le-Grand, he had never neglected his round of duty calls. A visit to the bishop, a visit to the abbot, a visit to the masters at his first school to tell them how he was getting on. It was not that he was enchanted with their company; it was that he knew how later he would need their good will. So when he returned home, his carefulness paid off. The family had one opinion, but the town had another. He was called to the Bar of the Council of Arras, and he was made as welcome as anyone could be. Because of course he was not his father and the world had moved on; he was sober, neat and punctilious; he was a credit to the town, a credit to the abbot and a credit to the respected relatives who had brought him up.

If only that unspeakable du Rut would quit his reminiscing … If only you could order your own mind, so that certain conversations, certain allusions, certain thoughts even, did not make you nauseated. As if you were guilty of a crime. After all, you are not a criminal, but a judge.

In his first year he had fifteen cases, which was considered better than average. Usually his papers would be prepared a clear week in advance, but on the eve of the first hearing he would work till midnight, till dawn if necessary. He would forget everything he had done so far, lay his papers aside; he would survey the facts again; he would build the case once more, painstakingly, from its foundations. He had a mind like a miser’s strongbox; once a fact went in, it stayed there. He knew he frightened his colleagues, but what could he do? Did they imagine that he was going to be less than a very very good lawyer indeed?

He began to advise his clients to settle out of court where they could. This brought little profit to himself or his opponent, but it saved clients a lot of time and expense. “Other people aren’t so scrupulous,” Augustin said.

After four months of practice he was appointed to a part-time judicial position. It was an honor, coming so soon, but immediately he wondered if it were double-edged. In his first weeks he had seen things that were wrong, and said so, naturally; and M. Liborel, who had sponsored him in his introduction to the Bar, seemed to think he had made a series of gaffes. Liborel had said (they had all said), “Of course, we agree on the need for a certain degree of reform, but we in Artois would prefer things not to be rushed.” In this way, misunderstandings began. God knows, he had not set out to ruffle anyone’s feelings, but he seemed to have managed it. And so whether this judicial position was because they thought he merited it, or whether it was a sop, a bribe, a device to blunt his judgement, or whether it was a prize, a favor or even a piece of compensation … compensation for an injury not yet inflicted?

That day came: that day appointed, for him to give a judgement. He sat up, the shutters open, watching the progress of the night across the sky. Someone had put down a supper tray among his papers for the case. He got up and locked the door. He left the food untouched. He expected to see it rot before his eyes; he looked, as if it were putrescent, at the thin green skin of an apple on a plate.

If you died it might be, like his mother, in a way never discussed; but he remembered her face, when she sat propped against the bolsters waiting to be butchered, and he remembered how one of the servants had said afterwards that they were going to burn the sheets. You might die like Henriette: alone, your blood pumping out onto white linen, unable to call, unable to move, shocked to death, paralyzed—while downstairs, people were making small talk and passing cakes around. You might die like Grandfather Carraut—palsied and decrepit and disgusting, memory gone, fretting about the will, chattering to his under-manager about the age of the wood for the barrels; breaking off, from time to time, to chide the family for faults committed thirty years before, and to curse his pretty dead daughter for her shameful swollen womb. That was not Grandfather’s fault. That was old age. But he couldn’t imagine old age. He couldn’t imagine approaching it.

And if you were hanged? He did not want to think about it. The workaday criminal death could take half an hour.

He tried praying: some beads to keep his mind ordered. But then slipping through his fingers they reminded him of a rope, and he dropped them gently onto the floor. He kept count: “Pater noster, qui es in coeli, Ave Maria, Ave Maria,” and that pious addendum. “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, Amen.” The blessed syllables ran together. They made nonsense words, everted themselves, darted in and out of sense. Anyway, what is the sense? God is not going to tell him what to do. God is not going to help him. He does not believe in a God of that sort. He’s not an atheist, he tells himself: just an adult.

Dawn: he heard the clatter of wheels below the window, the leathery creak of the harness and the snort and whinny of the horse drawing a cart bringing vegetables for those who would still be alive at dinnertime. Priests were wiping their vessels for early Mass, and the household below was rising, washing, boiling water and lighting fires. At Louis-le-Grand, he would have been at his first class by now. Where were they, the children he had known? Where was Louis Suleau? Pursuing his sarcastic path. Where was Fréron? Cutting a swathe through society. And Camille would be sleeping still, this morning, gathered to the city’s dark heart: sleeping unconscious of his perhaps damned soul draped about in muscle and bone.

Brount whined at the door. Charlotte came, called him sharply to come away. Brount’s reluctant paws scrabbled down the stairs.

He unlocked the door to let the barber in. The man looked into the face of his regular, amiable client; he knew better than to try his morning chatter. The clock ticked without compunction towards ten.

It occurred to him at the last moment that he need not go; he could simply sit here and say, I’m not going into court today. They would wait for him for ten minutes, post a clerk to look along the road and then they would send a message; and he would reply that he was not going into court today.

They could not drag him out, or carry him, could they? They could not force the sentence out of his throat?

But it was the law, he thought wearily, and if he could not carry it out he should have resigned: should have resigned yesterday.

Three p. m.: the aftermath. He is going to be sick. Here, by the side of the road. He doubles up. Sweat breaks out along his back. He goes down on his knees and retches. His eyes mist over, his throat hurts. But there’s nothing in his stomach; he hasn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.

He puts out a hand, gets to his feet and steadies himself. He wishes for someone to take his hand, to stop him from shivering; but when you are ill, no one comes to help.

If there were anyone to watch his progress along the road they would see that he is staggering, lurching from foot to foot. He tries consciously to stand up straight and put some order in his steps, but his legs feel too far away. The whole despicable body is teaching him a lesson again: be true to yourself.

This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.

A man survives: he comes through. Even here in Arras it was possible to find allies, if not friends. Joseph Fouché taught at the Oratorian College. He had thought of the priesthood, but had grown away from the idea. He taught physics, and was interested in anything new. Fouché came to dinner quite often, invited by Charlotte. He seemed to have proposed to her—or at any rate, they had come to some understanding. Max was surprised that any girl would be attracted by Fouché, with his frail, stick-like limbs and almost lashless eyes. Still, who’s to know? He did not like Fouché at all, in point of fact, but Charlotte had her own life to lead.

Then there was Lazare Carnot, a captain of engineers at the garrison; a man older than himself, reserved, rather bitter about the lack of opportunities open to him, as a commoner in His Majesty’s forces. Carnot went for company to the Academy’s meetings, formulae revolving in his head while they discussed the sonnet form. Sometimes he treated them to a tirade about the deplorable state of the army. Members would exchange amused glances.

Only Maximilien listened earnestly—quite ignorant of military matters, and a little overawed.

When Mlle. de Kéralio was voted in by the Academy—its first lady member—he made a speech in her honor about the genius of women, their role in literature and the arts. After this she’d said, “Why don’t you call me Louise?” She wrote novels—thousands of words a week. He envied her facility. “Listen to this,” she’d say, “and tell me what you think.”

He made sure not to—authors are touchy. Louise was pretty, and she never quite got the ink scrubbed off her little fingers. “I’m off to Paris,” she said, “one can’t go on stagnating in this backwater, saving your presences.” Her hand tapped a rolled sheaf of manuscript against a chair back. “O solemn and wondrous Maximilien de Robespierre, why don’t you come to Paris too? No? Well, at least let’s take off for the afternoon with a picnic. Let’s start a rumor, shall we?”

Louise belonged to the real nobility. “Nothing to be thought of there,” said the Aunts: “Poor Maximilien.”

“Noble or not,” Charlotte said, “the girl’s a trollop. She wanted my brother to up and go to Paris with her, imagine.” Yes, just imagine. Louise packed her bags and hurtled off into the future. He was dimly aware of a turning missed; one of those forks in the road, that you remember later when you are good and lost.

Still, there was Aunt Eulalie’s stepdaughter, Anais. Both the Aunts favored her above all the other candidates. They said she had nice manners.

One day before long the mother of a poor rope maker turned up at his door with a story about her son who was in prison because the Benedictines at Anchin had accused him of theft. She said the accusation was false and malicious; the Abbey treasurer, Dom Brognard, was notoriously light-fingered, and had in addition tried to get the rope maker’s sister into bed, and she wouldn’t by any means be the first girl … .

Yes, he said. Calm down. Have a seat. Let’s start at the beginning.

This was the kind of client he was beginning to get. An ordinary man—or frequently a woman—who’d fallen foul of vested interests. Naturally, there was no hope of a fee.

The rope maker’s tale sounded too bad to be true. Nevertheless, he said, we’ll let it see the light. Within a month, Dom Brognard was under investigation, and the rope maker was suing the abbey for damages. When the Benedictines wanted to retain a lawyer, who did they get? M. Liborel, his one-time sponsor. He said, gratitude does not bind me here, the truth is at stake.

Little hollow words, echoing through the town. Everyone takes sides, and most of the legal establishment takes Liborel’s. It turns into a dirty fight; and of course in the end they do what he imagined they would do—they offer the rope maker more money than he earns in years to settle out of court and go away and keep quiet.

Obviously, things are not going to be the same after this. He’ll not forget how they got together, conspired against him, condemned him in the local press as an anti-clerical troublemaker. Him? The abbot’s protégé? The Bishop’s golden boy? Very well. If that’s how they want to see him, he will not trouble from now on to make things easy for his colleagues, to be so very helpful and polite. It is a fault, that persistent itch to have people think well of him.

The Academy of Arras elected him prsident, but he bored them with his harangues about the rights of illegitimate childen. You’d think there was no other issue in the universe, one of the members complained.

“If your mother and your father had conducted themselves properly,” Grandfather Carraut had said, “you would never have been born.”

Charlotte would take out her account books and observe that the cost of his conscience grew higher by the month. “Of course it does,” he said. “What did you expect?”

Every few weeks she would round on him and deliver these wounding blows, proving to him that he was not understood even in his own house.

“This house,” she said. “I can’t call it a home. We have never had a home. Some days you are so preoccupied that you hardly speak. I may as well not be here. I am a good housekeeper, what interest do you display in my arrangements? I am a fine cook, but you have no interest in food. I invite company, and when we take out the cards or prepare to make conversation you withdraw to the other side of the room and mark passages in books.”

He waited for her anger to subside. It was understandable; anger these days was her usual condition. Fouché had offered her marriage—or something—and then left her high and dry, looking a bit of a fool. He wondered vaguely if something ought to be done about it, but he was convinced she’d be better off without the man in the long run.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to be more sociable. It’s just that I’ve a lot of work on.”

“Yes, but is it work you’ll be paid for?” Charlotte said that in Arras he had got himself the reputation of being uninterested in money and soft-hearted, which surprised him, because he thought of himself as a man of principle and nobody’s fool. She would accuse him of alienating people who could have promoted his career, and he would begin again to explain why it was necessary to reject their help, where his duties lay, what he felt bound to do. She made too much of it, he thought. They could pay the bills, after all. There was food on the table.

Charlotte would go round and round the point, though. Sooner or later, she would work herself into a crying fit. Then out it would come, the thing that was really bothering her. “You’re going to marry Anaïs. You’re going to marry Anaïs, and leave me on my own.”

In court he was now making what people called “political speeches.” How not? Everything’s politics. The system is corrupt. Justice is for sale.

30 June 1787:

It is ordered that the language attacking the authority of justice and the law, and injurious to judges, published in the printed memoir signed “De Robespierre, barrister-at-law,” shall be suppressed; and this decree shall be posted in the town of ARRAS.

BY ORDER OF THE MAGISTRATES OF BÉTHUNE

Every so often, a pinpoint of light in the general gloom: one day as he was coming out of court a young advocate called Hermann sidled up to him and said, “You know, de Robespierre, I’m beginning to think you’re right.”

“About what?”

The young man looked surprised, “Oh, about everything.”

He wrote an essay for the Academy of Metz:

The mainspring of energy in a republic is vertu, the love of one’s laws and one’s country; and it follows from the very nature of these that all private interests and all personal relationships must give way to the general good … . Every citizen has a share in the sovereign power … and therefore cannot acquit his dearest friend, if the safety of the state requires his punishment.

When he had written that, he put his pen down and stared at the passage and thought, this is all very well, it is easy for me to say that, I have no dearest friend. Then he thought, of course I have. I have Camille.

He searched for his last letter. It was rather muddled, written in Greek, some business about a married woman. By applying himself to the dead language, Camille was concealing from himself his misery, confusion and pain; by forcing the recipient to translate, he was saying, believe that my life to me is an elitist entertainment, something that only exists when it is written down and sent by the posts. Max let his palm rest on the letter. If only your life would come right, Camille. If only your head were cooler, your skin thicker, and if only I could see you again … If only all things would work together for good.

Now it is his daily work to particularize, item by item, the iniquities of the system, and the petty manifestations of tyranny here in Arras. God knows, he has tried to placate, to fit in. He has been sober and conformist, deferential to colleagues of experience. When he has spoken violently it has only been because he hoped to shame them into good actions; in no way is he a violent man. But he is asking the impossible—he is asking them to admit that the system they’ve labored in all their lives is false, ill-founded and wicked.

Sometimes when he is faced with a mendacious opponent or a pompous magistrate, he fights the impulse to drive a fist into the man’s face; fights it so hard that his neck and shoulders ache. Every morning he opens his eyes and says, “Dear God, help me to bear this day.” And he prays for something, anything, to happen, to deliver him from these endless, polite, long-drawn-out recriminations, to save him from the dissipation of his youth and wit and courage. Max, you can’t afford to return that man’s fee. He’s poor, I must do it. Max, what would you like for dinner? I haven’t an idea. Max, have you named the happy day? He dreams of drowning, far far under the glassy sea.

He tries not to give offense. He likes to think of himself by nature as reasonable and conciliatory. He can duck out, prevaricate, evade the issue. He can smile enigmatically and refuse to come down on either side. He can quibble, and stand on semantics. It’s a living, he thinks; but it isn’t. For there comes the bald question, the one choice out of two: do you want a revolution, M. de Robespierre? Yes, damn you, damn all of you, I want it, we need it, that’s what we’re going to have.