A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 3

Lady’s Pleasure

’91: “Lafayette,” Mirabeau suggests to the Queen, “is walking more closely in the footsteps of Cromwell than becomes his natural modesty.”

We’re done for, Marat says, it’s all up with us; Antoinette’s gang are in league with Austria, the monarchs are betraying the nation. It is necessary to cut off 20,000 heads.

France is to be invaded from the Rhine. By June, the King’s brother Artois will have an army at Coblenz. Maître Desmoulins’s old client, the Prince de Condé, will command a force at Worms. A third, at Colmar, will be under the command of Mirabeau’s younger brother, who is known, because of his shape and proclivities, as Barrel Mirabeau.

The Barrel spent his last few months in France pursuing the Lanterne Attorney through the courts. He now hopes to pursue him, with an armed force, through the streets. The émigrés want the old regime back, not one jot or one tittle abated: and a firing squad for Lafayette. They call, as of right, for the support of the powers of Europe.

The powers, however, have their own ideas. These revolutionaries are dangerous, beyond doubt; they menace us all in the most horrible fashion. But Louis is not dead, nor deposed; though the furnishings and appointments at the Tuileries may not measure up to those at Versailles, he is not even seriously inconvenienced. In better times, when the revolution is over, he may be inclined to admit that the sharp lesson has done him good. Meanwhile it is a secret, unholy pleasure to watch a rich neighbor struggle on with taxes uncollected, a fine army rent by mutiny, Messieurs the Democrats making themselves ridiculous. The order established by God must be maintained in Europe; but there is no need, just at present, to re-gild the Bourbon lilies.

As for Louis himself, the émigrés advise him to begin a campaign of passive resistance. As the months pass, they begin to despair of him. They remind each other of the maxim of the Comte de Provence: “When you can hold together a number of oiled ivory balls, you may do something with the King.” It infuriates them to find that Louis’s every pronouncement bows to the new order—until they receive his secret assurance that everything he says means the exact opposite. They cannot understand that some of those monsters, those blackguards, those barbarians of the National Assembly, have the King’s interests at heart. Neither can the Queen comprehend it:

“If I see them, or have any relations with them, it is only to make use of them; they inspire me with a horror too great for me to ever become involved with them.” So much for you, Mirabeau. It is possible that Lafayette is penetrated with a clearer idea of the lady’s worth. He has told her to her face (they say) that he intends to prove her guilty of adultery and pack her off home to Austria. To this end, he leaves every night a little door unguarded, to admit her supposed lover, Axel von Fersen. “Conciliation is no longer possible,” she writes. “Only armed force can repair the damage done.”

Catherine, the Tsarina: “I am doing my utmost to spur on the courts of Vienna and Berlin to become entangled in French affairs so that I can have my hands free.” Catherine’s hands are free, as usual, for choking Poland. She will make her counter-revolution in Warsaw, she says, and let the Germans make one in Paris. Leopold, in Austria, is occupied with the affairs of Poland, Belgium, Turkey; William Pitt is thinking of India, and financial reforms. They wait and watch France weakening herself (as they think) by strife and division so that she is no longer a threat to their schemes.

Frederick William of Prussia thinks a little differently; when war breaks out with France, as he knows it will, he intends to come out best. He has agents in Paris, directed to stir up hatred of Antoinette and the Austrians: to urge the use of force, to unbalance the situation and tilt it to violent conclusions. The real enthusiast for counter-revolution is Gustavus of. Sweden, Gustavus who is going to wipe Paris off the face of the earth: Gustavus who was paid one and a half million livres per annum under the old regime, Gustavus and his imaginary army. And from Madrid, the fevered reactionary sentiments of an imbecile king.

These revolutionaries, they say, are the scourge of mankind. I will move against them—if you will.

From Paris the future looks precarious. Marat sees conspirators everywhere, treason on the breeze drifting the new tricolor flag outside the King’s windows. Behind that facade, patroled by National Guardsmen, the King eats, drinks, grows stout, is seldom out of countenance. “My greatest fault,” he had once written, “is a sluggishness of mind which makes all my mental efforts wearisome and painful.”

In the left-wing press, Lafayette is now referred to not by his title, but by his family name of Mottié. The King is referred to as Louis Capet. The Queen is called “the King’s wife.”

There is religious dissension. About one-half of the cures of France agree to take the constitutional oath. The rest we call refractory priests. Only seven bishops support the new order. In Paris, nuns are attacked by fishwives. At Saint-Sulpice, where Father Pancemont is obdurate, a mob tramps through the nave singing that wholesome ditty: “Ça ira, ça ira, les aristocrats á la Lanterne,” The King’s aunts, Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, leave secretly for Rome. The patriots have to be assured that the two old ladies have not packed the Dauphin in their luggage. The Pope pronounces the civil constitution schismatic. The head of a policeman is thrown into the carriage of the Papal Nuncio.

In a booth at the Palais-Royal, a male and female “savage” exhibit themselves naked. They eat stones, babble in an unknown tongue and for a few small coins will copulate.

Barnave, summer: “One further step towards liberty must destroy the monarchy, one further step towards equality must destroy private property.”

Desmoulins, autumn: “Our revolution of 1789 was a piece of business arranged between the English government and a minority of the nobility, prepared by some in the hopes of turning out the Versailles aristocracy, and taking possession of their castles, houses and offices: by others to saddle us with a new master: and by all, to give us two Houses, and a constitution like that of England.”

’91: eighteen months of revolution, and securely under the heel of a new tyranny.

“That man is a liar,” Robespierre says, “who claims I have ever advocated disobedience to the laws.”

January at Bourg-la-Reine. Annette Duplessis stood at the window, gazing into the branches of the walnut tree that shaded the courtyard. From here, you could not see the foundations of the new cottage; just as well, for they were as melancholy as ruins. She sighed in exasperation at the silence welling from the room behind her. All of them would be beseeching her, inwardly, to turn and make some remark. If she were to leave the room, she would come back to find it alive with tension. Taking chocolate together mid-morning: surely that should not be too much of a strain?

Claude was reading The Town and Court Journal, a right-wing scandal sheet. He had a faintly defiant air. Camille was gazing at his wife, as he often did. (Two days married, she discovered with a sense of shock that the black soul-eating eyes were short-sighted. “Perhaps you should wear spectacles.” “Too vain.”) Lucile was reading Clarissa, in translation and with scant attention. Every few minutes her eyes would flit from the page to her husband’s face.

Annette wondered if this was what had plunged Claude so deeply into disagreeableness—the girl’s air of sexual triumph, the high color in her cheeks when they met in the mornings. You wish she were nine years old, she thought, kept happy with her dolls. She studied her husband’s bent head, the strands of gray neatly dressed and powdered; rural interludes wrung no concessions from Claude. Camille, a few feet away, looked like a gypsy who had mislaid his violin and had been searching for it in a hedgerow; he frustrated daily the best efforts of an expensive tailor, wearing his clothes as a subtle comment on the collapsing social order.

Claude let his paper fall. Camille snapped out of his reverie and turned his head. “What now? I told you, if you read that thing you must expect to be shocked.”

Claude seemed unable to articulate. He pointed to the page; Annette thought he whimpered. Camille reached forward for it; Claude clasped it to his chest. “Don’t be silly, Claude,” Annette said, as one does to a baby. “Give the paper to Camille.”

Camille ran his eyes down the page. “Oh, you’ll enjoy this. Lolotte, will you go away for a minute?”

“No.”

Where did she get this pet name? Annette had some feeling that Danton had given it to her. A little too intimate, she thought; and now Camille uses it. “Do as you’re told,” she said.

Lucile didn’t move. I’m married now, she thought; don’t have to do what anybody says.

“Stay then,” Camille said. “I was only thinking to spare your feelings. According to this, you’re not your father’s daughter.”

“Oh, don’t say it,” Claude said. “Burn the paper.”

“You know what Rousseau said.” Annette looked grim. “‘Burning isn’t answering.’”

“Whose daughter am I?” Lucile asked. “Am I my mother’s daughter, or am I a foundling?”

“You’re certainly your mother’s daughter, and your father’s the abbé Terray.”

Lucile giggled. “Lucile, I am not beyond slapping you,” her mother said.

“Hence the money for the dowry,” Camille said, “comes from the abbé’s speculation in grain at times of famine.”

“The abbé did not speculate in grain.” Claude held Camille in a red-faced inimical stare.

“I do not suggest he did. I am paraphrasing the newspaper.”

“Yes … of course.” Claude looked away miserably.

“Did you ever meet Terray?” Camille asked his mother-in-law.

“Once, I think. We exchanged about three words.”

“You know,” Camille said to Claude, “Terray did have a reputation with women.”

“It wasn’t his fault.” Claude flared up again. “He never wanted to be a priest. His family forced him into it.”

“Do calm yourself,” Annette suggested.

Claude hunched forward, hands pressed together between his knees. “Terray was our best hope. He worked hard. He had energy. People were afraid of him.” He stopped, seeming to realize that for the first time in years he had added a new statement, a coda.

“Were you afraid of him?” Camille asked: not scoring a point, simply curious.

Claude considered. “I might have been.”

“I’m quite often afraid of people,” Camille said. “It’s a terrible admission, isn’t it?”

“Like who?” Lucile said.

“Well, principally I’m afraid of Fabre. If he hears me stutter, he shakes me and takes me by the hair and bangs my head against the wall.”

“Annette,” Claude said, “there have been other imputations. In other newspapers.” He looked covertly at Camille. “I have contrived to dismiss them from my mind.”

Annette made no comment. Camille hurled The Town and Court Journal across the room. “I’ll sue them,” he said.

Claude looked up. “You’ll do what?”

“I’ll sue them for libel.”

Claude stood up. “You’ll sue them,” he said. “You. You’ll sue someone for libel.” He walked out of the room, and they could hear his hollow laughter as he climbed the stairs.

February, Lucile was furnishing her apartment. They were to have pink silk cushions; Camille wondered how they would look a few months on, when grimy Cordeliers had mauled them. But he confined himself to an unspoken expletive when he saw her new set of engravings of the Life and Death of Maria Stuart. He did not like to look at these pictures at all. Bothwell had a ruthless, martial expression in his eye that reminded him of Antoine Saint-Just. Bulky retainers in bizarre plaids waved broadswords; kilted gentlemen, showing plump knees, helped the distressed Queen of Scots into a rowing boat. At her execution Maria was dressed to show off her figure, and looked all of twenty-three. “Crushingly romantic,” Lucile said. “Isn’t it?”

Since they had moved, it was possible to run the Révolutions from home. Inky men, short-tempered and of a robust turn of phrase, stamped up and down the stairs with questions to which they expected her to know the answers. Uncorrected proofs tangled about table legs. Writ servers sat around the street door, sometimes playing cards and dice to pass the time. It was just like the Danton house, which was in the same building round the corner—complete strangers tramping in and out at all hours, the dining room colonized by men scribbling, their bedroom an overflow sitting room and general thoroughfare.

“We must order more bookcases made,” she said. “You can’t have things in little piles all over the floor, I skid around when I get out of bed in the morning. Do you need all these old newspapers, Camille?”

“Oh yes. They’re for searching out the inconsistencies of my opponents. So that I can persecute them when they change their opinions.”

He lifted one from a pile. “Hébert’s,” she said. “That is dismal trash.”

René Hébert was peddling his opinions now through the persona of a bluff, pipe-smoking man of the people, a fictitious furnace maker called Père Duchesne. The paper was vulgar, in every sense—simple-minded prose studded with obscenity. “Père Duchesne is a great royalist, isn’t he?” Camille swiftly marked a passage. “I may have to hold that one against you, Hébert.”

“Is Hébert really like Père Duchesne? Does he really smoke a pipe and swear?”

“Not at all. He’s an effete little man. He has peculiar hands that flutter about. They look like things that live under stones. Listen, Lolotte—are you happy?”

“Absolutely.”

“Are you sure? Do you like the apartment? Do you want to move?”

“No, I don’t want to move. I like the apartment. I like everything. I am very happy.” Her emotions now seemed to lie just below the surface, scratching at her delicate skin to be hatched. “Only I’m afraid something will happen.”

“What could happen?” (He knew what could happen.)

“The Austrians might come and you’d be shot. The Court might have you assassinated. You could be abducted and shut up in prison somewhere, and I’d never know where you were.”

She put up her hand to her mouth, as if she could stop the fears spilling out.

“I’m not that important,” he said. “They have more to do than arrange assassins for me.”

“I saw one of those letters, threatening to kill you.”

“That’s what comes of reading other people’s mail. You find out things you’d rather not know.”

“Who obliges us to live like this?” Her voice muffled against his shoulder. “Someday soon we’ll have to live in cellars, like Marat.”

“Dry your tears. Someone is here.”

Robespierre hovered, looking embarrassed. “Your housekeeper said I should come through,” he said.

“That’s all right.” Lucile gestured around her. “Not exactly a love nest, as you see. Sit on the bed. Sit in the bed, feel free. Half of Paris was in here this morning while I was trying to get dressed.”

“I can’t find anything since I moved,” Camille complained. “And you’ve no idea how time-consuming it is, being married. You have to make decisions about the most baffling things—like whether to have the ceilings painted. I always supposed the paint just grew on them, didn’t you?”

Robespierre declined to sit. “I won’t stay—I came to see if you’d written that piece you promised, about my pamphlet on the National Guard. I expected to see it in your last issue.”

“Oh Christ,” Camille said. “It could be anywhere. Your pamphlet, I mean. Have you another copy with you? Look, why don’t you just write the piece yourself? It would be quicker.”

“But Camille, it’s all very well for me to give your readers a digest of my ideas, but I expected something more—you could say whether you thought my ideas were cogent, whether they were logical, whether they were well expressed. I can’t write a piece praising myself, can I?”

“I don’t see the difficulty.”

“Don’t be flippant. I haven’t time to waste.”

“I’m sorry.” Camille swept his hair back and smiled. “But you’re our editorial policy, didn’t you know? You’re our hero.” He crossed the room, and touched Robespierre on the shoulder, very lightly, with just the tip of his middle finger. “We admire your principles in general, support your actions and writings in particular—and will therefore never fail to give you good publicity.”

“Yet you have failed, haven’t you?” Robespierre stepped back. He was exasperated. “You must try to keep to the task in hand. You are so heedless, you are unreliable.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

She felt a needlepoint of irritation.

“Max, he isn’t a schoolchild.”

“I’ll write it this afternoon,” Camille said.

“And be at the Jacobins this evening.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You are terribly dictatorial,” she said.

“Oh no, Lucile.” Robespierre looked at her earnestly. His voice suddenly softened. “It’s just that one has to use exhortation with Camille, he’s such a dreamer. I’m sure”—he dropped his eyes—“if I had just been married to you, Lucile, I’d be tempted to spend time with you and I wouldn’t give such attention to my work as I ought. And Camille is no use at fighting temptation on his own, he never has been. But I’m not dictatorial, don’t say that.”

“All right,” she said, “you have the license of long acquaintance. But your tone. Your manner. You should save that for berating the Right. Go and make them flinch.”

His face tightened: defensive, distressed. She saw why Camille preferred always to apologize. “Oh,” he said. “Camille quite likes being pushed around. It’s something in his character. So Danton says. Good-bye. Write it this afternoon, won’t you?” he added gently.

“Well,” she said. They exchanged glances. “That was pointed, wasn’t it? What does he mean?”

“Nothing. He was just shaken because you criticized him.”

“Must he not be criticized?”

“No. He takes things to heart, it undermines him. Besides, he was right. I should have remembered about the pamphlet. You mustn’t be hard on him. It’s shyness that makes him abrupt.”

“He ought to have got over it. Other people don’t get allowances made for them. Besides, once you said he had no weaknesses.”

“Day to day he has weaknesses. In the end he has no weaknesses.”

“You might leave me,” she said suddenly. “For someone else.”

“What makes you imagine that?”

“Today I keep thinking. I keep thinking of what could happen. Because I never supposed that one could be so happy, that everything could come right.”

“Do you think you have had an unhappy life?”

Appearances were against her; but truthfully she answered, “Yes.”

“I also. But not from now on.”

“You could be killed in an accident in the street. You might die. Your sister Henriette died of a consumption.” She scrutinized him as if she wanted to see the tissue beneath the skin, and provide against contingencies.

He turned away; he didn’t feel he could bear it. He was terribly afraid that happiness might be a habit, or a quality knitted into the temperament; or it might be something you learn when you’re a child, a kind of language, harder than Latin or Greek, that you should have a good grasp on by the time you’re seven. What if you haven’t got that grasp? What if you’re in some way happiness-stupid, happiness-blind? It occurred to him that there are some people, ashamed of being illiterate, who always pretend to others that they can read. Sooner or later they get found out, of course. But it is always possible that while you are valiantly pretending, the principles of reading strike you for the first time, and you are saved. By analogy, it is possible that while you, the unhappy person, are trying out some basic expressions-the kind of thing you get in phrase books for travelers—the grammar and syntax of this neglected language are revealing themselves, somewhere at the back of your mind. That’s all very well, he thought, but the process could take years. He understood Lucile’s problem: how do you know you will live long enough to be fluent?

The People’s Friend, No. 497, J.-P. Marat, editor:

… name immediately a military tribunal, a supreme dictator … you are lost beyond hope if you continue to heed your present leaders, who will continue to flatter you and lull you until your enemies are at your walls … . Now is the time to have the heads of Mottié, of Bailly … of all the traitors in the National Assembly … within a few days Louis XVI will advance at the head of all the malcontents and the Austrian legions … . A hundred fiery mouths will threaten to destroy your town with red shot if you offer the least resistance … all the patriots will be arrested, the popular writers will be dragged away to dungeons … a few more days of indecision, and it will be too late to shake off your lethargy; death will overtake you in your sleep.

Danton at Mirabeau’s house. “So how goes it?” the Comte said.

Danton nodded.

“I mean, I really want to know.” Mirabeau laughed. “Are you totally cynical, Danton, or do you harbor some guilty ideals? Where do you stand, really? Come, I’m taken with a passion to know. Which is it to be for King, Louis or Philippe?”

Danton declined to answer.

“Or perhaps neither. Are you a republican, Danton?”

“Robespierre says that it is not a government’s descriptive label that matters, but its nature, the way it operates, whether it is government by the people. Cromwell’s republic, for instance, was not a popular government. I agree with him. It seems to me of little importance whether we call it a monarchy or a republic.”

“You say its nature matters, but you do not say which nature you would prefer.”

“My reticence is considered.”

“I’m sure it is. You can hide a great deal behind slogans. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, indeed.”

“I subscribe to that.”

“I hear you invented it. But freedom comprehends—what?”

“Do I have to define it for you? You should simply know.”

“That is sentimentality,” Mirabeau said.

“I know. Sentimentality has its place in politics, as in the bedroom.”

The Comte looked up. “We’ll discuss bedrooms later. Let’s, shall we, descend to practicalities? The Commune is to be reshuffled, there will be elections. The office ranking below mayor will be that of administrator. There will be sixteen administrators. You wish to be one of them, you say. Why, Danton?”

“I wish to serve the city.”

“No doubt. I myself am assured of a place. Amongst your colleagues you may expect Siéyès and Talleyrand. I take it from the expression on your face that you think it a company of tergiversators in which you will be quite at home. But if I am to support you, I must have an assurance as to your moderate conduct.”

“You have it.”

“Your moderation. You understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Fully?”

“Yes.”

“Danton, I know you. You are like myself. Why else have they started calling you the poor man’s Mirabeau, do you suppose? You haven’t an ounce of moderation in your body.”

“I think our resemblances must be superficial.”

“Oh, you think you are a moderate?”

“I don’t know. I could be. Most things are possible.”

“You may wish to conciliate, but it is against your nature. You don’t work with people, you work over them.”

“Danton nodded. He conceded the point. “I drive them as I wish,” he said. “That could be towards moderation, or it could be towards the extremes.”

“Yes, but the difficulty is, moderation looks like weakness, doesn’t it? Oh yes, I know, Danton, I have been here before you, crashing down this particular trail. And speaking of extremism, I do not care for the attacks on me made by your Cordeliers journalists.”

“The press is free. I don’t dictate the output of the writers of my district.”

“Not even the one who lives next door to you? I rather thought you did.”

“Camille has to be running ahead of public opinion all the time.”

“I can remember the days,” Mirabeau said, “when we didn’t have public opinion. No one had ever heard of such a thing.” He rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “Very well, Danton, consider yourself elected. I shall hold you to your promise of moderation, and I shall expect your support. Come now—tell me the gossip. How is the marriage?”

Lucile looked at the carpet. It was a good carpet, and on balance she was glad she had spent the money on it. She did not particularly wish to admire the pattern now, but she could not trust the expression on her face.

“Caro,” she said, “I really can’t think why you are telling me all this.”

Caroline Rémy put her feet up on the blue chaise-Longue. She was a handsome young woman, an actress belonging to the Theatre Montansier company. She had two arrangements, one with Fabre d’Églantine and one with Hérault de Séchelles.

“To protect you,” she said, “from being told all this by unsympathetic people. Who would delight in embarrassing you, and making fun of your naïveté.” Caroline put her head on one side, and wrapped a curl around her finger. “Let me see—how old are you now, Lucile?”

“Twenty.”

“Dear, dear,” Caroline said. “Twenty!” She couldn’t be much older herself, Lucile thought. But she had, not surprisingly, a rather well-used look about her. “I’m afraid, my dear, that you know nothing of the world.”

“No. People keep telling me that, lately. I suppose they must be right.” (A guilty capitulation. Camille, last week, trying to educate her: “Lolotte, nothing gains truth by mere force of repetition.” But how to be polite, faced with such universal insistence?)

“I’m surprised your mother didn’t see fit to warn you,” Caro said. “I’m sure she knows everything there is to know about Camille. But if I’d had the courage—and believe me I reproach myself—to come to you before Christmas, and tell you, just for instance, about Maitre Perrin, what would your reaction have been?”

Lucile looked up. “Caro, I’d have been riveted.”

It was not the answer Caro had expected. “You are a strange girl,” she said. Her expression said clearly, strangeness doesn’t pay. “You see, you have to be prepared for what lies ahead of you.”

“I try to imagine,” Lucile said. She wished for the door to smash open, and one of Camille’s assistants to come flying in, and start firing off questions and rummaging for a piece of paper that had been mislaid. But the house was quiet for once: only Caro’s well-trained voice, with its tragedienne’s quaver, its suggestion of huskiness.

“Infidelity you can endure,” she said. “In the circles in which we move, these things are understood.” She made a gesture, elegant fingers spread, to indicate the laudable correctness, both aesthetic and social, of a little well-judged adultery. “One finds a modus vivendi. I have no fear of your not being able to amuse yourself. Other women one can cope with, provided they’re not too close to home—”

“Just stop there. What does that mean?”

Caro became a little round-eyed. “Camille is an attractive man,” she said. “I know whereof I speak.”

“I don’t see what it has to do with anything,” Lucile muttered, “if you’ve been to bed with him. I could do without that bit of information.”

“Please regard me as your friend,” Caro suggested. She bit her lip. At least she had found out that Lucile was not expecting a child. Whatever the reason for the hurry about the marriage, it was not that. It must be something even more interesting, if she could only make it out. She patted her curls back into place and slid from the chaise-longue. “Must go. Rehearsal.”

I don’t think you need any rehearsal, Lucile said under her breath. I think you’re quite perfect.

When Caro had gone, Lucile leaned back in her chair, and tried to take deep breaths, and tried to be calm. The housekeeper, Jeanette, came in, and looked her over. “Try a small omelette,” she advised.

“Leave me alone,” Lucile said. “I don’t know why you think that food solves everything.”

“I could step around and fetch your mother.”

“I should just think,” Lucile said, “that I can do without my mother at my age.”

She agreed to a glass of iced water. It made her hand ache, froze her deep inside. Camille came in at a quarter-past five, and ran around snatching up pen and ink. “I have to be at the Jacobins,” he said. That meant six o’clock. She stood over him watching his scruffy handwriting loop itself across the page. “No time ever to correct …” He scribbled. “Lolotte … what’s wrong?”

She sat down and laughed feebly: nothing’s wrong.

“You’re a terrible liar.” He was making deletions. “I mean, you’re no good at it.”

“Caroline Rémy called.”

“Oh.” His expression, in passing, was faintly contemptuous.

“I want to ask you a question. I appreciate it might be rather difficult.”

“Try.” He didn’t look up.

“Have you had an affair with her?”

He frowned at the paper. “That doesn’t sound right.” He sighed and wrote down the side of the page. “I’ve had an affair with everybody, don’t you know that by now?”

“But I’d like to know.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why would you like to know?”

“I can’t think why, really.”

He tore the sheet once across and began immediately on another. “Not the most intelligent of conversations, this.” He wrote for a minute. “Did she say that I did?”

“Not in so many words.”

“What gave you the idea then?” He looked up at the ceiling for a synonym, and as he tipped his head back, the flat, red winter light touched his hair.

“She implied it.”

“Perhaps you mistook her.”

“Would you mind just denying it?”

“I think it’s quite probable that at some time I spent a night with her, but I’ve no clear memory of it.” He had found the word, and reached for another sheet of paper.

“How could you not have a clear memory? A person couldn’t just not remember.”

“Why shouldn’t a person not remember? Not everybody thinks it’s the highest human activity, like you do.”

“I suppose not remembering is the ultimate snub.”

“I suppose so. Have you seen Brissot’s latest issue?”

“There. You’ve got your paper on it.”

“Oh, yes.”

“What, you mean you really can’t remember?”

“I’m very absentminded, anyone will tell you. It needn’t have been so much as a night. Could have been an afternoon. Or just a few minutes, or not at all. I might have thought she was someone else. My mind might have been on other things.”

She laughed.

“I’m not sure you ought to be amused. Perhaps you ought to be shocked.”

“She thinks you very attractive.”

“What heartening news. I was consumed with anxiety in case she didn’t. The page I want is missing. I must have thrown it on the fire in a rage. A literary jockey, Mirabeau calls Brissot. I’m not quite sure what that means but I expect he thinks it’s very insulting.”

“She was telling me something about a barrister you once knew.”

“Which of the five hundred?”

But he was on the defensive now. She didn’t answer. He wiped his pen carefully, put it down. He looked at her sideways, cautiously, from under his eyelashes. He smiled, slightly.

“Oh God, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You look as if you’re going to tell me what a good time you had. Do people know?”

“Some people, obviously.”

“Does my mother know?”

No answer.

“Why didn’t I know?”

“I can’t think. Possibly because you were about ten at the time. We hadn’t met. I can’t think how people would have broached the topic.”

“Ah. She didn’t tell me it was so long ago.”

“No, I’m sure she just told you exactly what suited her. Lolotte, does it matter so much?”

“Not really. I suppose he must have been nice.”

“Yes, he was.” Oh, the relief of saying so. “He was really extremely nice to me. And somehow, oh, you know, it didn’t seem much to do.”

She stared at him. He’s quite unique, she thought. “But now—” and suddenly she felt she had the essence of it—“now you’re a public person. It matters to everybody what you do.”

“And now I am married to you. And no one will ever have anything to reproach me with, except loving my wife too much and giving them nothing to talk about.” Camille pushed his chair back. “The Jacobins can wait. I don’t think I want to listen to speeches tonight. I should prefer to write a theater review. Yes? I like taking you to the theater. I like walking around in public with you. I get envied. Do you know what I really like? I like to see people looking at you, and forming ideas, and people saying, is she married?—yes—and their faces fall, but then they think, well, still, even so, and they say, to whom? And someone says, to the Lanterne Attorney, and they say, oh, and walk away with a glazed look in their eye.”

She raced off to get dressed for the theater. When she looked back, she had to admire it, as a way of getting off the subject.

A little woman—Roland’s wife—came out of the Riding School on Pétion’s arm. “Paris has changed greatly,” she said, “since I was here six years ago. I shall never forget that visit. We were night after night at the theater. I had the time of my life.”

“Let’s hope we can do as well for you this time,” Pétion said, with gallantry. “And yet you are a Parisian, my friend Brissot tells me?”

You’re overdoing the charm, Jérôme, his friend Brissot thought.

“Yes, but my husband’s affairs have kept us so long in the provinces that I no longer lay claim to the title. I have so often wished to return—and now here I am, thanks to the affairs of the Municipality of Lyon.”

Brissot thought, she talks like a novel.

“I’m sure your husband is a most worthy representative,” Pétion said, “yet let us cherish a secret hope that he does not conclude Lyon’s business too quickly. We should hate to lose, so soon, the benefit of your advice—and the radiance of your person.”

She glanced up at him and smiled. She was the type he liked—petite, a little plump, hazel eyes, dark auburn ringlets about an oval face—style perhaps a little bit young for her? What would she be, thirty-five? He pondered the possibility of burying his head in her opulent bosom—on some later occasion, of course.

“Brissot has often told me,” he said, “of his Lyon correspondent, his ‘Roman Lady’—and of course I have read all her articles and come to admire both her elegant turn of phrase and the noble cast of mind which inspires it; but never, I confess, did I look to see beauty and wit so perfectly united.”

A slight rigidity in her ready smile showed that this was just a little too fulsome. Brissot was rolling his eyes in a rather obvious manner. “So what did you think of the National Assembly, Madame?” he asked her.

“I think perhaps it has outlived its usefulness—that is the kindest thing one can say. And such a disorderly set of people! Today’s session can’t be typical?”

“I’m afraid it was.”

“They waste so much time—scrapping like schoolboys. I had hoped for a higher tone.”

“The Jacobins pleased you better, I think. A more sober gathering.”

“At least they seem concerned with the matter in hand. I am sure that there are patriots in the Assembly, but it shocks me that grown men can be so easily duped.” They could see the unwelcome conclusion darkening her eyes. “I’m afraid some of them must be willing dupes. Some of them, surely, have sold themselves to the Court. Otherwise our progress would not be so slow. Do they not understand that if there is to be any liberty in Europe we must rid ourselves of all monarchs?”

Danton was walking by, in pursuit of the city’s business; he turned, raised an eyebrow, removed his hat and passed them with a laconic, “Good morning, Mme. Revolutionary, Messieurs.”

“Good heavens. Who was that?”

“That was M. Danton,” Pétion said smoothly. “One of the curiosities of the capital.”

“Indeed.” Reluctantly she dragged her eyes from Danton’s retreating back. “How did he come by those scars?”

“No one cares to speculate,” Brissot said.

“What a brute he looks!”

Pétion smiled. “He is a man of culture,” he said, “a barrister by profession, and a very staunch patriot. One of the City Administrators, in fact. His exterior belies him.”

“I should hope it does.”

“Whom did Madame see at the Jacobins?” Brissot asked. “Which of our friends has she met?”

“She has met the Marquis de Condorcet—I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t say Marquis—and Deputy Buzot—oh, Madame, do you recall that little fellow at the Jacobins that you took such a dislike to?”

How rude, Brissot thought: I am a little fellow myself, which is better than you, who are running to fat.

“That vain, sarcastic man, who looked at the company through a lorgnette?”

“Yes. Now he is Fabre d’Églantine, a great friend of Danton.”

“What an odd pair they must make.” She turned. “Ah, here is my husband at last.” She made the introductions. Pétion and Brissot stared at M. Roland in ill-concealed bewilderment, taking in his bald dome, his grave face with its yellow aging skin, his tall, spare, dessicated body. He could have been her father, each thought: and exchanged glances to that effect.

“Well, my dear,” Roland said, “I hope you’ve been amusing yourself?”

“I have prepared the abstracts you asked for. The figures are all checked, and I have drafted several possibilities for your deposition to the Assembly. It is up to you to tell me which you prefer, and then I will cast it in its final form. Everything is in order.”

“My little secretary.” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Gentlemen—see how lucky I am. I’d be lost without her.”

“So, Madame,” Brissot said, “perhaps you would like to have a little salon? No, don’t blush, you are not unqualified. We who debate the great questions of the hour need to do so under some gentle feminine influence.” (Pompous arsehole, Pétion thought.) “To lighten the tone, perhaps a few gentlemen from the world of the arts?”

“No.” Brissot was surprised by the firmness of tone. “No artists, no poets, no actors—not for their own sake. We must establish our seriousness of purpose. If they were also patriots, of course they would be welcome.”

“You are penetrating, as always,” Pétion said. (You’d be penetrating if you could, Brissot thought.) “You should ask Deputy Buzot—you liked him, didn’t you?”

“Yes. He seemed to me to be a young man of singular integrity, a most valuable patriot. He has moral force.”

(And such a handsome, pensive face, Pétion thought, which no doubt has something to do with his appeal; God help poor plain Mme. Buzot if this determined little piece sinks her claws into François-Léonard.)

“And shall I bring Louvet?”

“I’m not sure of Louvet. Has he not written an improper book?” Pétion looked down at her pityingly. “You are laughing at me because I am a provincial,” she said. “But one has standards.”

“Of course. But Faublas was really a very harmless book.” He smiled involuntarily, as people always did when they tried to imagine wheyfaced Jean-Baptiste writing a risque bestseller. It was all autobiographical, people said.

“And Robespierre?” Brissot persisted.

“Yes, bring Robespierre. He interests me. So reserved. I should like to draw him out.”

Who knows, Pétion thought, perhaps you’re the girl who will? “Robespierre’s always busy. He has no time for a social life.”

“My salon will not form part of anyone’s social life,” she corrected sweetly. “It will be a forum for serious discussion of the issues confronting patriots and republicans.”

I wish she would not talk so much about the republic, Brissot thought. That’s an issue to be tiptoed around. I will teach her a lesson, he thought. “If you wish republicans, I shall bring Camille.”

“Who is that?”

“Camille Desmoulins—did nobody point him out at the Jacobins?”

“Dark, sulky boy with long hair,” Pétion said. “Has a stutter—but no, he didn’t speak, did he?” He looked at Brissot. “He sat next to Fabre, whispering.”

“Thick as thieves,” Brissot said. “Great patriots, of course, but not what you’d call examples of the civic virtues. Camille’s only been married for weeks, and already—”

“Gentlemen,” Roland interposed, “is this fit for the ears of my wife?” They had forgotten he was there—so vague and gray a presence beside his blithe vivacious spouse. He turned to her: “M. Desmoulins, my dear, is a clever and scandalous young journalist who is sometimes known as the Lanterne Attorney.”

A faint blush again on the soft, fresh skin: how quickly the smile could vanish, leaving her mouth a hard, decisive line. “I see no need to meet him.”

“But it is fashionable to know him, you see.”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“After all,” Pétion said, “one has standards.”

Brissot chuckled. “Madame doesn’t find much to commend in Danton’s clique.”

“She’s not alone.” Pétion spoke for Roland’s benefit. “Danton has some qualities, but there is a certain lack of scruple in evidence—he is careless with money, extravagant, and of course one wonders at its source. Fabre’s antecedents are dubious in the extreme. Camille—well, he’s clever, I grant you, and he’s popular, but he’ll never stay the course.”

“I suggest,” Brissot continued, “that Madame open her apartment to the patriots between the close of business in the Assembly—about four o’clock on a normal day—and the meeting of the Jacobins at six.” (She can open her legs to the patriots a little later, Pétion thought.) “People will come and go, it will be pleasant.”

“And useful,” she added.

“I think, gentlemen,” Roland said, “that you will congratulate yourselves on this initiative. As you see, my wife is a woman of culture and sensibility.” He looked down at her, gratified, as if she were an infant daughter taking her first steps.

Her face glowed with excitement. “To be here—at last,” she said. “For years I’ve watched, studied, fulminated, argued—with myself, of course; I’ve waited, longed, if I had any faith I would have prayed; all my concern has been that a republic should be established in France. Now here I am—in Paris—and it is going to happen.” She smiled at the three men, showing her even white teeth, of which she was very proud. “And soon.”

Danton saw Mirabeau at City Hall. It was three o’clock, an afternoon in late March. The Comte was leaning against the wall, his mouth slightly ajar as if he were recovering from some exertion. Danton stopped. He saw that the Comte had changed since their last meeting—and he was not one to notice such things. “Mirabeau—”

Mirabeau smiled dolefully. “You must not call me that. Riquetti is my name now. Titles of nobility have been abolished by the Assembly. The decree was supported by Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Mottié, ci-devant Marquis de Lafayette, and opposed by the Abbé Maury, who is the son of a shoemaker.”

“Are you quite well?”

“Yes,” Mirabeau said. “No. No, to tell the truth, Danton, I am ill. I have a pain—here—and my eyesight is failing.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Several. They speak of my choleric disposition, and advise compresses. Do you know what I think of, Danton, these days?” There was agitation in his face.

“You should rest, at least find yourself a chair.” Danton heard himself speak, unwittingly, as if to a child or an old man.

“I don’t need a chair, just listen to me.” He put a hand on Danton’s arm. “I think about the old King’s death. When he died, they tell me”—he passed the other hand across his face—“they couldn’t find anyone willing to shroud the corpse. The stench was so atrocious, it was so horrible to look at—none of the family dared risk contagion, and the servants just plain refused. In the end they brought in some poor laboring men, paid them I don’t know what—and they put it in the coffin. That’s how a king ends. They say one of the men died. I don’t know if that’s true. When they were taking the coffin to the crypt the people stood by the roadside spitting and shouting obscenities. ‘There goes Lady’s Pleasure! ’ they said.” He raised his outraged face to Danton. “Dear God, and they think they are invulnerable. Because they reign by the grace of God they think they have God in their pockets. They ignore my advice, my honest, considered, well-meant advice; I want to save them, and I am the only man who can do it. They think they can ignore all common sense, common humanity.” Mirabeau looked old; his pitted face had reddened with emotion, but beneath the blush it was like clay. “And I feel so mortally tired. The time has all got used up. Danton, if I believed in slow poisons I should say that someone has poisoned me, because I feel as if I am dying by degrees.” He blinked. There was a tear in his eye. He seemed to shake himself like a big dog. “My regards to your dear wife. And to that poor little Camille. Work,” he said to himself. “Get back to work.”

On March 27 the ci-devant Comte de Mirabeau collapsed suddenly in great pain and was taken to his house on the rue Chaussée-de-l’Antin. He died in a coma on April 2, at 8:30 in the morning.

Lately Camille had retreated to the blue chaise-longue, fenced in by books, his long legs curled up beneath him as if to disassociate himself from Lucile’s taste in carpets. It was late afternoon. The light was failing, and the street was almost deserted. Today the shops were shut, as a mark of respect. The funeral was tonight, by torchlight.

He had been to Mirabeau’s house. He’s in great pain, they said, he can’t see you. He had begged: just for a moment, please, please. Put your name in the book of well-wishers, they said. There, by the door.

Then a Genevan, in passing, too late: “Mirabeau asked for you, at the last. But we had to say you were not there.”

The Court had sent twice a day to inquire: time was, when Mirabeau could have helped them, that they did not send at all. All forget now, the distrust, the evasions, the pride: the grasping egotist’s hand on the nation’s future, rifling through circumstance as through a greasy sheaf of promissory notes. Strangers stop each other in the streets, to commiserate and express dread of the future.

On Camille’s desk, a scribbled-over sheet, almost illegible. Danton picked it up. “‘Go then, witless people, and prostrate yourself before the tomb of this god’—what does it say then?”

“‘This god of liars and thieves.’”

Danton put down the paper, appalled. “You can’t write that. Every newspaper in the country is given over to panegyrics. Barnave, who was his staunch opponent, has pronounced his eulogy at the Jacobins. Tonight the Commune and the whole Assembly will walk in his funeral procession. His most obdurate enemies are praising him. Camille, if you write that, you may be torn to pieces the next time you appear in public. I mean, literally.”

“I can write what I like,” he snapped. “Opinion is free. If the rest of the world are hypocrites and self-deluders, does it therefore follow—am I bound to alter my views because the man is dead?”

Danton said, “Jesus Christ,” in an awestruck way, and left.

It was now almost dark. Lucile was at the rue Condé. Ten minutes passed; Camille sat in the unlit room. Jeanette put her head in at the door. “Don’t you want to talk to anybody?”

“No.”

“Only Deputy Robespierre is here.”

“Oh yes, I want to talk to Robespierre.”

He could hear the woman’s tactful lower-class voice outside the door. I am forever coming into mothers, he thought: mothers and friends.

Robespierre looked haggard and uneasy, a sallow tinge on his fair skin. He pulled up a hard chair uncertainly, and sat facing Camille. “Are you not sleeping?” Camille asked.

“Not very well, these last few nights. I have a nightmare, and when I wake up it is difficult to breathe.” He put his hand tentatively against his rib cage. He dreaded the summer ahead, the suffocating blanket of walls and streets and public buildings. “I wish I had better health. My hours at the moment are trying my strength.”

“Shall we open a bottle of something and drink to the glorious dead?”

“No thanks. I’ve been drinking too much,” he said apologetically. “I have to try to keep off it in the afternoons.”

“I don’t call this afternoon,” Camille said. “Max, what’s going to happen next?”

“The Court will be looking for a new adviser. And the Assembly for a new master. He was their master, and they have a slavish nature—or so Marat would say.” Robespierre brought his chair an inch or two forward. The complicity was total; they had understood Mirabeau, and they alone. “Barnave will loom large now. Though he is hardly a Mirabeau.”

“You hated Mirabeau, Max.”

“No.” He looked up quickly. “I don’t hate. It blurs the judgement.”

“I have no judgement.”

“No. That’s why I try to guide you. You can judge events, but not men. You were too much attached to Mirabeau. It was dangerous for you.”

“Yes. But I liked him.”

“I know. I accept that he was generous to you, he built your confidence. I almost think—he wished to be a father to you.”

Goodness, Camille thought: is that the impression you carried away? I think perhaps my sentiments were not entirely filial. “Fathers can be deceptive creatures,” he said.

Max was silent for a moment. Then he said, “In the future, we must be careful of personal ties. We may have to break free of them—” He stopped, conscious that he had suddenly said what he came to say.

Camille looked at him without speaking. After a moment: “Perhaps you did not come to discuss Mirabeau,” he said. “Perhaps I am quite wrong, but perhaps you have chosen this evening to tell me that you don’t intend to marry Adèle.”

“I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s the reason, really.”

Robespierre avoided his eyes. They sat for a moment in silence. Jeanette came in, smiled at them both and lit the lamps. When she had gone, Camille flung himself to his feet. “You’ll have to do better than that.” He was very angry.

“It’s hard to explain. Have patience for a minute.”

“And I’m to tell her. Is that it?”

“I hoped you would. I honestly don’t know what I would say. You must realize, I feel I hardly know Adèle.”

“You knew what you were doing.”

“Don’t yell at me. There was no definite arrangement of any kind, nothing was settled. And I can’t go on with it. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets. There are plenty of people for her to marry, better than me. I don’t even know how the whole thing got started. Am I in a position to marry?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because—because I work all the time. I work because it’s my duty, so it seems to me. I have no time to devote to a family.”

“But you have to eat, Max, you have to sleep somewhere, you have to have a home. Even you have to take an hour off occasionally. Adèle knows what to expect.”

“That’s not the whole point. You see, I might have to make sacrifices for the sake of the Revolution. I’d be very happy to do it, it’s what I—”

“What kind of sacrifices?”

“Suppose it were necessary for me to die?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It would leave her a widow for the second time.”

“Have you been talking to Lucile? She has it all worked out. How there might be an outbreak of bubonic plague. Or one might be run over by a carriage. Or be shot by the Austrians, which I admit is quite likely. All right—one day you’re going to die. But if everybody proceeded on your assumptions, the human race would come to an end, because no one would have children.”

“Yes, I know,” he said awkwardly. “It’s right for you to marry, even though your life may be in danger. But not for me. It’s not right for me.”

“Priests now marry. You campaigned in the Assembly for their right to do so. You run contrary to the spirit of the times.”

“What the priests do and what I do are two separate questions. Most of them couldn’t remain celibate, we ended an abuse.”

“Do you find celibacy so easy?”

“The easiness of it isn’t the question.”

“What about the girl in Arras—Anaïs, wasn’t it? Would you have married her, if things had gone differently?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not Adèle?”

“No.”

“You just don’t want to be married?”

“That’s right.”

“But not for the reasons you give me.”

“Don’t browbeat me, you haven’t got me in court.” He got up, in great distress. “Oh, you think I’m callous, but I’m not. I want everything that people do want—but it just doesn’t work out, for me. I can’t commit myself, knowing—I mean, fearing—what the future may hold.”

“Are you afraid of women?”

“No.”

“Give the question your honest consideration.”

“I try always to be honest.”

“As a practical matter,” Camille said scathingly, “life will be difficult for you now. You may not like the fact, but it seems that you’re attractive to women. In company they pin you against walls and heave their bosoms at you. There is a positive rustle of carnality from the public galleries when you make an intervention. The belief that you had an attachment has held them back so far, but what now? They’ll be pursuing you in public places and ripping your clothes off. Think of that.”

Robespierre had sat down again, his face frozen by consternation and distaste.

“Go on. Tell me your real reason.”

“You have it already. I can’t explain anymore.” At the back of his mind, something moved, full of dread. A woman, her pinched mouth, her hair scraped back into a band; the crackle of firewood, the drone of flies. He looked up, helpless. “Either you understand or you don’t. I think there was something I wanted to say … but you shouldn’t have flown into a rage because now I can’t remember what it was. But I need your help.”

Camille dropped into a chair. He looked at the ceiling for a while, his arms hanging loose over the chair’s arms. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “I’ll sort it out. Don’t think about it anymore. Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You’re afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it’s because of another kind of love, isn’t it, that the duty is laid upon you? It is really my fault, this business, mine and Annette’s. We liked the idea, so we set it up. You were too polite to upset our arrangements. You’ve never so much as kissed her. Of course, you wouldn’t. I know, there is your work. No one else is going to do what you are going to do, and you come to the point of renouncing, as much as you can, human needs and human weaknesses. I wish—I wish I could help you more.”

Robespierre searched his face for some evidence of malice or levity; saw none. “When we were children,” he said, “life wasn’t particularly easy for either of us, was it? But we kept each other going, didn’t we? The years in Arras were the worst, the years in between. I’m not so lonely, now.”

“Mm.” Camille was looking for a formula, a formula to contain what his instinct rejected. “The Revolution is your bride,” he said. “As the Church is the Bride of Christ.”

“Oh well,” Adèle said. “Now I shall have Jérôme Pétion looking down the front of my dress and breathing sentimental slogans in my ear. Look, Camille, I’ve understood the situation for weeks. Let this be a lesson to you not to scheme.”

He was amazed, that she was taking it so well. “Will you go away and cry?”

“No, I’ll just—do a bit of rethinking.”

“There are lots of men, Adèle.”

“Don’t I just know it?” she said.

“Will you not feel able to see him now?”

“Of course I’ll feel able to see him. People can be friends, can’t they? I presume that’s what he wants?”

“Ye, of course. I’m so glad. Because it would be difficult for me, otherwise.”

She looked at him fondly. “You’re a self-centered little bastard, aren’t you, Camille?”

Danton began to laugh. “Eunuch,” he said. “The girl should be glad he didn’t carry the farce any further. Oh, I should have guessed.”

“No need for such unholy jubilation.” Camille was gloomy. “Try to understand.”

“Understand? I understand perfectly. It’s easy.”

He went to hold forth at the Café des Arts. He had it on good authority, he told everyone, that Deputy Robespierre was sexually impotent. He told his cronies at City Hall, and a few score deputies of his acquaintance; he told the actresses backstage at the Theatre Montansier, and almost the entire membership of the Cordeliers Club.

April 1791, Deputy Robespierre opposed a property qualification for future deputies, defended freedom of speech. May, he upheld press freedom, spoke against slavery and asked for civil rights for the mulattos in the colonies. When the organization of a new legislature was discussed, he proposed that members of the existing Assembly should not be eligible for re-election; they must give way to new men. He was heard for two hours in a respectful silence, and his motion was carried. In the third week of May, he fell ill from nervous strain and overwork.

Late May, he demanded without success the abolition of the death penalty.

June 10, he was elected Public Prosecutor. The city’s Chief Magistrate resigned rather than work with him. Pétion took the vacant place. Gradually, you see, our people are coming into the power they have always thought is their due.