A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 2

Robespierricide

“I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.” Oh, Manon thought, not before that? It seemed to her that her letters, her writings, should have prompted some quickening of sensibility in the man who—she now knew—was the only one who could ever have made her happy.

This was no hasty process. Rivers of ink had flowed between them, when they’d been apart; when they’ve been together—or, let us say, in the same city—they have seldom had a private moment. Salon conversation, hours of it, has been their lot; they spoke the language of legislators, before they spoke the language of love. Even now, Buzot did not say much. He seemed perplexed, torn, tormented. He was younger than she was, less tutored in his emotions. He had a wife: a plain woman, older.

Manon ventured this: her fingertips on his shoulder, as he sat with his head in his hands. It was consolatory; and it stopped her fingers from trembling.

There was a need for secrecy. The newspapers nominated lovers for her—Louvet, often. Until now she’d reacted with public scorn; have they no arguments, have they not even a higher form of wit? (In private, though, these skits and squibs brought her near to tears; she asked herself why she was meted out the same treatment as that peculiar, wild young woman Théroigne, the same treatment—when she thought about it—as the Capet woman used to get.) The newspapers—just—she could bear; what was harder to bear was the activity of the gossip circus that centered on the Ministry of Justice.

Danton’s comments were relayed to her; he claimed her husband had been a cuckold for years, in every moral sense if not the physical one. But how could he imagine her situation; how could he appreciate, acknowledge the delicate satisfactions of a relationship between a chaste woman and an honorable man? It was impossible to think of him in any context but that of the grossly physical. She had seen his wife; since he became a minister he had brought her once to the Riding School, to sit in the public gallery and hear him roaring at the deputies. She was a dull type of woman, pregnant, probably with no thought in her head beyond gruel and baby mush. Still, she’s a woman—how could she bear it, she asked out loud, how could she bear to have that bully’s overweight body stretched on top of hers?

It was an unguarded remark, a remark almost shocked out of her by the strength of her own repulsion; next day it was of course repeated all over town. She went scarlet at the thought of it.

Citizen Fabre d’Églantine called. He crossed his legs and put his fingertips together. “Well, my dear,” he said.

This ghastly assumption of familiarity was what she resented. This unserious person, who associated with females who trembled on the outer fringes of polite society: this creature with his theatrical affectations and his snide remarks out of earshot; they sent him here to watch her, and he went back and made reports. “Citizen Camille is saying,” he told her, “that your now-famous remark suggests that you are in fact greatly attracted to the minister—as he has always suspected.”

“I can’t imagine how he presumes to divine the state of my feelings. As we have never met.”

“No, I realize this: why won’t you meet him?”

“We would have nothing to say to each other.”

She had seen Camille Desmoulins’s wife at the Riding School, and at the public gallery of the Jacobins; she looked an accommodating sort of girl, and they said she accommodated Danton. They said Camille condoned it or did rather more … . Fabre noticed that little, flinching movement of the head, that flinching away from knowledge. And yet, what a cesspit the woman’s mind must be; even we, he thought, do not speculate in public about what our colleagues do in bed.

Manon asked herself: why do I have to put up with this man? If I must communicate with Danton, couldn’t there be some other go-between? Apparently not. Perhaps, she thought, Danton doesn’t trust as many people as his expansive manner suggests?

Fabre looked at her quizzically. “Your loss,” he said. “Really, you have the wrong impression; you’d like Camille much better than you like me. Incidentally, he believes that women should have been allowed to vote in the elections.”

She shook her head. “I disagree. Most women know nothing of politics. They do not reason—” she thinks of Danton’s women—“they have no constructive thoughts at all. They would simply be influenced by their husbands.”

“Or their lovers.”

“In your circles, perhaps.”

“I’ll tell Camille what you say.”

“Please don’t bother. I’ve no wish to carry on a debate with him, at first- or second-hand.”

“He’ll be devastated to know that your opinion of him has sunk even lower.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” she said harshly.

He raised an eyebrow: as he always did, when he had provoked her to an outburst. Day after day he watched her, reaping her moods and garnering her expressions.

Secrecy then. Yet there’s a need for honesty, and François-Léonard admitted it. “We are both married, and I see that it’s impossible … for you, anyway … to do anything to dishonor those vows … .”

But if feeds so right, she cried. My instinct tells me it can’t be wrong.

“Instinct?” He looked up. “Manon, this is suspect. You know, we have no absolute right to be happy … or rather, we need to think carefully about what the nature of happiness might be … . We have no right to please ourselves, at the expense of others.” Still those steady fingers rested upon his shoulder; but her face was unconvinced, her face was … greedy. “Manon?” he said. “Have you read Cicero? His essay on Duty?”

Has she read Cicero? Does she know her Duty? “Oh, yes …” she moaned. “Oh, I’m well read. And I know that obligations must be weighed, that no one can be happy at the expense of other people. Don’t you think I’ve been through all this, in my head?”

“Yes.” He looked abashed. “I’ve underestimated you.”

“Do you know, if I have a fault—” she paused minutely, waiting for the polite rejoinder—“if I have a fault, it’s that I speak to the point, I can’t bear hypocrisy, I can’t bear this politeness that detracts from honesty—I must speak to Roland.”

“Speak to him? Of what?”

Fair question. Nothing has happened between them—in the sense that Danton and his friends think of something happening. (She pictured Lucile Desmoulins’s little breasts, crushed between Danton’s fingers.) Only his precipitate declaration, her precipitate answer: but since then, he had barely touched her, barely touched her hand.

“My dear”—she dropped her head—“this goes so far beyond the realms of the physical. As you say—in that sense, nothing is possible for us. And, of course, I must support Roland—this is a time of crisis, I am his wife, I cannot abandon him. And yet—I cannot allow him to live in doubt about the true nature of things. This is part of my character, you must understand it.”

He looked up. He frowned. “But Manon, you have nothing to say to your husband. Nothing has occurred. We have simply spoken of our feelings—”

“Yes, we have spoken of them! Roland has never spoken to me of his feelings—but I respect them, I know he has feelings, he must have, everybody has them. I must say to him: here is the truth. I have met the man I was meant to love; our situation is thus, and thus; I shall not mention his name; nothing has occurred; nothing shall occur; I shall remain a faithful wife to you. He will understand me; he will know my heart has gone elsewhere.”

Buzot cast his eyes down. “You are implacable, Manon. Has there ever been a woman like you?”

I doubt it, she thought. She said, “I cannot betray Roland. I cannot leave him. My body, you may think, was meant for pleasure. But pleasure is not of the first account.” Still, she thought of Buzot’s hands; rather robust hands for so elegant, so well kept a man. Her breasts are not like the Desmoulins woman’s; they are breasts that have fed a child, they are responsible breasts.

Buzot said, “Do you think it’s a good idea to tell him? Do you think—” (God help me)—“that there’s any point?”

He had an intimation that he had gone about this the wrong way. But then, he had no experience. He was a virgin, in these matters; and his wife, whom he had married for her money, was older, and plain.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Fabre said. “There’s certainly someone! How pleasant to find that people are no better than you are.”

“Not Louvet?”

“No. Barbaroux, perhaps?”

“Oh no. Reputation bad. Attractions obvious. Rather,” Camille sighed, “rather florid and showy for Madame.”

“I wonder how the Virtuous Roland will take it?”

“At her age,” Camille said with disgust. “And she so plain too.”

“Are you ill?” Manon asked her husband. It was hard to keep the sharpness out of her voice. Her husband had slumped in his chair, and as he dragged his eyes to her face his expression was certainly that of physical pain.

“I’m sorry.” Sorry for him, she meant. She did not feel any further need to apologize; she was simply setting out the situation for him, so that there should be no need for demeaning behavior, for pretenses, for anything that could be construed as deceit.

She waited for him to speak. When he did not, she said, “You understand why I won’t tell you his name.”

He nodded.

“Because it would produce impediments to our work. Obstacles. Even though we are reasonable people.” She waited. “I am not a woman who can bridle my emotions. My conduct, though, will be above reproach.”

At last he broke the silence.

“Manon, how is Eudora, our daughter?”

She was amazed, angry at the irrelevance. “You know she’s well. You know she’s well looked after.”

“Yes, but why do we never have her here?”

“Because the ministry is no place for a child.”

“Danton has his children at the Place des Piques.”

“His children are infants, they can be left to nursemaids. Eudora is a different matter—she would need my attention, and at present that is taken up elsewhere. You know she is not pretty, she has no accomplishments—what would I do with her?”

“She is only twelve, Manon.”

She looked down at him. She saw his sinewy hand, clenching and unclenching; then she saw that he had begun to cry, that tears were running silently down his cheeks. She thought, he would not want me to witness this. With a look of puzzled sadness she left the room, closing the door quietly, as she did when he was sick, when he was her patient and she his nurse.

He listened until the clip of her footsteps died away, and then at last permitted himself to make a sound, a sound that seemed to him to be natural, as natural as speech: it was a stifled animal bleat, a bleat of mourning, from a narrow chest. On and on it went; unlike speech, it went nowhere, it had no necessary end. It was for himself; it was for Eudora; it was for all the people who had ever got in her way.

Eléonore: She had thought, when all this is over, Max will marry me. She had hinted it to her mother. “Yes, I think so,” Mme. Duplay had said comfortably.

A few days later her father took her aside. With a thoughtful, embarrassed gesture, he smoothed his thinning hair over his scalp. “He’s a great patriot,” he said. It seemed to be worrying him. “I should think he’s very fond of you. He’s very reserved, isn’t he, in his private capacity? Not that one would wish him any different. A great patriot.”

“Yes.” She was irritated. Did her father imagine that her pride in him needed to be bolstered in this way?

“It’s a great honor that he lives here with us, and so of course we ought to do all we can … . The fact is, you’re already married, in my eyes.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see what you mean.”

“I’d rely on you … if there were anything you could do to make his life more comfortable—”

“Father, didn’t you hear me, I said, I see what you mean.”

Finally, she let her hair down, so that it tumbled over her square shoulders and down her back. She pushed it away from her small breasts and leaned into the mirror to scrutinize herself. Perhaps it is folly to imagine that with my plain face … Lucile Desmoulins had come yesterday, bringing the baby for them to see. They fussed around her and chattered, and she had passed the baby to Victoire and sat alone: one hand drooping over the arm of her chair, like a winter flower touched with ice. When Max had come in, she had turned her head, smiled; and sudden pleasure lit his face. It ought to be called brotherly affection, what he felt for Lucile; but for me, she thought, if there were any justice it ought to be more than that.

She smoothed her hand down over her flat belly and hips. She began to take pleasure in the softness of her own skin; she felt what his hands would feel. But when she turned away from the mirror, she saw for a second the square, solid lines of her body, and, as she eased herself into the bed and put her head on his pillow, only a residue of disappointment remained. As she lay and waited, her whole body locked rigid in anticipation.

She heard him climbing the stairs; turned her face resolutely to the door. For one dreadful half-second she imagined that—Oh God, is it possible—the dog might burst in, hurl himself upon her, panting and grinning, whining and slurping, snatching up (as he was prone to do) jawfuls of her very clean and well-brushed hair.

But the door handle turned, and nothing and no one entered. He hesitated on the threshold of the room, and looked as if he might back out, and down the stairs again. Then, deciding, he stepped in. Eyes met; of course, they would. He had a sheaf of loose papers in his hands, and as he reached out to put them down, his eyes still on her face, some of them went fluttering to the floor.

“Shut the door,” she said. She hoped it would be all that she would need to say, perfect understanding then; but emerging from her mouth it sounded just a practical suggestion, as if she were incommoded by a draught.

“Eléonore, are you sure about this?”

An expression of impatience and self-mockery crossed his face; it did seem that she had made up her mind. He lifted her hands, kissed her fingertips. He wanted to say, very clearly, we can’t do this; as he bent to retrieve the scattered papers, blood rushed into his face, and he realized the total impossibility of asking her to get up and go.

When he turned back to her she was sitting up. “No one will complain,” she said. “They understand. We’re not children. They’re not going to make things difficult for us.”

Are they not, though, he thought. He sat down on the bed and stroked her breast, the nipple hardening into the palm of his hand. His face expressed concern for her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Really.”

No one had ever kissed her before. He did it very gently, but still, she seemed surprised. He thought that he had better take his clothes off because in a minute she would start advising it, telling him that was all right too. He touched alien flesh, soft, strange; there was a girl he used to see when he came to Versailles at first, but she was not a good girl, not in any sense, and it had been easier to drift apart, and since then it had been easier not to do anything, celibacy is easy but half-celibacy is very hard, women don’t keep secrets and the papers are avid for gossip … . Eléonore did not seem to expect or want any delay. She pushed her body against his, but it was stiff with the anticipation of pain. She knows the mechanics, he thought, but no one has introduced her to the art. Does she know she might begin to bleed? He felt a sharp, nauseous pang.

“Eléonore, close your eyes,” he whispered to her. “You should try to relax, just a minute until you feel—” Better, he had almost said, as if it were a sickbed. He touched her hair, kissed her again. She didn’t touch him; she hadn’t thought of it. He pushed her legs apart a little. “I don’t want you to be frightened,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she said.

But it wasn’t. He couldn’t force his way into her dry and rigid body without using a brutality he couldn’t call up. After a minute or two he propped himself on his elbow and looked down at her. “Don’t try to rush,” he said. He slipped a hand under her buttocks. Eléonore, he would have liked to say, I’m not practiced at this, and I wouldn’t describe you as a natural. She arched her body against his. Someone’s told her to work hard for what she wants in life, to grit her teeth and never give up … poor Eléonore, poor women. Rather unexpectedly, and at a faintly peculiar angle, he penetrated her. She did not make a sound. He gathered her head against his shoulder so that he did not have to see her face and would not know if it hurt her. He eased himself around—not that there was much ease about it—into a more agreeable position. He thought again, it’s been too long, you do this often or not at all. And so, of course, it was over quickly. He buried in her neck a faint sound of release. He let her go, and her head dropped back against the pillow.

“Did I hurt you?”

“It’s all right.”

He rolled over on his side and closed his eyes. She would be thinking, so that’s it, is it, is that what the fuss is about? Of course she would think that. It was his own disappointment he couldn’t get over, a kind of bitter, strained feeling in his throat. There’s a lesson somewhere, he thought; when pleasures you deny yourself turn out not to be pleasures, you’re doubly destroyed, for not only do you lose an illusion, you also feel futile. It had been much better, of course, with the Versailles girl, but there was no going back to that situation, there was no conquering one’s spiritual distaste for the casual encounter. Should he say to Eléonore, I’m sorry it was so quick, I realize you didn’t enjoy it? But what was the point, since she didn’t have a standard of comparison, and would only say “it was all right” anyway.

“I’ll get up now,” she said.

He put an arm round her. “Stay.” He kissed her breasts.

“All right. If you want.”

He made tentative exploration. There was no blood, at least he didn’t think so. He thought, presumably she will actually know that there is more to it, that it gets better with practice, because she will understand that for some people it is such an important part of their lives.

Now at last she relaxed a little. She smiled. It was a smile of accomplishment. Who can guess what she’s thinking? “This bed’s not very big,” she said.

“No, but—” If it came to that, he would just have to tell her. He would have to say Eléonore, Comélia, much as I appreciate the free and generous offer of your body, I have no intention of spending my nights with you, even if your whole family helps us to move the furniture. He closed his eyes again. He tried to think what excuse he could make to Maurice when he left the house, how he would cope with Madame’s questions, no doubt tears. He thought then of the recrimination that would descend on Eléonore’s muddled and guiltless head, and the feminine spite. And besides, he didn’t want to go, to cold and unfrequented rooms in another district, and meet Maurice Duplay at the Jacobins, and nod to him, and refrain from asking after the family. And he knew, quite certainly, that this would happen again. When Eléonore decided that it was time she’d just trip upstairs and wait for him, and he wouldn’t be able to send her away, any more than he had the first time. He wondered who she’d confide in, because she’d need advice on how often to expect it; and the disastrous possibilities came tumbling in on his head, as he tried to delimit the circle of her female friends. It was fortunate that she hardly knew Mme. Danton.

He must have gone to sleep then, and when he woke up she had gone. It was 9 p.m. Tomorrow, he thought, she will go bouncing along the street, smiling at people and paying calls for no real reason.

In the days afterwards he became sick with guilt. The second time she was easier, less tense, but she never gave any sign of experiencing pleasure. It came to him that if she found herself pregnant they would have to be married very quickly. Perhaps, he thought, when the Convention meets, new people will come to the house, and perhaps someone will like her, and I can be generous and release her from any promise or tie.

But in his heart, he knew that this wouldn’t happen. No one would like her. The family wouldn’t let them like her. The people who’re married, he thought, can get divorced now. But the only thing that will release us is if one of us dies.

At the ministry, Camille sat at his desk, and irrelevant thoughts flitted through his head. He thought of the night he had spent in his cousin de Viefville’s apartment, before he had gone to see Mirabeau. Barnave had called. Barnave had spoken to him as if he were someone worthy of consideration. He had liked Barnave, personally. He was in prison now, accused of conspiring with the Court; of this charge he was, of course, utterly guilty. Camille sighed. He drew little ships at sea in the margin of the encouraging letter he was drafting to the Jacobins of Marseille.

The members of the Convention were gathering now in Paris. Augustin Robespierre: Camille, you haven’t changed a bit. And Antoine Saint-Just … he would have to be patient about Saint-Just, stop that disastrous, illogical animosity flaring up … .

“I have the feeling he harbors loathsome thoughts in his head,” he told Danton.

And Danton, preoccupied with solidarity: “Do try, do try,” he said, in his tired barrister’s voice, “to keep the peace, you know, not be a constant disappointment to Maximilien? You do make work for him, tidying up your indiscretions.”

“Saint-Just will not have indiscretions, I suppose.”

“He doesn’t look as if he would.”

“That will endear him to everyone, I’m sure.”

“Endear,” Danton laughed. “The boy alarms me. That chilly, purposive smirk.”

“Perhaps he’s trying to look pleasant.”

“Hérault will be jealous. The women will be interested in someone else.”

“Hérault need not worry. Saint-Just isn’t interested in women.”

“You used to say that about Saint Maximilien, but now he has the delightful Comélia. Yes, isn’t it so?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

So that was common gossip now, besides the supposed infidelity of Roland’s wife and the menage here at the Place des Piques. What things for people to occupy themselves with, he thought.

Perhaps Danton would leave office soon. For himself he would be pleased. Yet it seemed certain that Roland’s supporters would try to arrange for him to stay on at the Interior, though he had been elected to the Convention. Even after the scandal about the Crown Jewels, the dusty old bureaucrat was riding high. And if he stayed in office, why not Danton, so much more necessary to the nation?

I don’t want to be here much longer, he thought. I shall turn into Claude. I don’t much want to speak to the Convention either, they won’t be able to hear me. Then again, he said to himself, it isn’t a question of what I want.

It was more troubling to think that Danton himself wanted to leave office. Even now he hadn’t thrown over his dreams—his delusions—of getting out of Paris for good. In the small hours, Camille had found him solitary in a pool of yellow candlelight, poring over the deeds to his Arcis property, each boundary stone, watercourse, right of way. As he lifted his head Camille had seen in his eyes a picture of mellow buildings, fields, copses and streams.

“Ah,” he had said, startled. “I thought my assassin had come at last.” He laid a hand, palm down, on the deeds. “To think of the Prussians here, perhaps.”

Fabre had been evasive lately, Camille thought. Not that he was given to plain speaking. If Fabre had to choose, between money and revolutionary fame … No, he’d refuse to choose, he’d go on dizzily demanding both.

“What interpretation are we to put on the removal of the Crown Jewels?” Camille asked Danton.

What are we to think? Or—what are we to say? He watched Danton digest the ambiguity.

“I think we must say that Roland’s carelessness is much to blame.”

“Yes, he should have made better security arrangements, should he not? Fabre was with the Citizeness Roland the day after. He went at half-past ten and came back at one. Do you think he had been castigating her?”

“How do I know?”

Camille gave him an amused, sideways glance. “And after he left the Citizeness, she went straight to her husband and told him that the man who stole the Crown Jewels had just called.”

“How do you know that?”

“Perhaps I’m making it up. Do you think I am?”

“You could be,” Danton said unhappily.

“Don’t trust Dumouriez.”

“No. Robespierre says it. I am sick of him saying it.”

“Robespierre is never wrong.”

“Perhaps I should go to the front myself. See a few people. Get a few things straightened out.”

So—perhaps when these pastoral moods came upon him, it was really a kind of fear. God knows he was vulnerable enough, though it seemed strange to apply the word to him. He was vulnerable to Dumouriez, and to supporters of the Bourbons, too, seeking fulfillment of promises made … . “There’s nothing to worry about. M. Danton will look after us.”

Camille swept the thought away hastily, pushing his hair back in nervous agitation, as if someone were in the room with him. He seemed to hear Robespierre’s voice drifting across a cold spring day in 1790: “Once you bestow affection on a person, reason flies out of the window. Look at the Comte de Mirabeau—objectively, if you can, for a moment. The way he lives, his words, his actions, put me on my guard immediately—then I apply a little thought, and I discover that the man is wholly given over to self-aggrandizement. Now why can’t you come to this conclusion, because it’s plain enough? You don’t yield to your feelings in other respects, when they run counter to your larger aims; for instance, you’re frightened of speaking in public, but you don’t let it stop you. Then, like that—you have to be ruthless with your feelings.”

Suppose he found that persistent unsparing voice at his elbow one day, claiming that Danton lacked probity; he had an answer, pat, not a logical one, but one sufficiently chilling to put logic in abeyance. To question Danton’s patriotism was to cast in doubt the whole Revolution. A tree is known by its fruits, and Danton made August 10. First he made the republic of the Cordeliers, then he made the Republic of France. If Danton is not a patriot, then we have been criminally negligent in the nation’s affairs. If Danton is not a patriot, we are not patriots either. If Danton is not a patriot, then the whole thing—from May ’89—must be done again.

It was a thought to make even Robespierre tired.

When the news of the victory at Valmy reached Paris, the city was delirious with relief and joy, and it was only later that a few people began to wonder why the French had not pursued their immediate advantage, chased up Brunswick and cut his retreat to pieces. The National Convention, meeting for the first time, had officially proclaimed the French Republic; it was the best of omens. Before long there will be no enemies on French soil—or no foreign enemies at least. The generals will push on to Mainz, Worms, Frankfurt; Belgium will be occupied, England, Holland and Spain will enter the war. In time defeats will occur, and betrayal, conspiracy and mere half-heartedness receive a ghastly reward; as the numbers of the Convention dwindle, one can seem to see every day on the empty benches a figure of Death, smiling, familiar and spry.

For the moment the Convention’s most startling phenomenon was Danton’s voice; it was heard every day, on every question, but its arrogant power never ceased to surprise. Shunning the ministerial bench, he sat in the high tier of seats to the left of the chamber, with the other Paris deputies and the fiercer of the provincials. These seats, and by extension those who occupy them, will be called the Mountain. The Girondins, Brissotins—whatever you please to call them—drift to the right of the hall, and between them and the Mountain lies the area called the Plain, or the Swamp, in accordance with the quaking natures of those who sit there. Now that the split was visible, wide open, there seemed no reason for discretion or restraint. Day after day, Buzot poured out into the airless, stifling, sweating chamber Manon Roland’s suspicions of Paris: tyrant city, leech, necropolis. Sometimes she watched him from the public gallery, rigidly impersonal in her applause; in public they behaved like polite strangers, and in private, though less strange, they were not less polite. Louvet carried in his pocket a speech, kept for the right time, which he called a Robespierricide.

Because of the crux of the matter—September, October, November—was the Brissotin attempt to rule; their private army of 16,000, brought from the provinces, singing in the streets, demanding the blood of would-be dictators—Marat, Danton, Robespierre—whom they called the Triumvirate. The War Minister shuttled that army to the front before there were pitched battles on the streets; but the battle-lines of the Convention were not within his jurisdiction.

Marat sat alone, hunched over his bloody preoccupations. When he got up to speak, the Brissotins hurried out of the chamber, or stayed to stare with fascinated distaste, murmuring among themselves; but as time passed they stayed to listen, because his words concerned them intimately. He spoke with one arm crooked before him and resting on the tribune, his head flung back on his short, muscular neck, prefacing his remarks with the demonic chuckle he cultivated. He was ill, and no one knew the name of his disease.

Robespierre met him—in passing, of course, he had always known him, but he had shrunk from closer contact. There was the danger that, if you talked with Marat, you would be blamed for him, accused of dictating his writings and fanning his ambition. And yet, one can’t pick and choose; in the present climate one must count up one’s friends. Perhaps from this point of view the meeting was not wholly successful, serving only to show how the patriots were divided. Robespierre’s body, young and compact, had a neat, feline tension inside his well-cut clothes; his emotions, or those emotions that might be worn on his face, were buried with the victims of September. Marat twitched at him across a table, coughing, a dirty kerchief wrapped around his head. He spluttered with passion, his grubby fist pumped, frustration blotched and mottled his skin. “Robespierre, you don’t understand me.”

Robespierre watched him dispassionately, his head tilted a little to one side. “That is possible.”

October 10: two months since the coup. Under Robespierre’s eyes (he spoke there every night) the Jacobin Club “purged” itself. Brissot and his colleagues were expelled; they were cast out from the body of patriotism, as filthy waste matter. October 29: the Convention, Roland on his feet. His supporters clapped and cheered him; but the old man seemed a bloodless marionette, duty and habit jerking the strings. Robespierre, he suggested, would like to see the September massacres over again. At the name of Robespierre, the Gironde broke out into groans and cries.

Robespierre rose from his place on the Mountain. He made for the rostrum, his small head lowered in a way that suggested belligerence. Gaudet, the Girondist who was president of the Convention, tried to stop him speaking. Danton’s voice was audible above the uproar. “Let him speak. And I demand to speak, when he’s done. It’s time a few things were put straight around here.”

VERGNIAUD [his eyes on Danton]: I was afraid of this … of their alliance. I have feared it for some time.

GAUDET [beside him]: One can deal with Danton.

VERGNIAUD: Up to a point.

GAUDET: Where the money runs out.

VERGNIAUD: It’s more complicated than that. God help you if you can’t see it’s more complicated than that.

GAUDET: Robespierre has the rostrum.

VERGNIAUD: As usual. [He closes his eyes; his pale heavy face settles into attentive folds.] The man cannot speak.

GAUDET: Not in your sense.

VERGNIAUD: There is no show.

GAUDET: The people like it well enough. His style.

VERGNIAUD: Oh yes, the people. The People.

Robespierre was unusually angry. It was the insult of Roland as an opponent, this dotard with his trollop of a wife and his incessant, obsessive muttering about the accounts of Danton’s ministry. That, and the gnat bites of their insinuations, whispers behind hands, stray voices in the street that call “September” and pass on. Danton has heard them too. It sometime shows in his face.

Robespierre’s voice, above the low muttering which filled the body of the hall, was dripping with contempt: “Not one of you dares accuse me to my face.”

There was a pause, a little silence for the Gironde to contemplate their cowardice.

“I accuse you.”

Louvet walked forward, fumbling inside his coat for the pages of the Robespierricide. “Ah, the pornographer,” Philippe Égalité said. The Duke’s voice rolled down, from the height of the Mountain. There was an outbreak of sniggering. Then the silence welled back.

Robespierre stepped aside, and yielded Louvet the rostrum. He wore a patient, hesitant smile; he glanced up towards the Paris deputies, then took a seat, in Louvet’s line of sight, and waited for him to begin his tirade.

“I accuse you of persistently slandering the finest patriots. Of having spread your slanders in the first week of September, when rumors were death blows. I accuse you of having degraded and proscribed the representatives of the nation.” He paused—the Mountain were yelling, baying at him—it was difficult to continue—Robespierre twisted his head, looked up at them, and the noise subsided, dwindled, tailed off, into another silence.

In it, Louvet resumed; but his voice, pitched for opposition, for a shouting match, had the wrong timbre now, and as he heard it—as he heard what was wrong, as he said to himself, this will not do—his voice shook a little. To brace himself, he put his hands on the rostrum; he found he could not take a grip, because his palms were slippery with sweat.

His quarry’s head was turned to him; but the light struck across his face, so that he was eyeless behind his tinted lenses. He seemed to wear no expression at all. Louvet launched himself forward, physically, as if he were going to jump: “I accuse you of having set yourself up as an object of idolatry: of having allowed people to name you in your presence as the only man who could save the nation—and of having said it yourself. I accuse you of aiming at being the supreme power.”

Whether he had finished, or he had simply paused—whatever the truth, the Mountain were yelling again, redoubling their volume, and he saw Danton shoot upwards from his seat and start forward as if to stride down the hall and settle the matter with his fists; he saw Danton’s friends on their feet, and Fabre holding his chief back in a theatrical parade of restraint. Louvet stepped down from the tribune. His shoulders had bowed, he had developed a sort of consumptive stoop; Robespierre was on his feet lightly, bouncily. He was back at the tribune, indicating by his manner that he’d not detain them; in his cool, even voice, he asked the House for time to prepare his defense. Danton would have strode to the rostrum, struck terror into them, torn the case to pieces, there and then; this was not Robespierre’s method. He made a sign to Danton, an inclination of the head, almost a bow; then left the chamber, a knot of Montagnards clustering about him, his brother Augustin clutching at his arm and saying the Gironde would murder him.

“A bad moment,” Legendre said. “Who would have expected it? I would not.”

Danton was very pale. The scar stood out on his face. “They are baiting me,” he said.

“Baiting you, Danton?”

“Yes, me. If they strike at Robespierre they strike at me, if they take him on they must take me on too. Tell them this. Tell Brissot.”

They told Vergniaud, later. “I am not Brissot,” he said. “I am not a Brissotin. At least, I think not. They fling the word about like largesse to the poor. Still—we have not been kind to Danton. We have resented his power in the ministry, we have been rude about his friends. Some of us have allowed our wives to make personal remarks. We have demanded to see his accounts, which naturally makes him nervous. We have, take it all in all, failed to bang our foreheads on the floor. Yet I hardly thought he bore us a grudge. How dangerously naïve.” He spread his hands. “But surely, in private, he and Robespierre have an antipathy for each other? Does that matter? Oh yes, it will matter, in the end.”

And Louvet: that was his big moment, and he met it damp with fright, trailing the Duke’s plaudits like a bad memory. He was just Louvet the novelist after all, lightweight, inconsiderable, the little tiger’s practice prey. Now they will be wondering why they let him do it, his friends who are vehement against Robespierre. The Plain saw only how Robespierre stepped aside, how he took his seat, how he signaled silence: no despot, that. But only I, Louvet thought, will know that I ended before I began, at the foot of the tribune—held in a look that turned my stomach above the sweet, encouraging, Judas smile.

“We regard him,” Mme. Duplay said, “as our son.”

“But in point of fact,” Charlotte Robespierre said, “he is my brother. Which is why, I am afraid, my claim on him takes precedence over any that you and your daughters imagine yourself to have.”

Mme. Duplay—mother of so many—could claim that she understood girls. She understood her mortally shy Victoire, her serious and awkward Eléonore and her pretty child-like Babette. She also understood Charlotte Robespierre. But she didn’t know what to do with her.

When Maximilien had said that his brother Augustin would be coming to Paris, he had asked her advice on the matter of his sister. At least, that’s what she thought he had done. He seemed to find it difficult to talk about the girl.

“What is she like?” She had been so curious, naturally. He never talked about his family. “Is she quiet, like you? What shall I expect?”

“Not too much,” he said, looking worried.

Maurice Duplay had insisted that the house had space for them all. And, indeed, there were two rooms unfurnished at present, never used. “Could we let your brother and sister go to strangers?” Maurice said. “No, we should all be together, as one family.”

The day came. They arrived at the gate. Augustin made a good first impression—a pleasant, capable boy, Madame thought, and he clearly couldn’t wait to see his brother. She opened her arms to receive the sweet-faced, lissom young thing that Max’s sister would be. Charlotte’s cold stare stabbed her with deadly equality. Her arms dropped.

“Perhaps we might go straight to our rooms,” Charlotte said. “We’re tired.”

The older woman’s cheeks burned as she led the way. Neither proud nor exacting, she was still used to deference—from her daughters, from her husband’s workmen. Charlotte had taken with her the tone used to an underservant.

She turned on the threshold. “Everything is very simple. Ours is a simple house.”

“So I see,” Charlotte said.

The floor was polished, the curtains were new, dear little Babette had arranged a vase of flowers. Mme. Duplay stood back, allowing Charlotte to walk in before her. “If there is any way in which we can make you more comfortable, please tell me.”

You could make me more comfortable, Charlotte’s face said, by dropping dead.

Maurice Duplay filled his pipe and addressed himself to the aroma of the tobacco. When Citizen Robespierre was in the house, or likely to come home soon, he never smoked, out of respect for his patriotic lungs. However, Augustin didn’t mind.

“Of course,” Duplay said at length, “she’s your sister. I shouldn’t criticize.”

“You can if you want,” Augustin said. “I suppose I ought to try to explain Charlotte to you. Max never will. He’s too good. He’s always trying to avoid thinking ill of people.”

“Is that so?” Duplay was mildly surprised, put it down to a proper fraternal blindness. Citizen Robespierre was open, just, equitable—but charity—no, that was not his strong point.

“I don’t remember our mother at all,” Augustin said. “Max does, but he never seemed to want to talk about her.”

“Your mother’s dead? I had no notion that your mother was dead.”

Augustin was taken aback. “He never told you about our family?” He shook his head. “How odd.”

“We presumed, you know, a quarrel. A serious quarrel. We didn’t want to pry.”

“She died when I was a baby. Our father went away. We don’t know if he’s dead or alive. I wonder, now—if he’s alive, would he have heard of Max?”

“I think so, if he’s anywhere in the civilized world. If he can read.”

“Oh yes, he can read.” Augustin was literal-minded. “I wonder what he thinks, then? Our grandfather brought us up, the girls went to our aunts. Until we got away to Paris. Charlotte, of course, she couldn’t get away. Then Henriette died—oh yes, we had another sister, and she and Max, when they saw each other, they got on very well, and I think Charlotte was probably jealous, a bit. She was only a child when she started to keep house for us. It aged her, I suppose. But she’s not thirty yet. She could still get married.”

Duplay drew on his pipe. “Why doesn’t she give it a go?”

“She had a disappointment over someone. You know him, in fact—he lodges down the road—Deputy Fouché. Can you call him to mind? He has no eyelashes and a sort of green face.”

“Was it a big disappointment?”

“I don’t think she liked him much actually, but she did take the view that she’d been … Well, you know how it is, some people are born with sour temperaments and they use the misfortunes in their lives as an excuse for them. I’ve been engaged three times, you know? When it came down to it, they couldn’t face the thought of Charlotte for a sister-in-law. She’s made us her life’s work. She doesn’t want any other women around. Nobody’s allowed to do anything for us, except her.”

“Mm. Do you think that’s why your brother hasn’t married yet?”

“I don’t know. He’s had plenty of chances. Women like him. But then again … perhaps he’s not the sort of person who marries.”

“Don’t talk about it round the town,” Duplay suggested. “About his not being the sort of person who marries.”

“Perhaps he’s afraid that most families end up like ours. Not superficially … I mean in some deeper way. There ought to be a law against families like ours.”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t speculate about what he thinks. If he wanted us to know, he’d tell us. Plenty of children lose their parents. We hope you will regard us as your family now.”

“I agree, plenty of children lose their parents—but the difficulty with my father is that we don’t know whether we’ve lost him or not. It’s very odd, the thought that he’s probably living somewhere, perhaps even here in Paris, reading about Max in the papers. Suppose he turns up one day? He might. He could come to the Convention, sit in the gallery, watch over us … . If I passed him on the street I wouldn’t know him. When I was a boy I used to hope he’d come back … and at the same time I was a bit afraid of what it would be like if he did. Grandfather talked about him a lot, when he was in a bad mood. ‘Expect your father’s drunk himself to death,’ that sort of thing. And people were always watching us, looking for signs. People in Arras now, the ones who don’t like the way Max’s career has gone, they say, ‘The father was a drunk and a womanizer, and the mother was no better than she should be.’ They use, you know, worse terms than that.”

“Augustin, you must put all this behind you. You’re in Paris now, you have a chance at a fresh start. I hope your brother will marry my eldest girl. She’ll give him children.” Augustin silently demurred. “And for now, he has good friends.”

“Do you think so? I haven’t been here long, of course, but I get the impression that mainly he has associates. Yes, he has a great mass of admirers—but he’s not supported by a group of friends, like Danton.”

“Well, of course, there is a difference in style. He has the Desmoulins. Camille’s baby is his godchild, you know.”

“If it is Camille’s. There, you see … I feel sorry for my brother. Nothing he has is ever quite what it seems.”

“I have a sense of duty,” Charlotte said. “It’s not a common thing, I find.”

“I know, Charlotte.” Her elder brother always spoke to her gently, if he possibly could. “What am I not doing that you think I should be doing?”

“You shouldn’t be living here.”

“Why not?” He knew one good guilty reason why not; probably, he thought, so did she.

“You are an important man. You are a great man. You should behave as if you know that. Appearances count. They do. Danton has it right. He puts on a show. People love it. I haven’t been here long, but I’ve noticed that much. Danton—”

“Charlotte, Danton spends too much money. And nobody quite knows where he gets it from.” There was a hint in his voice, that she should change the subject.

“Danton has some style about him,” she insisted. “They say he doesn’t scruple to sit in the King’s chair at the Tuileries, when the cabinet meets.”

“And fills it to the inch, no doubt,” Robespierre said drily. “And if there were such a thing as the King’s table, Danton would put his feet up on it. Some people, Charlotte, are more equipped by nature for that sort of thing. And it makes enemies too.”

“How long have you worried about making enemies? I can’t remember the day when you gave a damn. Do you imagine people think any better of you for living in a garret?”

“I don’t know why you have to make it sound so much worse than it is. I’m perfectly comfortable. There’s nothing I want that I haven’t got here.”

“You would be much better off if I were taking care of you.”

“Charlotte, my dear, you’ve always taken care of us—couldn’t you just for a while take a rest?”

“In another woman’s house?”

“All houses belong to somebody, and most of them have women in them.”

“We could have privacy. A nice convenient apartment of our own.” It would solve some problems, he thought. Her face darkened as she watched him, expecting contradiction. He opened his mouth to agree. “And there’s another thing,” she said.

He stopped short. “And what is that?”

“These girls. Maximilien, I’ve seen Augustin ruining himself with women.

So she knew. Did she? “How is he ruined?”

“Well, he would have been, if it weren’t for me. And that wretched old woman has no other aim in life but to get those girls into your bed. Whether she’s succeeded I leave to your conscience. That little horror Elisabeth looks at men as if—I can’t describe it. If any harm ever came to her, it wouldn’t be the man I’d blame.”

“Charlotte, what are you talking about? Babette’s just a child. I’ve never heard anyone say a word against her.”

“Well, you have now. What about it then? Shall I look for an apartment for us?”

“No. We’ll stay as we are. I can’t bear to live with you. You’re just as bad as you ever were.” And just as mad, he thought.

November 5: people have queued all night for a place in the public galleries. If they expect to see on Robespierre’s face a sense of personal crisis, they will be disappointed. How familiar now, these streets and these slanders. Arras seems twenty years ago; even in the Estates-General, wasn’t he there singled out for attack? It is his nature, he thinks.

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.

“Mm,” Camille says, up on the Mountain. “This is not an ethical position. It is an excuse.”

He is speaking quietly, almost to himself; he is surprised by the violence with which his colleagues turn round on him. “He is in politics, practical politics,” Danton says. “What the fuck does he want with an ethical position?”

“I don’t like this idea of ordinary crimes and political crimes. Our opponents can use it to murder us, just as we can use it to murder them. I don’t see what good the idea does. We ought to admit that all crimes are the same.”

“No,” Saint-Just said.

“And you talk, Lanterne Attorney.”

“But when I was the Lanterne Attorney, I said, right, let’s have some violence, it’s our turn. I never excused myself by saying I was a legislator to the world.”

“He is not making excuses,” Saint-Just said. “Necessity does not have to be excused or justified.”

Camille turned on him. “Where did you read that, you half-wit? Your politics are like those improving fables they give to children, each one with a little moral tag on the end. What does it mean? You don’t know. Why do you say it? You have to say something.”

He watched a flush of rage wash over Saint-Just’s pale skin. “Whose side are you on?” Fabre hissed into his ear.

Stop now, he told himself. You are antagonizing everybody. “Whose side? That’s what we say about the Brissotins, that their judgement is destroyed by factional interest. Isn’t it?”

“My God, you are a liability,” Saint-Just snapped. Camille got to his feet, more frightened by the words coming out of his own mouth than of theirs, thinking that in minutes he could be among the black branches and indifferent faces in the Tuileries gardens. It was Orléans who put out a hand and detained him, a slight social smile on his face. “Must you go now?” the Duke said, as if a party were breaking up early. “Don’t go. You can’t do a walkout in the middle of Robespierre’s speech.”

His actions at variance with his manner, the Duke reached out and pulled Camille to the bench beside him. “Sit still,” he said. “If you go now, people will read things into it.”

“Saint-Just hates me,” Camille said.

“He certainly isn’t a very friendly young man, but you shouldn’t feel singled out. I myself am on his list, I feel.”

“His list?”

“He would have one, wouldn’t you think? Looks the type.”

“Laclos had lists,” Camille said. “Oh God, I sometimes wish it were ’89 again. I miss Laclos.”

“So do I. So do I.”

Hérault de Séchelles was in the president’s chair. He glanced up at his Montagnard colleagues and flicked an eyebrow, a request for later explanation. They seemed to be holding some private parliamentary session up there; and now Camille was having some sort of tussle with Égalité. Robespierre had reached his peroration. He had left his opponents with nothing to say and nowhere to go. Camille was going to miss the end of the speech, he would not be there for the applause. The Duke seemed to have released him. He was on his way to the door. Hérault remembered Camille running out of a courtroom, years ago, long, long before they had been introduced: his chin lifted, his expression a compound of contempt and glee. Winter 1792, still running; his expression now a compound of contempt and fear.

Annette wasn’t at home; he attempted retreat, but Claude heard his voice, came out. “Camille? You look upset. No, don’t try escaping, I have to talk to you.”

He looked upset himself—a discreet, semi-official agitation. There were a couple of Girondist newspapers draped around the room. “Really,” Claude said. “The tone of public life these days! The lowness of it! Need Danton say such things? Young Deputy Philippeaux asks the Convention to request Danton to stay on in the ministry—reasonable. Danton refuses—reasonable. Then he has to add that if the Convention wants Roland to stay in office it had better ask his wife first. That was a sharp, personal thing to say, in front of so many people, and naturally they make personal attacks in their turn. Now they are talking about Lucile and Danton.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“Why do you allow it to be said? Is it true?”

“I thought you were immune to the newspapers, after the business of Annette and the Abbé Terray.”

“That was the most preposterous fabrication—this is something that people believe. Can you possibly like what it implies about you?”

“What is that?”

“Simply that Danton can do what he likes, that you can’t stand up to him.”

“I can’t,” Camille muttered.

“They mention other men besides Danton. I don’t want this said of Lucile. You should make her see …”

“She likes to live up to a certain reputation, without ever quite deserving it.”

“Why? If it is not true, why does she give cause for such rumors? You neglect her, I think.”

“No, that’s not it. We quite enjoy ourselves, really. But Claude, please don’t shout at me. I’ve had a terrible day. During Robespierre’s speech—”

A head appeared round the door; servants were so casual these days. “Monsieur, Citizen Robespierre’s here.”

Robespierre had not called often, since his farcical engagement to Adèle. But he was welcome; Monsieur retained his good opinion. Claude hurried forward to greet him; the servant, having thoroughly muddled the forms of address, ducked out and slammed the door. “Robespierre,” Claude said, “I am glad to see you. Would you help us re-establish some communication?”

“My father-in-law is possessed by a horror of scandal.”

“I think you,” Claude said simply, “are possessed by a devil.”

“Let me see,” Robespierre said. He was in a high old mood, quite unexpected, so elevated that he was near to smothered giggles. “Asmodeus?”

“Asmodeus was a seraphim, when he started,” Camille said.

“So were you. Now, let’s have it—what was it made you run out on my speech?”

“Nothing. I mean, I misunderstood something you said, and I made a remark, and they all jumped on me.”

“Yes, I know. They’re all very sorry.”

“Not Saint-Just.”

“No—well—Saint-Just is very decided in his views, he won’t permit any wavering.”

“Permit? For Christ’s sake, I don’t need any permission from him. He said I was a liability. What right has someone to walk into a revolution that was made before he came and call other people a liability?”

“Don’t yell at me, Camille. He had a right to express his opinion, I suppose.”

“But I haven’t?”

“No one has taken your right away—they’ve just shouted at you for exercising it. Camille is morbidly sensitive,” he said cheerfully to Duplessis.

“I could wish he were more sensitive on certain matters.” He nodded towards the newspapers. Robespierre seemed confused. He took off his glasses. His eyes were red-rimmed. Claude wondered at his patience, his equanimity: at his finding time for all this.

“Try to—suppress this gossip, of course,” Robespierre said. “Well, not suppress, exactly. That sounds as if there were some truth in it. Must all behave very discreetly.”

“So as not to attract attention to our sins,” Camille said.

“I must take Camille away,” Robespierre said to Claude. “Don’t let the newspapers spoil your peace of mind.”

“Do you imagine I have any great amount to spoil?” He rose to see them out. “Will you be at Bourg-la-Reine this weekend?”

“Bourg-la-Republique,” Camille said. “Good patriots don’t have weekends.”

“Oh, you can have a weekend if you want to,” Robespierre said.

“I wish you’d join us,” Claude said. “But I suppose not.”

“I am very busy just now. This business with Louvet has wasted my time.”

And you would not be allowed to come, Camille thought, not without Eléonore and Mother as chaperone to Eléonore, and Charlotte as chaperone to Mother, and Babette because she would scream if denied the treat, and Victoire because it wasn’t fair to leave her at home. “Shall I come?” he asked his father-in-law.

“Yes. Lucile needs the fresh air, and you, I suppose, need a pause from contention.”

“And you are offering me one?”

Claude raised the ghost of a smile for him.

“What are we going to do now?” Camille asked.

“We are going to walk a little, and see if anyone recognizes us. You know, I think your father-in-law is almost fond of you.”

“You think that?”

“He is growing used to you. At his age, one likes to have something to complain about. Nevertheless, I think—”

“Why do you want to know if people will recognize you?”

“It is an idea I have. I have heard people say that I am vain. Do you think I am vain?”

“No, it’s not a word I would have applied.”

“To myself I seem an obscure person.”

“Obscure?” This is the prelude, Camille thought, to a shocking outbreak of diffidence; Robespierre had never reconciled himself to fame, and his modesty, if not placated, took a ferocious turn. “I’m sorry if I upset your concentration, when you were making your speech.”

“It’s nothing. Louvet’s quashed. They’ll think twice now before they make another attack on me. I have the Convention”—he cupped his hand—“beautiful.”

“You look very tired, Max.”

“I shall be, when I think about it. Never mind. Something is achieved. You, you look well. You look as if you have plenty of appetite left for revolution.”

“It must be the life of debauchery Brissot’s friends say I lead. It suits me.”

A man checked his pace to look into their faces. He frowned. “Not sure,” Camille said. “Do you want people to recognize you?”

“No. But I wanted a quiet word. There’s almost nowhere one can go without being overheard.”

The exuberance was draining away; often now he had a pinched look, his mouth drawn into a thin, apprehensive line.

“Do you really think that? That people are always listening to your conversations?”

“I know they are.” (If you lived with my sister Charlotte, he thought, you’d not doubt it.) “Camille, I want you to consider more seriously the Brissotin newspapers. We know that they are motivated by malice, but you don’t give them the trouble of inventing things. It looks so bad, especially with Citizeness Danton unwell, that her husband is so seldom at home, and that you are both seen around the town, with women.”

“Max, I spend most of my evenings with the Jacobin correspondence committee. And Gabrielle is not unwell, she is expecting a baby.”

“Yes, but when I spoke with her, earlier this week, I thought she was unwell. And she and Georges are never seen together, they never accept invitations together.”

“They quarrel.”

“What about?”

“Politics.”

“I didn’t think she was that sort of woman.”

“It isn’t an abstract argument. It’s a matter of the way we live our lives now.”

“I don’t want to lecture you, Camille—”

“Yes you do.”

“Very well, then, I do. Stop gambling. Try to get Danton to stop. Stay at home more. Make your wife behave respectably. If you must have a mistress, pick someone discreet, and make a proper arrangement.”

“But I don’t want a mistress.”

“That’s all to the good then. The way you’ve been living is in some sense a reproach to our ideals.”

“Stop there. I never volunteered for these ideals.”

“Listen—”

“No, you listen, Max. For as long as we’ve known each other you’ve been trying to keep me out of trouble. But you’ve known better than to exercise your pompous side with me. A few months ago, you wouldn’t have been talking about ‘a reproach to our ideals.’ You looked the other way. You have a great capacity for ignoring what doesn’t suit you. But now you want to make an issue of it. Or rather, I know who does. Saint-Just.”

“What is going on in your head about Saint-Just?”

“I have to fight him now, while it can do me some good. He called me a liability. So I deduce he wants to get rid of me.”

“Get rid?”

“Yes, get rid of me, disable me, pack me off to Guise, Oh my God, where fierce indignation can no longer tear his heart at the sound of my silly little stutter.”

They almost halted for a moment, to look into each other’s faces. “There’s very little I can do about your personal disagreements. Is there?”

“Except not take his side.”

“I don’t want to take a side. I don’t need to. I have a high regard for both of you, personally, politically—don’t the streets look shabby now?”

“Yes. Where are we going?”

“Will you come and see my sister?”

“Will Eléonore be at home?”

“She’ll be at her drawing class. I know she doesn’t like you.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“I don’t know. How can I? She’s jealous of my friends, of my occupations.”

“Won’t you have to marry her?”

“Eventually, perhaps.”

“Also—no, never mind.”

Very often, he had come close to telling Robespierre what had happened with Babette on the morning his son was born. But Max was so fond of the girl, so much more at ease with her than with most people, and it seemed cruel to hunt out trust from where he had reposed it. And it would be horrible to be disbelieved; he might be disbelieved. Again, how to retell exactly what had been said and done, without putting your own interpretation on it, and submit it to another judgement? It wasn’t possible. So at the Duplay house he was very polite to everybody—except Eléonore—and very careful; and still the incident preyed upon his mind. He had once begun to tell Danton, then abandoned the subject; Danton would certainly say he was making it up, and tease him about his fantasy life.

Beside him, Robespierre’s voice was running on: “ … and I sometimes think that the fading out of the individual personality is what one should desire, not the status of a hero—a sort of effacement of oneself from history. The entire record of the human race has been falsified, it has been made up by bad governments to suit themselves, by kings and tyrants to make them look good. This idea of history as made by great men is quite nonsensical, when you look at it from the point of view of the people. The real heroes are those who have resisted tyrants, and it is in the nature of tyranny not only to kill those who oppose it but to wipe their names out of the record, to obliterate them, so that resistance seems impossible.”

A passerby hesitated, stared. “Excuse me—” he said. “Good citizen—are you Robespierre?”

Robespierre didn’t look at the man. “Do you understand what I say about heroes? There is no place for them. Resistance to tyrants means oblivion. I will embrace that oblivion. My name will vanish from the page.”

“Good citizen, forgive me,” the patriot said doggedly.

Eyes rested on him briefly. “Yes, I’m Robespierre,” he said. He put his hand on Citizen Desmoulins’s arm. “Camille, history is fiction.”

ROBESPIERRE: … You see, you can’t understand how things were for me then. For the first two years at school I wasn’t exactly miserable, I was happy in a way, but I was cut off from people, sealed off by myself in a cell—then Camille came—do you think I’m being sentimental?

SAINT-JUST: I do rather.

ROBESPIERRE: You don’t understand how it was.

SAINT-JUST: Why all this preoccupation with the past? Why not look to the future?

ROBESPIERRE: A lot of us would like to forget the past, but you can’t, well, you can’t put it out of your head entirely. You’re younger than I am, naturally you think about the future. You haven’t got any past.

SAINT-JUST: A little.

ROBESPIERRE: Before the Revolution, you were a student, you were preparing for your life. You’ve never had any other job. You’re a professional revolutionary. You’re an entirely new breed.

SAINT-JUST: I had thought of that.

ROBESPIERRE: If I can explain—when Camille came—I myself, I find it difficult to get along with people sometimes, people don’t take to me so easily. I didn’t understand why Camille bothered with me, but I was glad. He was like a magnet to people. He was just the same as he is now. When he was ten years old he had that sort of—black radiance.

SAINT-JUST: You are fanciful.

ROBESPIERRE: It made things easier for me. Camille’s always complained that his family doesn’t care about him. I could never see that. And I couldn’t see how it mattered, when other people love him so much.

SAINT-JUST: So what are you saying—that because of some association in your past life, everything he does is all right?

ROBESPIERRE: Oh no. I’m just saying, he’s an extremely complicated person, and whatever he gets up to, the fact remains, we’re very close. Camille’s clever, you know. He’s also a very good journalist.

SAINT-JUST: I have doubts about the value of journalists.

ROBESPIERRE: You just don’t like him, really, do you?