A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 6

A Secret History

The baby was still alive, but he didn’t want to see it. He made no comment on the arrangements that had been made. Letters of condolence lay heaped on his desk. As he opened them, he thought, each of these writers is a decent hypocrite: each of them knows what I did to her. They write as if they did not. They write to bring themselves to my attention, to make their names stick in my mind.

Robespierre’s letter was long and emotional. It would slide from the personal to the political—this being Max—and then—this being Max—it would slide back. I am more than ever your friend, it said, and I will be your friend till death. “From this moment you and I are one …” it said. Even in his present condition, Danton thought it an overstatement of the case. He wondered at its distraught tone.

Camille did not write him a letter. He sat without speaking, his head bowed, and let Danton talk about the past, and shed tears, and rant on at him for one dereliction or another. He did not know why he was in the line of fire, why his whole career and character were suddenly under review, but it seemed to do Danton good to shout at him. Danton grew exhausted by the business. He slept at last. He’d wondered if sleep would ever be possible again. Gabrielle seemed to haunt the red-walled study, haunt the octagonal dining room where his clerks had once toiled; she haunted the alcove in the bedroom where they had lain in their separate beds, the distance widening between them month by month.

He turned up her journal, kept sporadically in a bold hand. He read each page, and the mechanics of his past were laid bare for him. Unwilling that anyone else should see the book, he burned it, putting it on the fire a leaf at a time, watching it curl and char. Louise sat in a corner of the apartment, her eyes puffy and her features coarsened and blurred. He did not send her away; he hardly seemed to notice her. On March 3 he left for Belgium again.

March was near-disaster. In Holland the depleted armies crashed to defeat. In the Vendee insurrection became civil war. In Paris mobs looted shops and smashed Girondin printing presses. Hébert demanded the heads of all the ministers, all the generals.

On March 8 Danton mounted the tribune of the Convention. The patriots never forgot the shock of his sudden appearance, nor his face, harrowed by sleepless nights and the exhaustion of traveling, pallid with strain and suffering. Complex griefs caught sometimes at his voice, as he spoke of treason and humiliation; once he stopped and looked at his audience, self-conscious for a moment, and touched the scar on his cheek. With the armies, he has seen malice, incompetence, negligence. Reinforcements must be massive and immediate. The rich of France must pay for the liberation of Europe. A new tax must be voted today and collected tomorrow. To deal with conspirators against the Republic there must be a new court, a Revolutionary Tribunal: from that, no right of appeal.

From the body of the hall someone called “Who killed the prisoners?” The Convention erupted: chants of septembriseur rocked the walls. The deputies of the Mountain rose as one to their feet. The president screamed for order; his bell clanged. Danton stood with his face turned to the public galleries. His fists were clenched at his side. As soon as the noise passed its climax, he threw his voice against it: “If there had been such a tribunal in September, the men who have so often and so savagely been reproached for those events would never have stained their reputations with one drop of blood. But I do not care about reputation or good name. Call me a drinker of blood, if you will. I will drink the blood of humanity’s enemies, if it means Europe will be free.”

A voice from the Gironde: “You talk like a king.”

He threw up his chin. “You talk like a coward.”

He had spoken for almost four hours. Outside a mob was gathering, chanting his name. The deputies stood in their massed ranks and applauded. Even Roland, even Brissot were on their feet; they wanted to escape. Beside himself, Fabre shouted, “This was your supreme performance, supreme.” The Mountain came down to him. He was surrounded by the press of his supporters; the applause rang in his ears. Threading through the solid-packed bodies, like a coffin-worm at a wedding feast, came Dr. Marat, plucking at his sleeve. He looked down into the bloodshot eyes.

“Now is your moment, Danton.”

“For what?” he said dispassionately.

“For the dictatorship. All power is yours.”

He turned away. At that moment a magnetic ripple of deference swept the deputies aside. Robespierre walked towards him. Every time I come home, Danton thought, I find you a greater man. Robespierre’s face was taut with strain; he looked older, the muscles bunched at the sides of his jaw. But when he spoke it was in a low voice, with a hesitant gentleness: “I wanted to see you, but I didn’t want to intrude. I’m not the best person at thinking of things to say, and we’ve never been so close that nothing needs to be said. That’s my fault, I suppose. And I regret it.”

Danton put a hand on his shoulder. “My good friend, thank you.”

“I wrote—I thought, you know, these letters don’t do any good. But I wanted you to know you can count on me.”

“I will.”

“There is no rivalry between us. We have no difference of policy.”

“Look at this,” Danton said. “Listen to them cheering me. It’s only weeks since they were spitting in my face because I couldn’t produce the ministry’s accounts.”

Fabre elbowed his way up. Already he had been taking soundings. “The Gironde will split over the Tribunal. Brissot will back you, so will Vergniaud. Roland and his friends are opposed.”

“They have defected from republicanism,” Danton said. “They spend their energies trying to destroy me.”

Still the deputies surged and jostled around him, hemming him in. Fabre was bowing to left and right, as if he took the credit. Collot, the actor, was shouting, “Bravo, Danton, bravo!” his bilious face congested by emotion. Robespierre had retreated. Still the applause went on. Outside, a crowd was shouting for him. He stood still, and passed a hand over his face. Camille had struggled through to him. Danton flung an arm across his shoulders. “Camille, let’s just go home,” he said.

Louise kept her ears open now. As soon as she heard that he was back in Paris, she went downstairs and set Marie and Catherine to work. The children were at Victor Charpentier’s house, and perhaps it was as well if he did not see them yet. She would have supper ready for him, at whatever hour he came home; he must not come to a house empty except for servants. Her mother came down five times to fetch her. “What do you mean,” she said, “by entangling yourself with that brute? You have no duty to him!”

“He may be a brute. But I know what Gabrielle would have wanted. She would have wanted everything to be done for his comfort.”

She sat in Gabrielle’s chair, as if to balk her ghost. From here, she thought, Gabrielle had seen governments broken. From here she had seen the throne totter and fall. She had been plain, unaffected in her manners; her habits were those of a quiet housewife. She had lived with these sanguinary men.

Midnight struck. “He’ll not come home now,” Catherine said. “We want to get to bed, even if you don’t. He’ll be round the corner, we reckon. He’ll not come home tonight.”

At six o’clock the next morning, Citizen Danton let himself in quietly, in search of a change of clothes. She gave him a shock, the pale child, slumped without grace into Gabrielle’s chair. He picked her up in his arms and transferred her to the sofa. He threw a rug over her. She didn’t wake. He took what he needed and left the house.

Around the corner Lucile was up and dressed and making coffee. Camille was writing, making the outline of the speech Danton would deliver to the Convention later that day. “An air of quiet industry prevails,” Danton said. “That’s what I like to see.” He put his arms around Lucile’s waist and kissed the back of her neck.

“Glad to see you back in your routine,” Camille said.

“Do you know, the little girl was waiting for me. Gély’s daughter. She’d gone to sleep in a chair.”

“Really?” Lucile and her husband flicked their dark eyes at each other. They don’t really need to speak, these days. They have perfected communication by other means.

March 10: it was bitterly cold, the kind of weather that makes breathing painful. Claude Dupin called, made her his formal proposal. Her father told him that although she was so young they were disposed to allow the marriage to go ahead within the year; things have been difficult round here, he said, and he told Claude Dupin (in confidence), “We’d like to get her into a different atmosphere. She sees and hears too much for a girl of her age. She’s lost her friend, of course, she’s had a bad shock. Wedding arrangements will take her mind off it.”

She said to Claude Dupin, “I’m really really sorry, but I can’t marry you. Not yet, anyway. Would you be prepared to wait a year? I made a promise, to my friend who is dead, that I would look after her children. If I were your wife I’d have other duties and I’d have to go and live in another street. I think that, Citizen Danton being what he is, he will very soon find himself a new wife. When they have a stepmother, I shall be happy to leave here, but not until then.”

Claude Dupin looked stunned. He’d thought everything was settled. “I can’t take this in,” he said. “Gabrielle Danton seemed a sensible woman to me. How could she let you make such a promise?”

“I don’t know how it came about,” Louise said. “But it did.”

Dupin nodded. “Fine,” he said. “I can’t say that I understand you, or that I like this, but if you say wait, I’ll wait. A promise is a promise, however unfortunate. But my dear, do one thing for me—so far as you can, stay away from Georges Danton.”

She braced herself for the row. After Claude Dupin had left, her mother burst into tears; her father sat looking solemn, as if very very sorry for all concerned. Her mother called her a fool; she took her by the shoulders and shook her, and said don’t tell me you made a promise, it’s not that at all; admit it, spit it out, you must be besotted with one of these people. Who is it, come on—it’s that journalist, isn’t it? You can say his name, Louise said. It won’t call up the devil. She had a sudden, hideously painful vision of Gabrielle laughing, sitting on her sofa and giggling at Claude Dupin, Gabrielle warm, alive, her swollen hand trailing on Camille’s shoulder. Scalding tears flooded down her cheeks. You little tart, her mother said; and slapped her hard across the face.

This was the second time in a month. Up here, she thought, is getting just like down there.

“You’re going to Belgium again?” she asks Danton.

“This will be the last time, I hope. I am needed in the Convention, these days.”

“And the children, are they to come home?”

“Yes. The servants can take care of them.”

“I won’t leave them to servants.”

“You’ve done too much. You shouldn’t be playing nursemaid. You should be out enjoying yourself.”

He wonders, vaguely, what a respectable girl-child of fifteen does for enjoyment.

“They’re used to me,” she says. “I like taking care of them. Can you explain what you’ll be doing while you’re away?”

“I’m going to see General Dumouriez.”

“Why do you have to keep going to see him?”

“Well, it’s complicated. Some of the things he’s doing recently don’t seem to be very revolutionary. For instance, we had Jacobin clubs set up all over Belgium, and he’s closing them down. The Convention wants to know why. They think he may have to be arrested, if he isn’t a patriot.”

“Not a patriot? What is he then? A supporter of the Austrians? Of of the King?”

“There is no King.”

“Yes, there is. He’s shut up in prison. The Dauphin is the King now.”

“No, he’s not anything—he’s just an ordinary little boy.”

“If that’s true, why do you keep him shut up?”

“What an argumentative child you are! Do you follow events? Do you read the newspapers?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will know that the French have decided not to have a King.”

“No, Paris has decided. That’s quite different. That’s why we have a civil war.”

“But child—deputies from all over France voted for the end of the monarchy.”

“They wouldn’t allow a referendum, though. They didn’t dare.”

Danton doesn’t seem pleased. “Are these your parents’ views?”

“My mother’s. Mine too. My father doesn’t have views. He would like to, but he can’t take the risk.”

“You must be very careful, because clearly your parents are royalists, and that is not a safe thing to be nowadays. You must be careful what you say.”

“Are people not allowed to say what they like? I thought it was in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Free speech.”

“You are allowed to express your opinion—but we are at war, and so your opinion must not be treasonable or seditious. Do you understand what they mean, those words?”

She nods.

“You must remember who I am.”

“You don’t let a person forget, Citizen Danton.”

“Come here,” he says. “Let me try to explain.”

“No.”

“Why won’t you?”

“My parents have forbidden me to be alone with you.”

“But you are. What’s the matter, do they think I might make you a little Jacobin?”

“No, it’s not my politics they worry about. It’s my virginity.”

He grinned. “So that’s what they think of me?”

“They think you’re in the habit of taking what you want.”

“They think I’m not to be trusted alone with a little girl?”

“Yes, they think that.”

“I wish you would go and tell them,” he said, “that I have never in my life forced my attentions on a woman. Despite some dire provocation from a pretty creature around the corner—tell your mother that, she’ll know just what I mean. Tell me, have they singled me out for this? Have they warned you about Camille? Because, I can assure you, if you were alone in an empty house with Camille he would consider it his positive duty to deflower you. His positive patriotic duty.”

“Deflower? What an expression!” she said. “I thought Camille had been having an affair with his mother-in-law?”

“Where the hell do you get these stories from?” Suddenly she has touched the anger that is never far below the surface. “To tell you the truth, it disgusts me that your parents think so badly of me. My wife has been dead a month—do they think I’m a monster?”

That is exactly what they do think, she says to herself. “Have you given up women, then?”

“Probably not forever. For now, yes.”

“Do you think that very moral?”

“I think it shows respect for my wife, who is dead.”

“It would have shown more respect if you had done it while she was alive.”

“We ought not to continue this conversation.”

“Oh, I think we ought. When you come home from Belgium.”

He left Paris on March 17, with Deputy Lacroix at his side. By now they knew each other quite well; he could have told Gabrielle everything she wanted to know.

On March 19 he was in Brussels; but by the time they caught up with Dumouriez, he had lost a battle at Neerwinden. They found him in the thick of a rearguard action: “Meet me in Louvain,” he said.

“What is the Convention anyway?” he asked angrily, that same night. “Three hundred fools, led by two hundred scoundrels.”

“You will at least observe the decencies,” Danton suggested.

The general stared at him. For a moment he saw himself spitted on his sword; but without a toga, it didn’t look quite right.

“I mean,” Danton said, “that you should at least write a letter to the Convention, promising a detailed explanation of your conduct, of your closure of the Jacobins clubs, of your refusal to work with the Convention’s representatives. Oh, and of your defeat.”

“God dammit,” Dumouriez said. “I was promised thirty thousand men. Let the Convention write a letter to me, and explain why they’ve got lost on the way!”

“Do you know there is a move to have you arrested? They are fireeaters, on the Committee of General Security. Deputy Lebas has spoken against you—and I hear he’s a young fellow for whom Robespierre has a high regard. And David too.”

“Committees?” the general said. “Let them try it! In the midst of my armies? What’s David going to do, hit me with his paintbrush?”

“It would be wise not to be flippant, General. Think about the Revolutionary Tribunal. I do not think it will make much distinction between failure and treason, and you are the man who has just lost France a battle. You had better be careful what you say to me, because I am here to judge your attitude and report on it to the Convention and the General Defense Committee.”

He was taken aback. “But Danton—haven’t we been good friends? We’ve worked together—in God’s name, I hardly recognize you. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the effect of prolonged sexual abstinence.”

The general looked up into Danton’s face. It yielded nothing. Again, turning away, he muttered, “Committees.”

“Committees are effective, General. So we are beginning to find. If the members work together, and work hard, then it is surprising how much can be achieved. Committees will soon be running the Revolution. The ministers already act under their surveillance. It is not so important to be a minister, these days.”

“Yes—what did I hear—about the ministers being prevented from going to the Convention?”

“A temporary detention only. The mob barricaded them into the Foreign Ministry to prevent them interfering with the debate. The Minister of War, you may be glad to know, showed a bold martial character, and escaped by vaulting over a wall.”

“This is no joke,” the general said. “This is anarchy.”

“I wanted my measures passed,” Danton said.

Dumouriez allowed himself to fold into a chair. He rested his forehead on a clenched fist. “Christ,” he said, “I’m done for. At my age a man should be thinking of retirement. Tell me, Danton, how is it in Paris? How are all my devoted friends? Marat, for instance?”

“The doctor is the same. A little yellower, perhaps, rather more shrunken. He takes special baths now, to soothe his pains.”

“Any baths would be an improvement,” the general muttered. “Quite ordinary ones.”

“They keep him at home sometimes, the special baths. I’m afraid they don’t improve his temper.”

“Camille can still talk to him?”

“Oh yes. We have a line of communication. It is necessary—his influence over the people has no rival. Hébert dreams that one day he may have as much. But, when you come down to it, people aren’t fools.”

“And young Citizen Robespierre?”

“Looking older. Working hard.”

“Not married that gawky girl yet?”

“No. He’s sleeping with her, though.”

“Is he now?” The general raised his eyebrows. “It’s an advance, I suppose. But when you think of the good time he could have, if he wanted … it’s a tragedy, Danton, a tragedy. I suppose he is not sitting on any of these committees?”

“No. They keep electing him, and he refuses to serve.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? He wasn’t meant for politics. I’ve never known anyone fight shy of power like he does.”

“He has plenty of power. He prefers it unofficial, that’s all.”

“He baffles me. He baffles you, too, I would suppose. Still, leave that alone—tell me, how’s the beauteous Manon?”

“Still in love, they say. Women in love are supposed to be soft little creatures, aren’t they? You should hear the speeches she writes for her friends in the Convention.”

“Did your baby live?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.” The general looked up. “Listen, Danton. There’s something I want to tell you. But you will have to reciprocate.”

“I love you too.”

“Now it’s you who are flippant. Listen. Pay attention. Roland wrote me a letter. He asked me to turn the armies and march them on Paris. To restore order there. Also, to—as he put it—crush a certain faction. The Jacobins, he meant. Crush Robespierre. And you.”

“I see. You have this letter?”

“Yes. But I won’t give it you. I didn’t tell you this so that you could hale Roland before your Revolutionary Tribunal. I told you to show what you owe to my forbearance.”

“You were tempted to try it?”

“Well, Citizen—how are your friends in Brittany?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come, Danton, you’re too intelligent to waste time like this. You have contacts with the émigré rebels in Brittany. You’re keeping in with them in case they’re successful. You have friends on the Girondist benches and in the House of Commons. You have men with the armies and in every ministry, and you’ve had money from every Court in Europe.” He looked up, propping his chin on his knuckles. “There hasn’t been a pie baked in Europe these last three years that you haven’t had a finger in. How old are you Danton?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Lord. Well, I suppose revolution is a young man’s business.”

“Is there some point to all this, General?”

“Yes. Go back to Paris, and prepare the city for the entry of my armies. Prepare them for a monarchy, a monarchy which will of course be subject entirely to the constitution. The little Dauphin on the throne, Orléans as regent. Best for France, best for me and best for you.”

“No.”

“What will you do, then?”

“I shall go back and indict Roland—and Brissot, too, more to the point. I shall throw them out of the Convention. Robespierre and I will put together our talents and our influence and we will fight our way to a peace settlement. But if Europe won’t make peace—then count on it, I’ll put the whole nation in arms.”

“You believe that? That you can throw the Girondists out of the Convention?”

“Of course I can do it. It may take months, rather than weeks. But I have the resources for it. The ground is prepared for me.”

“Don’t you ever get tired?”

“I’m always tired now. I’ve been trying to struggle out of this bloody business ever since I got into it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dumouriez said.

“As you please.”

“The Republic is six months old, and it’s flying apart. It has no cohesive force—only a monarchy has that. Surely you can see? We need the monarchy to pull the country together—then we can win the war.”

Danton shook his head.

“Winners make money,” Dumouriez said. “I thought you went where the pickings were richest?”

“I shall maintain the Republic,” Danton said.

“Why?”

“Because it is the only honest thing there is.”

“Honest? With your people in it?”

“It may be that all its parts are corrupted, vicious, but take it altogether, yes, the Republic is an honest endeavor. Yes, it has me, it has Fabre, it has Hebert—but it also has Camille. Camille would have died for it in ’89.”

“In ’89, Camille had no stake in life. Ask him now—now he’s got money and power, now he’s famous. Ask him now if he’s willing to die.”

“It has Robespierre.”

“Oh yes—Robespierre would die to get away from the carpenter’s daughter, I don’t doubt.”

“You are determined to be the complete cynic, General. There is nothing I can do about that. But watch us—we are going to make a new constitution. It will be different from anything the world has ever seen before. It will provide for everyone to be educated, and for everyone to have work.”

“You will never put it into practice.”

“No—but even hope is a virtue. And still, it will add to the glory of our names.”

“We have arrived at the core of you, Danton. You are an idealist.”

“I must sleep, General, I have a journey ahead.”

“You will arrive in Paris and go straight to the Convention, to denounce me. Or to one of your Committees.”

“Don’t you know me better than that? I’m not a denouncer. Though don’t delude yourself—there will be others to do it.”

“But the Convention will expect your report.”

“It can savor its expectations till I’m ready.”

The general stood up suddenly, trim and alert in the flickering light. “Good night, Citizen Danton.”

“Good night, General.”

“Change your mind?”

“Good night.”

Paris, March 23: “Shh,” Danton said.

“You’re here,” Louise said. “At last.”

“Yes. Shh. What were you doing?”

“Watching from the window.”

“Why?”

“I just had a feeling that you might come home.”

“Have your father and mother seen me?”

“No.”

Marie said, “Oh, Monsieur.” She put her hand over her mouth. “No one told us to expect you.”

“What is all this?” Louise said. She was whispering.

“It’s a secret. You like secrets, don’t you? Are the babies asleep?”

“Of course they’re asleep. It’s past nine o’clock. You mean the secret is just that you’re here?”

“Yes. You’ve got to help me hide.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing her pretty mouth, drop open.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. But if people know I’m back I’ll have to report straight to the Convention. I want to sleep for twenty-four hours—no Riding School, no committees, no politics at all.”

“It’s what you need, I’m sure. But General Dumouriez—aren’t they expecting to hear what he said?”

“They’ll know soon enough. So you’ll help me to hide, will you?”

“I don’t see how one can hide such a large man as you.”

“Let’s try, shall we?”

“All right. Are you hungry?”

“We seem to be falling into a spurious domesticity,” he said. Abruptly he turned away from her and dropped into a chair, plaiting his fingers over his eyes. “I just can’t think, now, of any way to go on … of how to carry on my life. The only way I can honor her is by sticking to ideas she didn’t share … to say to myself, we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but she valued the truth. By pursuing that truth I move further from anything she believed or would have found acceptable … .” She saw that he was crying. “Forgive me for this,” he said.

She moved forward to stand behind his chair, a hand resting on the back of it.

“I suppose you loved her,” she said. “According to your lights.”

“I loved her,” he said. “I loved her by anyone’s lights. By anyone’s measure. Perhaps there was a time I thought I didn’t, but I know different now.”

“If you loved her, Citizen Danton, why did you spend your nights in other women’s beds?”

He looked up at her for a second. “Why? Lust. Policy. Self-aggrandizement. I suppose you think I’m blunt, insensible? I suppose you think I can tolerate this sort of inquisition?”

“I don’t say it to be cruel. I only say it because you mustn’t start regretting something that didn’t exist. You were dead to each other—”

“No.”

“Yes. You don’t understand what you are. Remember, she talked to me. She felt lonely, she felt under threat; she thought, you know, that you were planning to divorce her.”

He was aghast. “It hadn’t entered my head! Why should I divorce her?”

“Yes, why should you? You had all the convenience of marriage, and none of its obligations.”

“I would never have divorced her. If I’d known she was thinking that … I could have reassured her.”

“You couldn’t even see that she was afraid?”

“How could I? She never told me.”

“You were never here.”

“Anyway, I have never understood women.”

“Damn you,” she said. “You make that a point of pride, don’t you? Listen, I am familiar with you great men, in all your manifestations, and I’m sure I don’t know the words for how you disgust me. I have sometimes sat with your wife while you were saving the country.”

“We have to discharge our public duties.”

“Most of you discharge your public duties by beginning to drink at nine o’clock in the morning and spend your day plotting how you can stab each other in the back and make off with each other’s wives.”

“There is an exception to that.” He smiled. “His name’s Robespierre. You wouldn’t like him. Of course, it never struck me before how we must appear to you—a set of drunken, middle-aged lechers. Well, Louise—what do you think I should do?”

“If you want to save yourself as a human being, you should get out of politics.”

“As a human being?” he queried gently. “What are the other possibilities?”

“I think you know what I mean. You haven’t lived like a proper human being these last few years. You have to get back to the man you were before—” She gestured.

“Yes, I know. Before the folly. Before the blasphemy.”

“Don’t. Just don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing. But your judgements are very harsh, aren’t they? I’m not sure there is much hope for me. If I wanted to abandon my career, I don’t know how I’d begin to do it.”

“We could find a way, if you made up your mind.”

“We could? You think so?”

He is laughing, she thought. “If I had only heard of you, from the newspapers, I should think you were a devil. I should be afraid to breathe the same air as you. But I know you.”

“I see that you have set yourself a task. You mean to save me from myself, don’t you?”

“I was told to. I promised.”

When she thinks about it now she cannot be sure what the terms of the promise were. Gabrielle had bequeathed her children, but had she also bequeathed her husband?

The next morning she instructed the servants strictly. They were to mention to no one that Monsieur was home. She had come down early, before seven. He was already up and dressed, reading his letters. “So you are going out after all, Citizen Danton?”

He glanced up, and saw that she was disappointed. “No, I’m staying. But I couldn’t sleep … too much on my mind.”

“What if people come, and ask if you are back yet?”

“Tell lies.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes. I need time to think.”

“I suppose it would not be any great sin.”

“You are grown very liberal, since last night.”

“Don’t keep laughing at me. If anyone comes, I shall not let them in, and if I meet anyone when I go to do the shopping—”

“Send Marie.”

“I’m keeping her in. She might give you away. I shall say, I haven’t seen you, and you’re not expected.”

“That’s the spirit.” He turned back to his letters. He spoke kindly enough, but there was, too, a hint of weariness and boredom. I have no idea how to talk to him, she thought. I wish I were Lucile Desmoulins.

At nine o’clock, she was back, out of breath. He was sitting with a blank sheet of paper before him, his eyes closed. “Can’t write,” he said, opening them. “Oh, words go down, but they’re hardly soul-searing stuff. Good thing I own a journalist.”

“When are you planning to emerge?”

“Tomorrow, I think. Why?”

“I don’t think you can hide any longer. I saw your journalist. He knows you’re here.”

“How?”

“Well, he doesn’t know, but he thinks you are. I denied it, of course. I’m lucky to be in one piece, I can tell you. He didn’t believe a word I said.”

“Then you’d better go and give him your apologies, and tell him—in confidence—that he is right. Appeal to him to protect me from marauding committeemen—tell him I haven’t decided yet what I ought to do about Dumouriez. And tell him to drop anything he’s doing tonight and come and get drunk with me.”

“I’m not sure I ought to convey that message. It’s dissolute.”

“If you think that’s what people do for debauchery,” he said, “you’ve got a lot to learn.”

Next morning, Louise was up even earlier. Her mother came blundering out of her bedroom, fastening her wrap. “At this hour!” she said. She knew very well that Danton’s servants sleep, not in the apartment, but on the mezzanine floor. “You will be alone with him,” she said. “Anyway, how will you get in?”

Louise showed her the key in the palm of her hand.

She let herself in very quietly, opening and closing doors to the study, where Danton would be if he were up; but she doubted he would be. Camille was standing by the window: shirt, breeches, boots, hair not brushed. There were papers all over Danton’s desk, covered in someone else’s handwriting. “Good morning,” she said. “Are you drunk?”

She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. “Do I look it?”

“No. Where is Citizen Danton?”

“I’ve done away with him. I’ve been busy dismembering him for the last three hours. Would you like to help me carry his remnants down to the concierge? Oh really, Louise! He’s in bed and asleep, where do you think he is?”

“And is he drunk?”

“Very. What is all this harping on intoxication?”

“He said that was what you were going to do. Get drunk.”

“Oh, I see. Were you shocked?”

“Very. What have you been writing?”

He drifted over to Danton’s desk, where he could sit down in the chair and look up full into her face. “A polemic.”

“I have been reading some of your work.”

“Good, isn’t it?”

“I think that it’s incredibly cruel and destructive.”

“If nice little girls like you thought well of it I wouldn’t be achieving much, would I?”

“I don’t think you can have kept your part of the bargain,” she said. “I don’t think you can have been very drunk, if you wrote all that.”

“I can write in any condition.”

“Perhaps that explains some of it.” She turned the pages over. She was conscious of his solemn black eyes fixed on her face. Around his neck there was a silver chain; what depended from it was hidden in the folds of his shirt. Did he perhaps wear a crucifix? Were things perhaps not as bad as they seemed? She wanted to touch him, very badly, feeling under the pious necessity of finding out; she recognized at once a point of crisis, what her confessor would call the very instant of temptation. He felt the direction of her gaze; he took from inside his shirt a chased-silver disc, a locket. Inside—without speaking, he showed her—was a fine curled strand of hair.

“Lucile’s?”

He nodded. She took the locket in the palm of her left hand; the fingers of her right hand brushed the skin at the base of his throat. It’s done—in a moment it’s done, finished with. She would like, at one level of her being, to cut her hand off. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll grow out of me.”

“You are incredibly vain.”

“Yes. There seems no reason why I should learn to be less so. But you, Citizeness, will have to learn to keep your hands to yourself.”

His tone was so scathing that she almost burst into tears. “Why are you being so nasty to me?”

“Because you opened the conversation by asking me if I were drunk, which is not considered polite even by today’s standards, and also because if someone trots out their forces at dawn you assume they have stomach for a fight. Get this very clear in your mind, Louise: if you think that you are in love with me, you had better re-think, and you had better fall out of love at lightning speed. I want no area of doubt here. What Danton is allowed to do to my wife, and what I am allowed to do to his, are two very different things.”

A silence. “Don’t bother to arrange your face,” Camille said. “You’ve arranged everything else.”

She began to shake. “What did he say? What did he tell you?”

“He’s infatuated with you.”

“He told you that? What did he say?”

“Why should I indulge you?”

“When did he say it? Last night?”

“This morning.”

“What words did he use?”

“Oh, I don’t know what words.”

“Words are your profession, aren’t they?” she shouted at him. “Of course you know what words.”

“He said, ‘I am infatuated with Louise.’”

All right; she doesn’t believe that; but let’s get on.

“He was serious? How did he say it?”

“How?”

“How.”

“In the usual four-in-the-morning manner.”

“And what is that?”

“When you’re married, you will have the opportunity to find out.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think you’re evil. It’s a strong word, I know, but I do think it.”

Camille lowered his eyelashes bashfully. “One tries, of course. But Louise, you shouldn’t be too brutal with me, because you’re going to have to live with me, in a manner of speaking. Unless you’re going to try and turn him down, but you wouldn’t try that, would you?”

“I’ll see. But I don’t necessarily believe you. About anything.”

“He wants to sleep with you, that’s the thing, you see. He can’t think of any way of doing it, except by marrying you. An honorable man, Georges-Jacques. An honorable, peaceable, domestic sort, he is. If I had formed the ambition, of course, it would be rather different.”

Camille suddenly slumped forward, elbows on the desk, hands over his mouth. For a moment she didn’t know whether he was laughing or crying, but it soon became apparent which it was. “You can laugh if you want,” she said bleakly, “I’m getting used to it.”

“Oh good, good. When I tell Fabre,” he said between sobs and gasps, “about this conversation—he won’t believe me.” He wiped his eyes. “There’s a lot you must get used to, I’m afraid.”

She looked down at him. “Aren’t you cold like that?”

“Yes.” He stood up. “I suppose I had better get myself together. Georges-Jacques and I are being elected to a committee today.”

“Which committee?”

“You don’t really want the details, do you?”

“How can you know, anyway, until the election is held?”

“Oh, you have a great deal to learn.”

“I want him out of politics.”

“Over my dead body,” Camille said.

Dawn looked peevish, a sullen red sun. She felt sullied by the encounter. Danton slept on.

Danton spoke to the Convention, later to the Jacobin Club. “More than once I was tempted to have Dumouriez arrested. But, I said to myself, if I take this drastic step, and the enemy learns of it—think what it will do for their morale. If they had profited by my decision, I might even be suspected of treachery. Citizens, I put it to you—what would you have done in my place?”

“Well, what would you have done?” he asked Robespierre. April has almost come in; there is a stiff fresh night breeze on the rue Honoré. “We’ll walk home with you. I’ll pay my respects to your wife, Duplay.”

“You’re very welcome, Citizen Danton.”

Saint-Just spoke. “It does seem to be one of those situations when it would have been better to do something.”

“Sometimes it’s better to wait and see, Citizen Saint-Just. Does that ever occur to you?”

“I would have arrested him.”

“But you weren’t there, you don’t know. You don’t know the state of the armies, there is so much to understand.”

“No, of course I don’t know. But why did you seek our opinions if you were going to shout them down?”

“He didn’t seek yours,” Camille said. “It is not though he values it.”

“I shall have to go to the front myself,” Saint-Just said, “and begin to penetrate these mysteries.”

“Oh, good,” Camille said.

“Will you stop being so childish?” Robespierre asked him. “Well, Danton, as long as you’re satisfied in your own mind, as long as you acted in good faith, what more can one ask?”

“I can think of more,” Saint-Just said under his breath.

In the Duplay yard, Brount ran out grumbling to the end of his chain. Approached, he placed his paws on his master’s shoulders. Robespierre had a word with him; along the lines, one supposed, of containing himself in patience, until perfect liberty was practicable. They went into the house. The Robespierre women (as one tended to think of them now) were all on display. Madame looked actively, rather intimidatingly benevolent; it was her aim in life to find a Jacobin who was hungry, then to go into the kitchen and make extravagant efforts, and say, “I have fed a patriot!” Robespierre, in this respect, was no use to her. He seemed to spurn her best efforts.

They sat in the parlor where Robespierre’s portraits were hung. Danton looked around him, Robespierre looked back: smiling, half-smiling or earnest, delicate in profile or tense and combative full-face, studious or amused, with a dog, with another dog, without a dog. The original seemed no more than an item in the display; he was quiet tonight, while they talked of Brissot, Roland, Vergniaud. The interminable topics: young Philippe Lebas moved into a corner and began to whisper with Babette. He was not to be blamed, Danton thought. Robespierre caught Danton’s eye, and smiled.

Another love affair, then, in the intervals of bloodletting. One finds time, one finds time.

When the Minister of War went to Belgium to investigate the situation there, Dumouriez arrested him, along with four of the Convention’s official representatives, and handed them over to the Austrians. Soon afterwards he put out a manifesto, announcing that he would march his armies on Paris to restore stability and the rule of law. His troops mutinied, and fired on him. With young General Égalité—Louis-Philippe, the Duke’s son—he crossed the Austrian lines. An hour later they were both prisoners of war.

Robespierre to the Convention: “I demand that all members of the Orléans family, known as Égalité, be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal … . And that the Tribunal be made responsible for proceeding against all Dumouriez’s other accomplices … . Shall I name such distinguished patriots as Messieurs Vergniaud, Brissot? I rely on the wisdom of the Convention.”

You wouldn’t have thought the Convention had much wisdom, considering the scenes that followed. The Gironde had an arsenal of charges against Danton: lying, skulking, misappropriating funds. As he strode to the rostrum the Right screamed their favorite insult: drinker of blood. As the president put his head in his hands and all but wept, opponents met head to head, punches were thrown, and Citizen Danton must physically grapple with deputies who were trying to prevent him from speaking in his own defense.

Robespierre looked down from the Mountain; his face was horrified. Danton gained the tribune, leaving a trail of casualties in his wake; he seemed stimulated by the disorder: “Daylight holds no fears for me!” he bawled across the benches of the Right. Philippe Égalité was aware that the colleagues on either side of him had slid further away, as if he were Marat. And here is Marat, limping towards the tribune as Danton stepped down.

He brushed past Danton; there was a flicker of contact between their eyes. He put his hand to the pistol in his belt, as if he were easing it for use. Turning his body almost sideways, he stretched one arm along the ledge of the tribune and surveyed his audience from behind it. Perhaps, Philippe Égalité thought, I shall never again see him do that.

Marat tilted his head back. He looked around the hall. Then, after a long-drawn, exquisite pause—he laughed.

“This man makes my blood run cold,” Deputy Lebas whispered to Robespierre. “It’s like meeting something in a graveyard.”

“Shh,” said Robespierre. “Listen.”

Marat reached up, pulled once at the red kerchief wrapped around his neck; this was the signal that the joke was over. He stretched out his arm again, fearfully leisured. When he spoke he sounded calm, dispassionate. His proposal was simply this: that the Convention abolish the deputies’ immunity from prosecution, so that they could put each other on trial. The Right and the Left glared at each other, each deputy imagining for his personal enemies a procession to Dr. Guillotin’s beheading machine. Two deputies of the Mountain, sitting a few feet apart, turned and looked at each other; their eyes met, then darted away in shock. No one looked Philippe in the face. Marat’s motion was carried, supported from all sides.

Citizens Danton and Desmoulins left the Convention together, applauded by a crowd that had gathered outside. They walked home. It was a clear, chilly April evening. “I could wish myself elsewhere,” Danton said.

“What are we going to do about Philippe? We can’t just throw him to Marat.”

“We might find some comfortable provincial fortress to put him in for the while. He’ll be safer in gaol than he will be at large in Paris.”

They were in their own district by now, the republic of the Cordeliers. The streets were quiet; news of the scenes in the Convention would soon leak out, and news of the Convention’s fearful decree. Elsewhere, deputies were limping home to nurse their contusions and sprains. Did everyone go slightly mad this afternoon, perhaps? Citizen Danton did have the air of a man who had been in a fight; but then he often had that air.

They stopped outside the Cour du Commerce. “Coming up for a glass of blood, Georges-Jacques? Or shall I open the burgundy?”

They went up, decided on the burgundy, sat on till after midnight. Camille scribbled down the salient points of the pamphlet he was planning to write. Salient points were not enough though; each word must be a little knife, and it would take him a few weeks yet to sharpen them.

Manon Roland was back in her old cramped apartment on the rue de la Harpe. “Good morning, good morning,” Fabre d’Églantine said.

“We did not invite you here.”

“Ah, no.” Fabre seated himself, crossing his legs. “Citizen Roland not at home?”

“He is taking a short walk. For the state of his health.”

“How is his health?” Fabre inquired.

“Not good, I’m afraid. We hope the summer may not be too hot.”

“Ah,” Fabre said. “Warm weather, cold weather, they all have their demerits for the invalid, don’t they? We feared as much. When one noticed that Citizen Roland’s letter of resignation from the Ministry was in your hand, one said to Danton, it must be that Citizen Roland is unwell. Danton said—but never mind.”

“Perhaps you have a message to leave for my husband.”

“No, for I didn’t come specifically, you see, to talk to Citizen Roland—but merely for a few minutes of your charming company. And to find Citizen Buzot here with you is an added pleasure. You are often together, aren’t you? You must be careful, or you will be suspected of”—he chuckled—“conspiracy. But then, I think a friendship between a young man and an older woman can be a very beautiful thing. So Citizen Desmoulins always says.”

“Unless you state your business very soon,” Buzot said, “I may throw you out.”

“Really?” Fabre said. “I was hardly aware that we had reached that pitch of hostility. Do sit down, Citizen Buzot, there’s no need to be so physical.”

“As president of the Jacobin Club,” she said, “Marat has presented to the Convention a petition for the proscription of certain deputies. One is Citizen Buzot, whom you see here. Another is my husband. They want us in front of your Tribunal. Ninety six people have signed this. What pitch of hostility is that?”

“No, I must protest,” Fabre said. “Marat’s friends have signed it, though I confess myself amazed to learn that Marat has ninety-six friends. Danton has not signed it. Robespierre has not.”

“Camille Desmoulins has.”

“Oh, we have no control over Camille.”

“Robespierre and Danton will not sign it simply because it is Marat who has put it forward,” she said. “You are hopelessly divided. You think you can frighten us. But you will not throw us out of the Convention, you have not the numbers or force to do it.”

Fabre looked at them through his lorgnette. “Do you like my coat?” he asked. “It’s a new English cut.”

“You will never achieve anything and you don’t represent anybody. Danton and Robespierre are afraid that Hébert will steal their thunder, Hébert and Marat are afraid of Jacques Roux and the other agitators on the streets. You’re terrified of losing your popularity, of not being out in front of the Revolution anymore—that’s why you have given up any pretense at decent gentlemanly conduct. The Jacobins are ruled by their public gallery, and you play to them. But be warned—this cityful of ragged illiterates that you pander to is not France.”

“Your vehemence amazes me,” Fabre said.

“In the Convention there are decent men from all over the nation, and you Paris deputies won’t be able to browbeat them all. This Tribunal, this end to immunity, it doesn’t work for you alone. We have our plans for Marat.”

“I see,” Fabre said. “Of course, you know, in a sense all this was unnecessary. If only you’d been halfway civil to Danton, not made those unfortunate remarks about how you wouldn’t like to have sexual intercourse with him. He’s a good fellow, you know, always ready to do a deal, and he’s not in the least out for blood. It’s just that recently, with his personal misfortunes, he’s not so easygoing as he was.”

“We don’t want a deal,” she said, furious. “We don’t want to do a deal with the people who organized the massacre last September.”

“That’s very sad,” Fabre said deliberately. “Because up till now, you know, it’s been a business of compromises, more acceptable or less acceptable, and accommodation, and perhaps making yourself—I don’t deny it—a little bit of money on the side. But it’s turning awfully serious now.

“Not before time,” she said.

“Well,” he stood up, “shall I convey your compliments to anyone?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Do you see much of Citizen Brissot?”

“Citizen Brissot is running his own version of the Revolution,” she said, “and so is Vergniaud. They have their own supporters and their own friends, and it is monstrously stupid and unfair to lump us together with them.”

“I’m afraid it’s unavoidable really. I mean if you see each other, exchange information, vote the same way, however coincidentally—well, to outsiders it does seem that you are a sort of faction. That’s how it would seem to a jury.”

“On that basis, you would be judged with Marat,” Buzot said. “I think you’re a little premature, Citizen Fabre. You must have a case before you can have a trial.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Fabre muttered.

On the stairs he met Roland himself. He was on his way to draft a petition—his eighth or ninth—for an examination of the accounts of Danton’s ministry. He had a dilapidated air, and he smelled of infusions. He looked away from Fabre’s eyes; his own were lusterless and aggrieved. “Your Tribunal was a mistake,” he said without preliminary. “We are entering a time of terror.”

Brissot: reading, writing, scurrying from place to place, gathering his thoughts, scattering his good will; proposing a motion, addressing a committee, jotting down a note. Brissot with his cliques, his factions, his whippers-in and his putters-out; with his secretaries and messengers, his errand boys, his printers, his claque. Brissot with his generals, his ministers.

Who the devil is Brissot anyway? A pastry cook’s son.

Brissot: poet, businessman, adviser to George Washington.

Who are the Brissotins? A good question. You see, if you accuse people of a crime (for example, and especially, conspiracy) and refuse to sever their trials, then it will at once be seen that they are a group, that they have cohesion. Then if we want to say, you’re a Brissotin, you’re a Girondist—prove that you’re not. Prove that you have a right to be treated separately.

How many are there? Ten eminences: sixty or seventy non-entities. Take, for instance, Rabaut Saint-Étienne:

When the National Convention shall be purged of that kind of man, so that people shall ask what a Brissotin was, I will move that to preserve a perfect specimen of one this man’s skin be stuffed, and that the original may be kept entire at the Museum of Natural History; and for this purpose, I will oppose his being guillotined.

Brissot: his contributors and his orators, his minutes and his memoranda, his fixers and his dupes.

Brissot: his ways and his means and his means to an end, his circumstances, his ploys, his faux pas and his bons mots; his past, his present, his world without end.

I establish it as a fact that the Right wing of the Convention, and principally their leaders, are almost all partisans of royalty and accomplices of Dumouriez; that they are directed by the agents of Pitt, Orléans and Prussia; that they wanted to divide France into twenty or thirty federative republics, that no Republic might exist. I maintain that history does not furnish an example of a conspiracy so clearly proved, by so many weighty probabilities, than the conspiracy of Brissot against the French Republic.

Camille Desmoulins, a pamphlet: “A Secret History of the Revolution.”