A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 10

The Marquis Calls

Both the monarchs are dead, the he-tyrant and the she-tyrant. You’d think there’d be a feeling of freedom, a feeling inside; Lucile finds she doesn’t have it. She had pressed Camille for details of the Queen’s last hours, anxious to know whether she had been worthy of a place in history; but he seemed reluctant to talk about it. In the end he said that, as she very well knew, nothing would induce him to attend the execution. Hypocrite, she said. You ought to go and see the results of your actions. He stared at her. I know how people die, he said. He made her an old regime bow, very fulsome and ironic, picked up his hat and went out. He seldom quarreled with her, but revenged himself by mysterious absences, of between ten minutes and several days in duration.

He was back within the hour: could they give a supper party? The notice was very generous, Jeanette said tartly. But good food in sufficient quantity can always be procured if you have money and know where to go. Camille disappeared again, and it was Jeanette, out shopping, who found out what there was to celebrate; the Convention had heard that afternoon that the Austrians had been defeated in a long and bloody battle at Wattignies.

So that night they drank to the latest victory, to the newest commanders. They talked of the progress against the Vendee insurgents, of success against the rebels of Lyon and Bordeaux. “It seems to me the Republic is prospering immensely,” she said to Hérault.

“The news is good, yes.” But he frowned. He was preoccupied; he had asked the Committee to send him to Alsace in the wake of Saint-Just, and he was to leave soon, perhaps tomorrow.

“Why did you do that?” she asked him. “We’ll be dull without you. I’m pleased you could come tonight, I thought you might be at the Committee.”

“I’m not a lot of use to them these days. They tell me as little as possible. I learn more from the newspapers.”

“They don’t trust you anymore?” She was alarmed. “What’s happened?”

“Ask your husband. He has the ear of the Incorruptible.” A few minutes later he rose, thanked her, explained that there were last-minute preparations. Camille stood up, and kissed Hérault’s cheek. “Come back soon. I shall so much miss our regular exchange of veiled abuse.”

“I doubt it will be soon.” Hérault’s voice was strained. “At least, at the frontier I can do useful work, and I can see the enemy, and know who they are. Paris is becoming a place for scavengers.”

“I apologize,” Camille said. “I can see I’m a waste of your time. Can I have my kiss back?”

“I swear,” someone said lazily, “that if you two were to mount the scaffold together you’d quarrel over precedence.”

“Oh, I fancy I’d have the advantage,” Camille said. “Though I cannot imagine which way it lies. My cousin decides the order of execution.”

There was a choking sound, and somebody put his glass down hard. Fabre stared at them, red-faced. “It’s not funny,” he said. “It’s in the worst taste imaginable, and it’s not even funny.”

There was a silence, into which Hérault dropped his good-byes. After he had gone the conversation resumed with a forced hilarity, which Fabre led. The party broke up early. Later, lying in bed, Lucile asked, “What happened? Our parties never fail, never.”

“Oh,” Camille said, “no doubt it is the end of civilization as we know it.” Then he added, tiredly, “It’s probably because Georges is away.” He turned away from her, but she knew that he was lying awake, listening to the sounds of the city by night: black eyes staring into black darkness.

Something’s amiss, she thought. At least, since Saint-Just left Paris, Camille was more with Robespierre. Robespierre understood him; he would find out what was wrong and tell her.

Next day she called on Eléonore. If it was true that Eléonore was Robespierre’s mistress, it didn’t make her any happier, certainly no more gracious. She was not slow to bring the conversation round to Camille.

“He,” she said with disgust, “can make Max do anything he wants, and nobody else can make him do anything they want at all. He’s just always very polite and busy.” She leaned forward, trying to communicate her distress. “He gets up early and deals with his letters. He goes to the Convention. He goes to the Tuileries and transacts the Committee’s business. Then he goes to the Jacobins. At ten o’clock at night the Committee goes into session. He comes home in the small hours.”

“He drives himself very hard. But what do you expect? That’s the kind of man he is.”

“He’ll never marry me. He says, as soon as the present crisis is over. But it never will be over, will it Lucile, will it?”

A few weeks ago in the street Lucile and her mother had seen Anne Théroigne. It had taken them both a moment to recognize her. Théroigne was no longer pretty. She was thin; her face had fallen in as if she had lost some teeth. She passed them; something flickered in her eyes, but she didn’t speak. Lucile thought her pathetic—a victim of the times. “No one could think her attractive now,” Annette said. She smiled. Her recent birthdays had passed, as she put it, without incident. Most men still looked at her with interest.

Once again, she was seeing Camille in the afternoons. He often stayed away from the Convention now. Many of the Montagnards were away on mission; many of the right-wing deputies, those who had voted against the King’s death, had abandoned their public duties and fled Paris. More than seventy deputies had signed a protest about the expulsion of Brissot, Vergniaud and the rest; they were in prison now, and only Robespierre’s good offices kept them out of the hands of the Tribunal. François Robert was in disgrace, and Philippe Égalité awaited trial; Collot d’Herbois was in Lyon, punishing rebels. Danton was enjoying the country air. Saint-Just and Babette’s husband, Philippe Lebas, were with the armies; the burden of the Committee’s work often kept Robespierre at the Tuileries. Camille and Fabre grew tired of counting the empty places. There was no one they much liked, and no one they much wanted to shout down. And Marat was dead.

Théroigne turned up at the rue des Cordeliers a few days after the supper party. Her clothes hung on her; she looked unwashed and somehow desperate. “I want to see Camille,” she said. She had developed a way of turning her head away from you as she spoke, as if she were engaged in a private monologue into which you mustn’t intrude. Camille heard her voice; he had been sitting doing nothing, staring into space. “Well my dear,” he said, “you have deteriorated. If this is all you can do by way of feminine charm, I think I prefer the way you were before.”

“Your manners are still exquisite,” Théroigne said, looking at the wall. “What’s that? That engraving? That woman’s going to have her head cut off.”

“That is Maria Stuart, my wife’s favorite historical personage.”

“How strange,” she said tonelessly.

“Sit down,” Lucile said. “Do you want something? A warm drink?” She was overwhelmed by pity; someone ought to feed her, brush her hair, tell Camille not to speak to her like that. “Would you rather I left you?” she said.

“No, that’s all right. You can stay if you want. Or go. I don’t mind.”

As she moved slowly into a better light, Lucile saw the scars on her face. Months ago, she knew, she had been beaten in the street by a gang of women. How she has suffered, Lucile thought; God preserve me. Her throat tightened.

“What I want won’t take long,” Théroigne said. “You know, don’t you, what I think?”

“I don’t know that you do,” Camille said.

“You know where my sympathies lie. Brissot’s people go on trial this week. I’m one of them, Brissot’s people.” There was no passion in her voice. “I believe in what they stand for and what they’ve tried to do. I don’t like your politics and I don’t like Robespierre’s.”

“Is that it? Is that what you came for?”

“I want you to go, right away, to the Section committee and denounce me. I’ll come with you. I won’t deny anything you say about me. I’ll repeat exactly what I just said.”

Lucile: “Anne, what’s the matter with you?”

“She wants to die,” Camille said. He smiled.

“Yes,” she said, in the same listless whisper. “I do.”

Lucile crossed the room to her. Théroigne pushed her hands away, and Camille gave her a sharp, fierce look. She dropped back, looking from one to the other.

“It’s easy,” Camille said. “You go out on the street and shout ‘Long live the King.’ They’ll arrest you right away.”

Anne raised a bony hand and touched her eyebrow. A white mark showed where the flesh had been split open. “I made a speech,” she said. “This happened. They hit me with a whip. They kicked me in the stomach and trod on me. I thought I was finished then. But it was a wretched way to die.”

“Try the river,” Camille said.

“Denounce me. Let’s go to the Section now. You’d be pleased to do it. You want your revenge.”

“Yes,” he said, “I do want revenge, but why should you have the benefit of a civilized end? I may detest Brissot’s people, but they shouldn’t have their names linked to scum like you. No, Théroigne, you can die in the street—like Louis Suleau did. You can take your death where you find it, and from whoever hands it out. I hope you wait a long time.”

Her expression didn’t change. Humbly, her eyes sliding across the carpet, she said, “I beg of you.”

“Go away,” Camille said.

She inclined her head. Her face averted, her gait beaten and slow, Théroigne moved towards the door. Lucile cried out for her to come back. “She means to take her life.” Stupidly, she was pointing after her, as if to make herself clear.

“No, she doesn’t,” Camille said.

“Oh, you are wicked,” Lucile whispered. “If there’s a hell, you’ll burn in it.” The door closed. She rushed across the room. She wanted to injure him, to hurt him in reparation for the ghost-like creature who had crept out into the rain. His expression distant, he held her wrists, thwarting her. Her whole body shook, and a rush of tears scalded her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you couldn’t do what she said, it’s absurd, but surely there’s some way to help her and make her want to live? Everybody must want to live.”

“That’s not true. Every day people are taken up off the streets. They wait for a patrol to come along, and then they shout out for the Dauphin, or for Robespierre to be guillotined. There are a multitude of deaths waiting. She only has to choose one.”

She dragged herself from his grasp, ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. Her chest heaved, her heart rose and throbbed in her throat. With all the desperate passions in our heads and bodies, one day these walls will split, one day this house will fall down. There will be soil and bones and grass, and they will read our diaries to find out what we were.

9 Brumaire, the Palais de Justice. Brissot seemed to have aged. He was more papery and stooped, and the hair at his temples had receded further. De Sillery looked old; where were his gambling passions now? He would not bet on the outcome of this; this was a certainty. Only, sometimes, he wondered how he got made into a Brissotin. He should be sitting beside Philippe; Philippe, the lucky devil, has another week to live.

He leant forward. “Brissot, do you remember? We were witnesses at Camille’s wedding.”

“So we were,” Brissot said. “But then you know, so was Robespierre.”

Vergniaud, who was always careless about his clothes, was immaculate tonight, as if to show that imprisonment and trial had not broken his spirit. His face was carefully devoid of expression; he would give nothing away, give his tormenters no satisfaction. Where was Buzot tonight, he wondered? Where was Citizen Roland? Where was Pétion? Alive or dead?

The clock struck 10:15. Outside it was pitch black, raining. The jury was back; at once they were surrounded by officers of the court. Citizen Fouquier, his cousin with him, strolled across the marble, into the light; there were twenty-two verdicts to be pronounced, twenty-two death sentences to be read, before he could go home to a late meal and a bottle.

His cousin Camille was very pale; his voice shook, he was on edge. For six days he, Fouquier, had been quoting his cousin’s assertions at the jury, his accusations of federalist conspiracy, of monarchist plots. Occasionally, when some now-famous phrase fell on their ears, the accused would turn as one man and look at Camille. It was as if they had rehearsed it; no doubt they had. It had been a strain, Fouquier supposed. He had already ordered the tumbrels; when there were twenty-two accused, you had to be mindful of these details.

There is, Fouquier reflected, something theatrical about the scene, or something for an artist’s brush; the black and white of the tiles, the flare of candle flames, the splashes, here and there, of the tricolor. Light touches his cousin’s face; he takes a chair. The foreman of the jury rises. A clerk flicks from a file a sheaf of death warrants. Behind the Public Prosecutor, someone whispered, “Camille, what’s the matter?”

Suddenly, from the ranks of the accused, there was a single sharp cry. The accused men leapt to their feet, the guards closed in on them, the officers of the court threw down their papers and scrambled from their places. One of the accused, Charles Valazé, had slid backwards from his bench. There were screams from women in the crowd, a rush to see what had happened; guards struggled to hold the spectators back.

“What a way to end it,” a juryman said.

Vergniaud, his face still impassive, motioned to Dr. Lehardi, one of the accused. Lehardi knelt by the fallen body. He held up a long dagger, which was bloody to the hilt. The Public Prosecutor immediately removed it from his hand. “I shall have something to say about this,” Fouquier complained. “He might have used it on me.”

Brissot sat slumped forward, his chin on his chest. Now Valazé’s blood trailed scarlet over the black and white. A space was cleared. Valazé, looking small and very dead, was picked up by two gendarmes and borne away.

The drama was not over yet. Citizen Desmoulins, attempting to get out of the courtroom, had fallen over in a dead faint.

17 Brumaire: execution of Philippe, known as Citizen Egalite. At his last meal he consumed two cutlets, a quantity of oysters, the greater part of a good bottle of Bordeaux. To attend the scaffold he wore a white pique waistcoat, a green frock coat and yellow buckskins: very English. “Well, my good man,” he said to Sanson, “let’s hurry it up, shall we?”

The executioner. His overheads have gone up shockingly since the Terror began. He has seven men to pay out of his own wages, and soon he will be hiring up to a dozen carts a day. Before, he managed with two assistants and one cart. The kind of money he can offer doesn’t attract people to the work. He has to pay for his own cord for binding the clients, and for the big wicker baskets to take the corpses away afterwards. At first they’d thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale. Do the powers-that-be understand just how much blood comes out of even one decapitated person? The blood ruins everything, rots things away, especially his clothes. People down there don’t realize, but he sometimes gets splashed right up to his knees.

It’s heavy work. If you get someone who’s tried to do away with himself beforehand, he can be in a mess, maybe collapsed through poison or loss of blood, and you can strain your back trying to drag him into position under the blade. Recently Citizen Fouquier insisted they guillotine a corpse, which everybody thought was a lot of unnecessary work. Again, take someone who’s crippled or deformed; they can’t be tied to the plank without a lot of sweat and heaving, and then the crowds (who can’t see much anyway) get bored and start hissing and catcalling. Meanwhile a queue builds up, and the people at the end of the queue get awkward and start screaming or passing out. If all the clients were young, male, stoical and fit, he’d have fewer problems, but it’s surprising how few of them fall into all those categories. The citizens who live nearby complain that he doesn’t put down enough sawdust to soak up the blood, and the smell becomes offensive. The machine itself is quiet, efficient, reliable; but of course he has to pay the man who sharpens the knife.

He’s trying to make the operation as efficient as he can, get the speed up. Fouquier shouldn’t complain. Take the Brissotins; twenty-one, plus the corpse, in thirty-six minutes flat. He couldn’t spare a skilled man to time it, but he’d got a friendly spectator to stand by with his watch: just in case he heard any complaints.

In the old days the executioner was esteemed; he was looked up to. There was a special law to prevent people calling him rude names. He had a regular audience who came to see skilled work, and they appreciated any little troubles he took. People came to executions because they wanted to; but some of these old women, knitting for the war effort, you can see they’ve been paid to sit there, and they can’t wait to get away and drink up the proceeds; and the National Guardsmen, who have to attend, are sickened off after a few days of it.

Once the executioner had a special Mass said for the soul of the condemned; but you couldn’t do that now. They’re numbers on a list now. You feel that before this, death had distinction; for your clients it was a special, individual end. For them you had risen early and prayed and dressed in scarlet, composed a marmoreal face and cut a flower for your coat. But now they come in carts like calves, mouths sagging like calves’ and their eyes dull, stunned into passivity by the speed with which they’ve been herded from their judgement to their deaths; it is not an art any longer, it is more like working in a slaughterhouse.

“I write these words to the sound of laughter in the next room … .”

From the first day they took her to prison, Manon had been writing. She had to record a justification, a credo, an autobiography. After a time her wrist would ache, her fingers stiffen in the cold, and she would want to cry. Whenever she stopped writing and allowed her mind to dwell on the past itself, rather than on means of expressing it, she felt a great void of longing open inside her: “ … we have had nothing.” She would lie on her prison bed, staring up into the darkness, consciously fitting herself for heroism.

Every day she expected them to come and tell her that her husband had been captured, that he was being held in some provincial town, that he was on his way to Paris to stand trial with her. But what if François-Leonard were taken? Perhaps they would not tell her at all. This is the price of discretion, this is the prize for good conduct; they had been so discreet, and behaved so well, that even her closest friends would not think Buzot any personal concern of hers.

Her room in prison was bare and cold, but clean. Meals were sent in to her; nevertheless, she had decided to starve herself to death. Little by little she cut down her intake, until they took her away to another room that served as the prison hospital. The prospect was held out to her then that she would be allowed to testify at Brissot’s trial; for that she must be strong, and so she began to eat again.

Perhaps it had been a trick from the start? She didn’t know. While the trial was in progress she had been taken to the Palais de Justice and held in a side room, under guard. But she never saw the accused, never saw the judges or (such as they were) the jury. One of her keepers brought her the news of Valazé’s suicide. One death breeds another. What was it Vergniaud had said, of the calm, smooth-skinned girl who had stabbed Marat? “She has killed us, but she has taught us how to die.”

They had delayed her own trial—perhaps because they hoped to capture Roland and stand them side by side. One could ask for mercy, of course; but her life was not worth the sacrifice of everything she had lived it for. Besides, there was no mercy to be got. From Danton? From Robespierre? Camille Desmoulins had been in some uncharacteristic mood at Brissot’s trial. He had said—a score of people had heard it, her keepers told her—“They were my friends, and my writings have killed them.” But no doubt he had repented of repentance, before Jacobin hands had scooped him up from the floor.

On the day she was moved to the Conciergerie, she realized that she would never see her child or her husband again. The cells were below the hall where the Tribunal sat; this was the last stage, and even if Roland were taken now she would be dead before he reached Paris. She appeared before the Tribunal on November 8—18 Brumaire, by the reckoning of that charlatan Fabre d’Églantine. She wore a white dress, her auburn hair down, gathering and accreting to itself the last rays of the afternoon light. Fouquier was efficient. She was bundled into a cart that same evening. The bitter wind whipped color into her cheeks, and she shivered inside her muslin. It was growing dark, but she saw the machine against the sky, the sinister geometry of the knife’s edge.

An eyewitness:

“Robespierre came forward slowly … . He wore spectacles which probably served to conceal the twitchings of his pallid face. His delivery was slow and measured. His phrases were so long that every time he stopped and raised his spectacles one thought that he had nothing more to say, but after looking slowly and searchingly over the audience in every part of the room, he would readjust his glasses and add a few more phrases to his sentences, which were already of inordinate length.”

Nowadays when he came up behind people they would jump, startled and guilty. It was as if the fear he often felt had communicated itself to them. Since he was not naturally heavy-footed, he wondered what he should do to warn them—cough, barge into the furniture? He knew that they thought he was there, listening, before they saw him, and all their self-doubts and mutinous half-thoughts came swarming to the surface of their skins.

At the meetings of the Committee he often sat in silence; he did not want to force his views on them, and yet when he abstained from comment he knew that they suspected him of watching them, of noting things down. And he did; he noted a great many things. Sometimes when he gave his opinion Carnot drily contradicted him; Robert Lindet looked very grave, as if he had reservations. He would snap at Carnot to reduce him to silence. What did the man think, that he had some sort of privilege, because he had known him before? His colleagues would exchange glances. Sometimes he would extract a few papers from Carnot’s portfolio, complaints from commanders whose men had dysentery or no shoes, or whose mounts were dying from lack of fodder. He would read them quickly and spread them out on the table like a gambler laying down his hand, his eyes engaging Camot’s; I wonder, he would say, if you think your appointment is working out for the best? Carnot sucked on his lower lip.

When his colleagues spoke, Robespierre sat with his narrow chin propped on thumb and forefinger, his face tilted to the ceiling. There was nothing they could tell him about day-to-day politics, about publicity good and bad, about handling the Convention and obtaining a majority. He remembered his school days, toiling in the shade of more flamboyant characters; he remembered Arras, where he was chivvied about by the claims of his family, slapped down by local magistrates, blackballed because of his politics by the local Bar’s dining club.

He’s not like Danton; he doesn’t want to go home. Here’s home: under the midnight lamps, and out in the rainy street. But sometimes while they’re talking he finds himself, for a moment, elsewhere; he thinks of those gray-green meadows and quiet town squares, the lines of poplars bending in an autumn wind.

20 Brumaire. A “Festival of Reason” is held in the public building formerly known as Notre Dame. The religious embellishments, as people like to call them, have been stripped from the building, and a cardboard Greek temple has been constructed in the nave. An actress from the Opera impersonates the Goddess of Reason, and is enthroned while the crowd sings the “Ça Ira.”

Under pressure from the Hébertists, the Bishop of Paris appears before the Convention, and announces his militant atheism. Deputy Julien, who had once been a Protestant pastor, took the occasion to announce his at the same time.

Declared Deputy Clootz (a radical, a foreigner): “A religious man is a depraved beast. He resembles those animals that are kept to be shorn and roasted for the benefit of merchants and butchers.”

Robespierre came home from the Convention. His lips were pale, his eyes cold with fury. Someone is going to suffer, Eléonore thought.

“If there is no God,” he said, “if there is no Supreme Being, what are the people to think who live all their lives in hardship and want? Do these atheists think they can do away with poverty, do they think the Republic can be made into heaven on earth?”

Eléonore turned away from him. She knew better than to hope for a kiss. “Saint-Just rather thinks it,” she said.

“We cannot guarantee bread to people. We cannot guarantee justice. Are we also to take hope away?”

“It sounds as if you only want a God because he fills the gaps in your policies.”

He stared at her. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “Perhaps you’re right. But Antoine, you see, he thinks everything can be achieved by wishing it—each individual makes himself over, becomes a better person, a person with more vertu, then as individuals change, society changes, and it takes—what? A generation? The problem is, Eléonore, that you lose sight of this when you’re bogged down in the detail, you are worrying all the time about supplying boots for the army, and you’re thinking, every day I fail at something—and it begins to look like one gigantic failure.”

She put her hand on his arm. “It’s not a failure, my darling. It’s the only success there’s ever been in the world.”

He shook his head. “I can’t always see it now in such absolute terms, I wish I could. I feel sometimes I’m losing my direction. Danton understands, he knows how to talk about this. He says, you make a few botches, you have a few successes, and that’s what politics is about.”

“Cynical,” Eléonore said.

“No, it’s a viewpoint—the way he looks at it, you do have your general principles to guide you, but you have to make the best of each situation as it arises. Now Saint-Just, he thinks differently—in his opinion, you have to see in each particular circumstance a chance to make your principles operate. Everything, for him, is an opportunity to state the larger case.”

“And where do you stand?”

“Oh, I’m just”—he threw his hands out—“floundering. Only here, with this issue, I do know where I am. I will not have this intolerance, I will not have this bigotry, I will not have the lifetime’s faith of simple people pulled from under them by dilettantes with no idea of what faith means. They call the priests bigots, but they are the bigots, who want to stop Mass being said.”

You “won’t have it,” she thought. That means the Tribunal, if they don’t back down. She herself was not inclined to believe in a God; or not in a beneficent one, anyway.

Up in his room he wrote a letter to Danton. He read it over, corrected it minutely, as he corrected everything, scoring it over, refining his meaning, stating his case. He was not satisfied with it; he tore it up—into small pieces, because he was not too angry to be careful—and wrote another. He wanted to ask Danton to come to Paris and help him crush Hébert. He wanted to say that he needed help, but would not be patronized: needed an ally, but would not be dominated.

Even the second draft was not satisfactory. Why didn’t he think of asking Camille to write it? Camille could put his case so simply, had put it so simply earlier that day: “We don’t need processions and rosaries and relics, but we do need, when things are very bad, the prospect of consolation—we do need, when things are even worse, the idea that in the long run there is someone who could manage to forgive us.”

He sat with his head bowed. You have to smile; what would Father Bérardier say? Here we are, when all’s said and done, two good Catholic boys. Never mind that he hasn’t heard Mass in years, that Camille counts a week wasted if he hasn’t broken every Commandment in the book. Strange, really, how you find yourself back where you started. Or not, of course: he remembered Camille being slapped around the head by Father Proyart for taking Plutarch’s Lives to Mass. “I’d just got to an exciting bit …”he’d said. In those days Plutarch passed for excitement. No wonder Camille cut loose when he got away from the priests. They asked us to be something more than human. And I, I struggled on, trying to be what they wanted—though I didn’t know I was doing it, though I thought I was living by another creed entirely.

His lighter mood didn’t last long. He addressed himself to a third draft. How does one write to Danton? He took out his DANTON notebook and read it over. He was no wiser when he finished, but much more depressed.

Jean-Marie Roland was in hiding in Rouen. On the day—November 10—when the news of his wife’s execution reached him, he left the house where he was hiding and walked some three miles out of town. He carried his sword-stick in his hand. He stopped in a deserted lane, by an apple orchard, and sat down under one of the trees. This was the place; there was no point in walking any further.

The ground was iron-hard, the trunk of the tree was cold to the touch; winter was in the air. He experimented; the first sight of his own blood dismayed him, turned him sick. But this was the place.

The body was found sometime later, by a passerby who had at first taken him to be an elderly man asleep. It was impossible to say for how many hours he had been dead or whether, impaled by the slender blade, it had taken him very long to die.

November 11, in pouring rain, Mayor Bailly was executed; by popular request, a guillotine was set up for the occasion on the Champs-de-Mars, where in ’91 Lafayette had fired on the people.

“Camille,” Lucile said, “there’s a marquis to see you.” Camille looked up from The City of God, and shook his hair out of his eyes. “Impossible.”

“Well then, a former marquis.”

“Does he look respectable?”

“Yes, very. All right? I’ll leave you then.”

Suddenly, and after all these years, she has no appetite for politics. Vergniaud’s dying words keep running through her head: “The Revolution, like Saturn, is devouring its own children.” It is becoming one of the slogans and pat phrases she seems to have lived by. (Does a father’s authority count for nothing? I don’t know why people complain they can’t make money nowadays, I have no trouble. They were my friends and my writings have killed them.) They run through her dreams every night, she finds them rising to her lips in conversation, the common currency of the last five years. (It’s all organized, no one who’s innocent will be touched. I loathe firm government. There’s nothing to worry about, M. Danton will look after us.) She no longer attends the debates of the Convention, sitting in the public gallery eating sweets with Louise Robert. She went once to the Tribunal, to hear Cousin Antoine bullying his victims; once was enough.

“Some confusion over identity,” de Sade said to Camille. “I should have sent in my credentials as an official of the Section des Piques. My mind was wandering. That’s enough to get someone denounced as suspect.” He reached out one of his small, soft hands and took away Camille’s book. “Devotional reading,” he said. “My dear. This is nothing to do with … ?”

“Fainting? Oh no. Just my usual diversion. I’m writing a work on the Church Fathers.”

“Each to his own,” de Sade said. “We authors must look out for each other, don’t you think?”

He was in his early fifties now, a small man, rather plump, with receding grayish blond hair and pale blue eyes. He had put on weight, but he still moved with elegance. He wore the dark clothes and tensely purposeful expression of the Terrorist politician, and he carried a folio of papers knotted with a flamboyant tricolor ribbon. “Obscene illustrations?” Camille inquired, indicating it.

“Good God,” de Sade said, shocked. “You consider yourself my moral superior, don’t you, M. Lanterne Attorney?”

“Well, I am most people’s moral superior. I know all the theory, and I have all the ethical scruples. It is only in my conduct that there is something wanting. Can I have Saint Augustine back, please?”

De Sade looked round for a table, and laid the saint facedown. “You unnerve me,” he said. Camille looked pleased. “I thought you might like to tell me about these regrets you are having,” the Marquis said. He took a chair.

Camille thought for a moment. “No … I don’t think I would. But you can tell me about yours, if you like.”

“The Bastille,” de Sade said. “It’s all double-edged, isn’t it? Take the fall of the Bastille. It made you famous. And I congratulate you. It shows how the wicked prosper, and how even the semi-wicked have a distinct advantage. Also it was a great step forward for humanity, whoever they may be. For my part, I was moved out before the trouble started, and in such a hurry that I left the manuscript of my new novel behind. I got out of prison on Good Friday—after eleven years, Camille—and my papers were nowhere to be found. It was a great blow to me, I can tell you.”

“What was it, your novel?”

“120 Days of Sodom.”

“Well, heavens,” Camille said, “it’s more than four years, haven’t you had time to get it together again?”

“Not any 120 days,” the Marquis said. “It was a feat of imagination which in these attenuated times it is difficult to reproduce.”

“What did you come for, Citizen? Not to talk about your novels, surely?”

The Marquis sighed. “Just to air my views. About the times, you know. I loved what happened at Brissot’s trial. To think of you recovering your senses, such as they are, in the arms of all those strong men. So what do you think now—do you think it would have been possible not to kill Brissot’s people?”

“I didn’t, but now I think—yes, we might have managed it.”

“Even after Marat’s death?”

“I suppose there is at least a chance that the girl did it by herself. She claimed she did. But no one even listened to her. Brissot’s trial went on for days. They were allowed to speak. They called witnesses. It was all reported in the newspapers. It was only pressure from Hébert that stopped it, or we could have been arguing still.”

“Just so,” de Sade said.

“But in future defendants won’t have those rights. It is regarded as not expeditious, not republican. I am afraid of the consequences of cutting the trials short. I think that people are being killed who need not be. But the killings go on.”

“And the judgements,” de Sade said. “The judgements in the courtroom. You see I approve the duel, the vendetta, the crime of passion. But this machinery of Terror operates with no passion at all.”

“Forgive me—I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about.”

“You know, your first writings were so entirely without pity, so completely devoid of the conventional mouthings—I had hopes for you. But now you’re beginning to retrace your steps. Repent. Aren’t you? You know, I was secretary of my Section committee in September. Not last September: the one past, when we killed the prisoners. There was something pure and revolutionary and absolutely fitting about the way the blood flowed—the speed, the fear. But now we have the jury’s verdict, the hair-cutting, the carts. We have the lawyers’ arguments before death. Nature should visit death; it should not be something you argue against.”

“I am sure I do not see why you are visiting this rubbish on me.”

“I suppose that to you—at least in your present frame of mind—it is only the legal process that makes it acceptable. More acceptable, if the trial is fair, and less acceptable if the witnesses are bullied and the trial is cut short. But to me it is all unacceptable, you see. The more they argue, the worse it is. I can’t go on any longer.” There was a pause. “Are you writing anything?” the Marquis asked. “I mean, besides your theological work?” Misunderstood again; his timid pale eyes were like those of an old hare, expecting traps.

Camille hesitated. “I’m thinking of writing. I must see what support I have. It is difficult. We know there are conspiracies, our whole lives are eaten away by them. We dare not speak freely to our best friends, or trust our wives or parents or children. Does that sound melodramatic? It is like Rome in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.”

“I don’t know,” de Sade said. “But if you say so, it probably is. I’ve been to Rome, you know? Waste of time. They’ve put up all these little chapels round the Colosseum, it ruins the place. Saw the Pope. Vulgarity incarnate. Still, I suppose Tiberius was worse.” He looked up. “What would you do with my opinions?”

“About the Pope?”

“About the Terror.”

“I think I’d keep them to myself, if I were you.”

“But I haven’t, you see. I’ve said at a meeting of my Section that the Terror must be stopped. I expect they’ll arrest me soon. Then we’ll see what we see. I tell you, dear Citizen Camille—it’s not the deaths I can’t stand. It’s the judgements, the judgements in the courtroom.”

Danton arrived back on November 20. He had in his pocket letters from Robespierre, from Fabre, from Camille. Robespierre’s had a hysterical tinge, Fabre’s sounded tearful and Camille’s was merely strange. He resisted the temptation to fold them up small and wear them as phylacteries.

They reinstalled themselves in the apartment. Louise looked up at him accusingly. “You’re thinking of going out.”

“It’s not every day,” he said, “that Citizen Robespierre requests my company at his revels.”

“All this time, you’ve been thinking about Paris. I believe you’ve been longing to get back.”

“Look at me.” He took her hands. “I know I’m a fool. When I’m here, I want to be in Arcis. When I’m in Arcis, I want to be here. But I want you to understand that the Revolution isn’t a game, that I can leave when I choose.” His voice was very serious; he put a hand to her waist, drew her to him. God, how he loved her! “In Arcis we avoided speaking of this, we spoke of simpler things. But it’s not a game, and it isn’t something, either, that I engage in just for my own profit, or gratification.” His fingers touched her mouth, very softly, stopping what she was going to say. “Once it was, yes. But we have to think very carefully now, sweetheart. We have to think carefully about what will happen to the country. And to us.”

“So that is what you have been doing. Thinking carefully.”

“Yes.”

“And you are going to see Robespierre now?”

“Not directly.” He lifted his chin. His mood was once again worldly, jocular; he was pulling away from her. “I need to be well informed before I see him. Robespierre, you know, hurls abuse at any fellow who doesn’t keep up with events.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not much,” he said cheerfully. He kissed her. They were more on terms now, on terms of his choosing; though he felt—and it hurt him—that she was frightened of him. “Aren’t you even a little bit glad to be back?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Back in our own street. Georges, I couldn’t live with your mother. We’ll have to have our own house.”

“Yes, we’ll do that.”

“Will you start seeing about it? Because we don’t want to be in Paris for much longer, do we?”

He didn’t answer. “I’ll not be long,” he said.

In the minute it took him to walk around the corner, he managed to greet half a dozen people, slap a few backs, hurry on before anyone could stop him to talk. By nightfall it would be all over the city: he’s back. Just as he was about to go into the Desmoulinses’ building, he became aware of something new—some obtrusive detail, nagging at the corner of his eye. He stepped back, looked up. Cut into the stone above his head were the words RUE MARAT.

For a moment he had the urge to turn back around the corner, climb the stairs, shout to the servants not to bother unpacking, they’d be returning to Arcis in the morning. He looked up to the lighted windows above his head. If I go up there, he thought, I’ll never be free again. If I go up there I commit myself to Max, to joining with him to finish Hébert, and perhaps to governing with him. I commit myself to fishing Fabre out of trouble—though God alone knows how that’s to be managed. I put myself once more under the threat of assassination; I recommence the blood feuds, the denunciations.

His face hardened. You can’t stand in the street calling into question the last five years of your life, just because they’ve changed the street name; you can’t let it alter the future. No, he thought—and he saw it clearly, for the first time—it’s an illusion, about quitting, about going back to Arcis to farm. I’ve been lying to Louise: once in, never out.

“Thank God,” Lucile said. “I was thinking of coming to get you.”

Her lips brushed his cheek. He’d been preparing to interrogate her closely about Camille and Robespierre, but instead he said, “How beautiful you are. I believe I’d forgotten.”

“In five weeks?”

“I’d never really forget.” He put his arms around her. “That was very sweet of you, to be so eager for my presence. You should have come to Arcis, I would have liked it.”

“Louise wouldn’t, or your mother.”

“It would have given them something in common.”

“I see. As bad as that?”

“A disaster. Louise is too young, too citified and quite the wrong shape. And how are you?”

“Oh Lord—mixed up.” She tried to pull away from him, but he held on to her, tightening his arms around her waist. How strong she was, full of fight; he believed she was afraid of nothing.

“Not pregnant again, Lolotte?”

She shook her head. “Thank God,” she added.

“Do you want me to give you another son?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You have a nice wife of your own to take care of, I think.”

“I can accommodate more than one woman in my life.”

“I thought you’d given me up.”

“Absolutely not. Point of honor.”

“But you had, before you left.”

I’ve got my strength back now, he thought. “It’s no good trying to reform, is it? You can’t reform of loving somebody.”

“You don’t love me. You just want to have me, and talk about it afterwards.”

“Better than not having you and talking about it afterwards, like everybody else.”

“Yes.” She leaned her forehead against his chest. “I’ve been silly, haven’t I?”

“Very silly. Your situation’s irretrievable. Our wives will never believe any good of you now. Be honest for once, and go to bed with me.”

“Is that what you came for?”

“Not originally, but—”

“I’m glad about that. I have no intention of complying, and besides, a little while ago Camille came in and flung himself down on our bed and is doing some savage brooding.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Look at me.” It was the same request, he remembered, that he had made to his wife thirty minutes earlier. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Everything’s wrong.”

“I’ll fix it all.”

“Please.”

Camille lay with his head buried in his arms. “Lolotte?” he said, without looking up. Danton sat down beside him and stroked his hair. “Oh, Georges.”

“Aren’t you surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me,” Camille said wanly. “Don’t stop doing that, it’s the first nice thing that’s happened to me in a month.”

“From the beginning then.”

“You got my letter?”

“It didn’t make much sense.”

“No. No, probably not. I can quite see that.”

He turned around and sat up. Danton was startled. In five weeks, the spurious maturity of the last five years had fallen away; the person who looked at him out of Camille’s eyes was the scared and shabby boy of ’88.

“Philippe is dead.”

“The Duke? Yes, I know.”

“Charles-Alexis is dead. Valazé stabbed himself right in front of me.”

“I heard. They brought me the news. But leave this for a minute. Tell me about Chabot and those people.”

“Chabot and two of his friends have been expelled from the Convention. They’re under arrest. Deputy Julien’s gone, he ran away. Vadier is asking questions.”

“Is he, now?” The head of the Committee of General Security was gaining himself a reputation for a horrible efficiency in the hounding of suspects. “The Inquisitor,” people called him. He was a man of sixty or so, with a long, yellow face, and long, yellow, many-jointed hands. “What sort of questions?” Danton said.

“About you. About Fabre and your friend Lacroix.”

Fabre’s dreary little confession was in Danton’s pocket. He has done … he does not appear to know, himself, what he has done. Yes, he amended a government document, in his own hand, and the amendment has been printed as part of the text; but then again, some unknown hand made an amendment to the amendment … . It makes you tired just to think about it. The possible conclusion is that Fabre is a forger—a common criminal, as opposed to some more refined type. All the indications are that Robespierre hasn’t an inkling what is going on.

He returned his attention to Camille. “Vadier obviously thinks he is about to uncover something damning about you, Georges. I spend my time avoiding Fabre. The Police Committee have had Chabot in. He denounced a conspiracy, of course. Said he’d gone along with it to track it to its source. No one believed that. Fabre has been delegated to produce a report of the affair.”

“On the East India Company? Fabre has?” This is becoming completely absurd, Danton thought.

“Yes, and on its political ramifications. Robespierre’s not interested in crooked stock-market deals, he’s interested in who’s behind them, and where their instructions come from.”

“But why didn’t Chabot denounce Fabre right away—why didn’t he say, Fabre was in it with me from the beginning?”

“What had he to gain? Then they’d be in the dock together. So Chabot kept quiet, thinking Fabre might be grateful, and exonerate him in the report. Another deal struck, you see.”

“And Chabot really thinks that Fabre will remain in the clear?”

“They expect you to use your influence to pull him into the clear.”

“What a mess,” Danton said.

“Anyway, it’s all worse now. Chabot’s denouncing Fabre, and everybody—the only saving grace is that by now no one believes anything he says. Vadier questioned me.”

“Questioned you? He’s getting a bit above himself.”

“Oh, it was all very informal. One good patriot to another. He said, Citizen, no one imagines you’ve done anything shady, but have you perhaps done something a little bit sharp? The idea was that I’d tell him all about it and feel much better afterwards.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, hardly anything. I opened my eyes and said, me, sharp? My stutter was very bad that day. I dropped Max’s name into the conversation a lot. Vadier is terrified of crossing him. He knew if he put any pressure on me I’d complain.”

“Well done,” Danton said grimly. But he saw the difficulty that he was in; it was not just a matter of what he did about Fabre, it was the rather larger matter of Camille’s conscience.

“I’m lying to Robespierre,” Camille said. “By implication, anyway. I don’t like this, you know. It puts me on shaky ground for what I want to do next.”

“And that is?”

“There is worse news, I’m afraid. Hébert has come out with a story about Lacroix lining his pockets in Belgium last year, when you were on mission together. He claims to have evidence. He has also persuaded the Jacobins to petition the Convention to pull Lacroix and Legendre back from mission in Normandy.”

“What does he say Legendre has done?”

“He’s your friend, isn’t he? I went to Robespierre and said, we must stop the Terror.”

“You said that?”

“He said, I entirely agree. He does, of course, he hates the killing, it’s only me who took so long to see … . So I said, Hébert is too powerful. He’s entrenched at the War Ministry and the Commune, he’s got his newspaper circulating to the troops—and Hébert will not agree to stop the Terror. It touched his pride. He said, if I want to stop it, I will, even if I have to cut off Hébert’s head first. All right, I told him, think about it for twenty-four hours and then we’ll decide how to move in on him. I came home and drafted a pamphlet against Hébert.”

“You never learn, do you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You were bewailing the Gironde. Your part in their downfall.”

“But this is Hébert,” Camille said uncomprehendingly. “Look, don’t confuse me. Hébert’s the obstacle to stopping the Terror. If we kill him, we won’t need to kill anyone else. Anyway, Robespierre—in that twenty-four hours he started to temporize. He came over all twitchy and indecisive. When I went back he said, ‘Hébert is very powerful, but he is right about some things, and he could be very useful if he were under our control.’” Two-faced little bastard, Danton thought; what’s he up to? “‘It might be better,’ he said, ‘if we could find a compromise. We don’t want anymore unnecessary bloodshed.’ For once I wished for Saint-Just. I really thought he was going to do it, you know, and then—” He made an exasperated gesture. “Saint-Just might have been able to push him into some action.”

“Action?” Danton said. “He won’t take action. He’s got no idea when it comes to action. Unnecessary bloodshed, oh my. Violence, how deplorable. He wears me out with his rectitude. That bugger couldn’t boil an egg.”

“Oh no,” Camille said. “Don’t, don’t.”

“So what does he want to do?”

“He won’t be pinned down to an opinion. Go and see him. Just take in what he says. Don’t argue.”

Danton thought, but that is how they used to talk about me. He pulled Camille into his arms. His body seemed strange and precarious, made of shadows and angles. Camille buried his head in his shoulder; and said, “You really are a shocking and cynical man.”

For a moment or two they didn’t speak. Then Camille pulled away and looked up at him. His hands rested lightly on Danton’s shoulders. “Has it ever occurred to you that Max feels the same basic contempt for you as you do for him?”

“He feels contempt for me?”

“It is something he feels very readily.”

“No, I hadn’t thought that.”

“Well, the whole world isn’t driven by your appetites, and people who are not feel themselves your superior, naturally. He struggles very hard to make allowances for you. He is not tolerant, but he is charitable. Or perhaps it is the other way around.”

“One becomes tired of analyzing his character,” Danton said. “As if one’s life depended on it.”

He had intended to go back to Louise for an hour. He stood at the corner of the Cour du Commerce. He had become used to talking to her, recounting everything that happened and what had been said, waiting for her comments. He told her things he would never have told Gabrielle; her very lack of involvement, lack of knowledge made her valuable to him. But just now, there was nothing to say. He felt a great inarticulate weight inside him. He looked at his watch. It was possible, though not likely, that the Incorruptible would be at home at this hour, and while he stretched his legs in crossing the river he could think what to say. He glanced up at his own lighted window, then strode off vengefully into the evening.

The lanterns were being lit, swinging giddily from ropes in the narrow alleys between the houses, or hanging from iron brackets. There were more of them now than there had been before the Revolution: lights against the conspirators, against the counterfeiters, against the dark night of the Duke of Brunswick. In ’89 they had been hanging up an aristo, and he had asked, “Do you think the light will shine brighter afterwards?” And Louis Suleau, expressing his surprise at being still alive: “Whenever I pass a lamppost, I see it stretch out towards me, covetously.”

Two young boys passed him, with cheerful country faces and running noses; they were selling rabbits to the townsfolk, and they carried the animals slung upside down on poles, bloodstained bundles caught in the field in traps. Someone will rob them, he thought, and then they will have neither money nor rabbits on a pole; as they passed him the furry corpses looked meager, little flesh on the swinging bones. Two women quarreled in the door of a cookshop, fists on hips; the river was a smudged channel of yellow and dirty gray, creeping up at the winter like the onset of a wasting disease. People hurried off the streets, to be shut away from the city and the night.

The carriage was new, and remarkable because it was smart; even in the gloom you could see fresh polish on new paint. He caught a glimpse of a round, pale face, and the coachman drew up beside him with a ponderous creak of harness; above it, the squeak of the owner’s voice. “My dear Danton, is it you?”

He halted unwillingly. The horses breathed wetly into the raw, wet twilight. “Hébert, is it you?”

Hébert stuck his head out. “So it is. One recognizes your bulk. My dear Danton, it grows dark, what are you doing, walking the streets in this democratic fashion? It is not safe.”

“Don’t I look as if I can take care of myself?”

“Of course, but don’t you realize, there are gangs of armed robbers—can’t I take you somewhere?”

“Not unless you’re prepared to go back the way you came.”

“Of course. No trouble.”

“All right.” He spoke to the coachman. “You know Robespierre’s house?”

He had the satisfaction of hearing a minute quaver in Hébert’s voice. “And when did you arrive back?”

“Two hours ago.”

“And the family? All well?”

“Hébert, you really are a most unpleasant person,” Danton said, settling himself opposite in the well-upholstered seat, “so it’s no use pretending otherwise.”

“Yes, I see.” Hébert gave a sort of nervous giggle. “Danton, you may have heard about certain speeches I have made.”

“Attacking my friends.”

“Don’t put it like that,” Hébert said reproachfully. “After all, if they’ve nothing to be ashamed of—I’m just offering them a chance to show what good patriots they are.”

“They have already shown it.”

“But surely, none of us should be afraid to have our conduct held up to scrutiny? The point is, Danton, that I shouldn’t like you to imagine that I was criticizing you, yourself.”

“I don’t think you would dare.”

“As a matter of fact, I thought that a tactical alliance between us—”

“I could as confidently form a tactical alliance with a sponge.”

“Well, think about it,” Hébert said, without rancor. “By the way, Camille’s in a bad state, isn’t he? Fainting like that.”

“I’ll tell him of your concern.”

“Chose the most inopportune moment. People are saying—quite understandably I suppose—that he’s regretting his part in bringing Brissot down. Soft-hearted, dear Marat used to say. Though it seems fearfully inconsistent with his past conduct. ’89. The lynchings. Mm. Here we are. Now then—how shall I put it? Citizen Robespierre’s a slippery fish this month. Hard to handle. Take care.”

“Thank you, Hébert, for transporting me.”

Danton swung down from the carriage. Hébert’s white face appeared beside him. “Persuade Camille to take a holiday,” he said.

“He might,” Danton said, “take the day off if it were your funeral.”

The unctuous smile froze. “Is that a declaration of war?”

Danton shrugged. “As you like,” he said. “Drive on,” he shouted to the coachman. Standing in the street, he wanted to shout obsenities after Père Duchesne, chase him and drive a first into his face. Hostilities begin here.

“So how’s your little sister liking married life?” Danton asked Eléonore.

Eléonore flushed darkly. “All right I suppose. Philippe Lebas doesn’t amount to so much.”

You poor, spiteful, disappointed cow, he thought. “I can find my own way,” he said.

There was no answer when he knocked. He pushed the door open and walked straight into Robespierre’s belligerent stare. He was sitting at his desk with pen, ink, one small notebook.

“Pretending not to be here, then?”

“Danton.” Robespierre got to his feet. He colored slightly. “I’m sorry, I thought it was Cornélia.”

“Well, what a way to treat your lady friend! Sit down, relax. What were you writing? A love letter to somebody else?”

“No, as a matter of fact I—never mind.” Robespierre flicked the little book shut. He sat down at his desk and joined his hands in an attitude of rather nervous prayer. “I could have done with you a week ago, Danton. Chabot came to see me. I—well, what did you ever think of Chabot?”

Danton noted the past tense. “I think he is a red-faced buffoon with a cap of liberty on his head and very little of a brain beneath it.”

“This marriage of his, you know … the Frei brothers are to be arrested tomorrow. It was the marriage that trapped him.”

“The dowry,” Danton said.

“Just so. The so-called brothers are millionaires. And Chabot, he likes all that—he’s susceptible. Well, how not? He’s kept too many frozen Lents.”

Danton looked closely at Robespierre. He’s softening? Possibly.

“It’s the girl I feel sorry for, the little Jewess.”

“Yes, but then,” Danton said, “they say she’s not the sister of either of them. They say she was bought out of a brothel in Vienna.”

“They’ll say anything, won’t they? I do know one thing—Chabot’s servant has given birth to his child since he left her. And this is the man who spoke so touchingly to the Jacobins last September about the rights of illegitimate children.”

You can never tell what will upset Robespierre most, Danton thought: treason, peculation or sex. “Anyway—Chabot came to see you, you were saying.”

“Yes.” Robespierre shook his head, amused by the human condition. “He had a packet with him which he said contained 100,000 francs.”

“You should have counted it.”

“It was wastepaper, for all I know. He went on in his usual way about plotters, and I said. ‘Have you any documentary evidence?’ He said, ‘I do, but,’” Robespierre laughed, “‘it’s all written in invisible ink.’ Then he said, ‘This money was given to me to bribe the Committee of Public Safety with, so I thought the best thing to do was to bring it to you. Can I have a safe conduct? I think I ought to get out of the country.’” He looked up at Danton. “Pitiable, isn’t it? We had him picked up at eight o’clock the next morning. He’s in the Luxembourg now. We made the mistake of letting him have pen and ink, so now every day he produces yards and yards of self-justificatory maundering which he sends to the Police Committee. Your name crops up a lot, I’m afraid.”

“And not in invisible ink?” Danton asked. “Talking of which—” He took Robespierre’s letter out of his pocket and dropped it on the desk between them. “Well, my old friend—what’s all this about doing away with Hébert?”

“Ah,” Robespierre said. “Camille and I got together and had a little panic.”

“I see. So I came all this way because you had a little panic.”

“I spoiled your holiday? I’m sorry. You’re quite better, though?”

“Fighting fit. I’m just trying to work out where’s the fight.”

“You know,” Robespierre cleared his throat, “I really think that by New Year our position may be quite favorable. As long as we get Toulon back. And here in Paris, rid ourselves of these anti-religious fanatics. Your friend Fabre is doing a good job on the so-called businessmen. Tomorrow I intend to obtain four expulsions from the Jacobins.”

“Of?”

“Proli, this Austrian who has worked for Hérault. And three of Hébert’s friends. To put them outside the club paralyzes them. And it serves as a warning to others.”

“I must point out that recently expulsion from the club has been the prelude to arrest. And yet Camille says you favor an end to the Terror?”

“I wouldn’t put it—quite so—I mean, I think in a couple of months we may be able to relax, but there are still a number of foreign agents that we have to flush out.”

“And that aside, you’d favor a return to the normal judicial process, and bringing in the new constitution?”

“We’re still at war, that’s the trouble. Very much at war. You know what the Convention said—‘The government of France is revolutionary until the peace.’”

“‘Terror is the order of the day.’”

“It was the wrong word, perhaps. You’d think the populace was going around with its teeth chattering. But it isn’t so. The theaters are open as usual.”

“For the performance of patriotic dramas. They bore me, patriotic dramas.”

“They are more wholesome than what the theater used to provide.”

“How would you know? You never go to the theater.”

Robespierre blinked at him. “Well, it seems, logically, that it must be so. I can’t oversee everything. I haven’t time to go to the theater. But if we return to the point—you must understand that in my private capacity I don’t like what has been happening, but I have to admit that politically it has been necessary. Now if Camille were here he would demolish that, but, well, Camille is a theoretician and I have to get on with things in the Committee and reconcile myself … as best I can. The way I see it … externally, our situation is much better, but internally we still have an emergency; we still have the Vendee rebels, and a capital full of conspirators. The Revolution is not safe from day to day.”

“Do you know what the hell it is you do want?”

Robespierre looked up at him helplessly. “No.”

“Can’t you think it out?”

“I don’t know what’s best to do. I seem to be surrounded by people who claim to have all the solutions, but mostly they involve more killings. There are more factions now than before we destroyed Brissot. I am trying to keep them apart, stop them destroying each other.”

“If you wanted to stop the executions, how much support would you have on the Committee?”

“Robert Lindet for sure, probably Couthon and Saint-André: Barère perhaps—I never know what Barère is thinking.” He kept count on his fingers. “Collot and Billaud-Varennes would be against any policy of moderation.”

“God,” Danton said reflectively, “Citizen Billaud, the big tough committeeman. He used to come round to my office, ’86, ’87, and I used to give him work drafting pleadings, so he could keep body and soul together.”

“Yes. No doubt he’ll never forgive you.”

“What about Hérault?” Danton said. “You’ve forgotten him.”

“No, not forgotten.” Robespierre avoided his eyes. “I think you know he no longer enjoys our confidence. I trust you’ll sever your links with him?”

Let it pass, Danton thought: let it pass. “Saint-just?”

Robespierre hesitated. “He would see it as weakness.”

“Can you not influence him?”

“Perhaps. He has had remarkable successes in Strasbourg. He will tend to think he is working on the right lines. And when people have been with the armies, a few lives in Paris don’t seem so important to them. The others—I can probably pull them into line.”

“Then get rid of Collot and Billaud-Varennes.”

“Not possible. They have the backing of all Hébert’s people.”

“Then get rid of Hébert.”

“And we’re back to a policy of Terror.” Robespierre looked up. “Danton, you haven’t spoken of your own place in this. You must have an opinion.”

Danton laughed. “You wouldn’t be so confident of that, if you knew me better. I shall bide my time. I suggest you do the same.”

“You know you’ll be attacked as soon as you appear in public? Hébert has insinuated certain things about your Belgian venture. I’m afraid your illness was regarded as largely mythical. People were saying you had emigrated to Switzerland with your ill-gotten gains.”

“We need a bit of solidarity, then.”

“Yes. I’ll speak for you, of course, at every opportunity. Get Camille to write something, do you think? Take his mind off things? I told him to stay away from trials. He’s very emotional, isn’t he?”

“You say that as if it were a surprise to you. As if you only met him last week.”

“I suppose the degree of it always does come as a surprise to me. Camille’s feelings seem uncontainable. Like natural disasters.”

“That can be useful, or it can be a nuisance.”

“That sounds cynical, Danton.”

“Does it? Well, perhaps it is.”

“So perhaps you feel cynical about Camille’s affection for you?”

“No, I rather feel grateful. I take what comes my way.”

“It’s a trait we have observed in you,” Robespierre said, with interest.

“Was that the royal plural?”

“No, I meant, Camille and I.”

“You discuss me?”

“We discuss everybody. Everything. But you know that. No one is closer than we are.”

“I accept your rebuke. Our friendships with Camille are both of a high order. Oh, that all his friendships had been the same!”

“I don’t see how they could have been, really.”

“No, you are pleased to be obtuse.”

Robespierre put his chin on his hand. “I am. Because I’ve had to compromise a lot to keep Camille’s friendship. It’s like everything else in my life. I spend my days crying, ‘Don’t tell me,’ and ‘Sweep that under the carpet before I come into the room.’”

“I didn’t know you knew that about yourself.”

“Oh yes. I am not a hypocrite myself, but I breed hypocrisy in other people.”

“You must, of course. Robespierre doesn’t lie or cheat or steal, doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t fornicate—overmuch. He’s not a hedonist or a mainchancer or a breaker of promises.” Danton grinned. “But what’s the use of all this goodness? People don’t try to emulate you. Instead they just pull the wool over your eyes.”

“They?” Robespierre echoed gently. “Say ‘we,’ Danton.” He smiled.

Maximilien Robespierre, private notebooks:

What is our aim?

The use of the constitution for the benefit of the people.

Who are likely to oppose us?

The rich and corrupt.

What methods will they employ?

Slander and hypocrisy.

What factors will encourage the use of such means?

The ignorance of ordinary people.

When will the people be educated?

When they have enough to eat, and when the rich and the government

stop bribing treacherous tongues and pens to deceive them; when their

interests are identified with those of the people.

When will this be?

Never.

FABRE: So what will you do?

DANTON: I won’t see you humiliated. It would reflect on me.

FABRE: But your plans—you must have plans?

DANTON: I do, but there is no call for you to go around the city saying Danton has plans. I want a reconciliation with the Right in the Convention. Robespierre says we must be united, not factious—he’s correct. Patriots should not torment each other.

FABRE: You expect them to forgive you for cutting their colleagues’ heads off?

DANTON: Camille will launch a press campaign in favor of clemency. In the end I want a negotiated peace, the controls off the economy and a return to constitutional government. It’s a big program and you can’t do it in a country that’s falling apart, so we have to strengthen the Committee. Keep Robespierre, get rid of Collot and Billaud-Varennes and Saint-Just.

FABRE: You admit now you were mistaken? You should never have let yourself be voted off the Committee last summer.

DANTON: Yes, I should have listened to you. Well, first you admit your mistakes, then you start to retrieve them. All of us made a mistake in treating Hébert as a hack writer with no talents. Before we had recovered from our mistake he had ministers and generals in his pocket—not to mention the rabble. It will take courage to break him, and luck.

FABRE: And then stop the Terror?

DANTON: Yes. Things have gone too far.

FABRE: I agree with that. I want Vadier’s hot breath off my neck.

DANTON: That’s all it means to you?

FABRE: Come on, man. What does it mean to you? It’s not that you’re turning soft, are you? You’re not mellowing?

DANTON: No? Perhaps I am. Anyway, I work hard to make my own interest coincide with the national interest.

FABRE: Do you want to run the country again, Georges-Jacques?

ANTON: I don’t know. I haven’t decided what I want.

FABRE: Christ, you’d better decide soon. You’re going to take them all on. It’s dangerous. You’ve got to have your wits about you. You can’t go into it half-asleep, or you’ll ruin us all. I don’t know—you don’t seem to have much relish for it. You don’t seem to be your old self.

DANTON: It’s Robespierre, he confuses me. I have the feeling that he’s hedging his bets all the time.

FABRE: Well … keep Camille sweet.

DANTON: Yes, I was thinking … if Camille gets into any trouble, I mean any more trouble, Robespierre will have to stand up and defend him, and that will mean he commits himself.

FABRE: Yes, what a good idea.

DANTON: It doesn’t matter what Camille does. Robespierre will always straighten it out for him.

FABRE: We can rely on that.

Fabre d’Églantine: When, of course, your whole name incorporates a lie, you continually seek reassurance of your reality, you are constantly seeking sources of self-esteem.

When the East India Company business blew up, I kept well out of it till I raised my price. When the prices was right, I committed a crime. But such a small crime! Bear with me. May I ask your indulgence, your good faith for a moment? You see, it wasn’t entirely the money.

I wanted them to say: you are a powerful man, Fabre! I wanted to see how high a price they put on my protection. It wasn’t my financial acumen that they were buying. Camille has remarked that my head is entirely filled with greasepaint and old prompt copies, where the brain should be; for my part I am always struck by how closely life resembles a hackneyed theatrical plot. What they wanted was my influence, the status that a close friend of Danton commands. Indirectly, I’m sure, they thought they were buying Danton too. After all, my colleagues in the venture had dealt with him before. I shouldn’t like you to think that the East India business happened in isolation. Forgery was just a logical extension of sharp practice, just a further step from currency speculation and crooked army contracts. Except that little step was onto the wrong side of the law; and for people like me in times like this it’s a bad thing to be on the wrong side of any law, any law at all. Now the idiot poet is on one side, and on the other side is Danton and the Incorruptible’s inseparable companion in boyhood adventures; looking smug.

I’m afraid I see no good coming of it. There was a point—it may have passed you by—when Danton and I abdicated from self-interest. When I say a point, I mean exactly that, a few seconds in which a decision was taken; I don’t say that afterwards we behaved differently, or better. When we planned how to win Valmy, we said we would never speak of it, not even to save our own lives.

Now—from that moment when we admitted to each other that there was something we wouldn’t do—we started to lurch at our destruction like two drunks in the sick early morning. Because each conviction he holds costs the opportunist double-dear; each time he places his trust, he bleeds a little. Valmy turned the tide for the Republic; since then, the French have been able to hold up their heads in Europe.

Now, Danton would never abandon his friends. If that sounds mawkish, I apologize. To put it another way—and this may make more sense to you—every trail I’ve padded in recent years leads to Danton at the heart of the wood. All the accusations Hébert levels at Lacroix about his Belgian mission are true of Danton. Hébert knows it. Vadier will find me out. He wants Danton too. Why? I suppose he offends his sense of propriety. Vadier is a moralist; so, I think, is Fouquier. It is a tendency I deplore. God knows what risks we take, God knows all that Danton has done. God and Camille. God will keep his mouth shut.

When I began denouncing conspiracies, to take the heat off myself, how did I know that Robespierre would seize on everything I said? He was looking for a conspiracy in the heart of patriotism: God help me, I provided one. Assume its existence, and every word and action seems to prove it, so that sometimes one wonders, of course—what if Robespierre’s right, and I’m the fool, what if some con trick I thought was cooked up in a Palais-Royal café is really a gigantic conspiracy woven in Whitehall?

No, no—I won’t think about it. A man could go mad.

In a way I wish they’d move in and arrest me. It may sound absurd, but arrest is the only thing that will prevent me from doing things to complicate it even more. My head aches, thinking about it; I get so depressed. It’s this waiting that unnerves me, the halt in the chase; keep moving, that’s always been my motto, all my life. Perhaps it is a technique of Vadier’s, or perhaps they are waiting till they come up with something else, something worse; or waiting till Danton commits himself to my defense?

I am afraid that if things go on as they are I shall never finish The Maltese Orange. It’s a good play, there are some very creditable verses in it. Perhaps it would be the big success that has always just eluded me.

Danton, these last few days, looks more like a mangy stuffed bear than someone who’s planning to set the nation by the ears. He seems much affected by the executions. He spends hours just thinking; you ask him what he’s doing and he says, thinking.

And Camille: they’ll never pin corruption charges on him, and I don’t think they’ll try. According to Rabbit, he and Duplessis spend many a cozy afternoon out at that farm of theirs, talking over the details of the fast ones he’s pulled: all strictly legal and below board. It’s their only point of contact.

But here I am, indulging in abuse again. The truth is that when I see Camille looking so stricken, with his absurdly over-sensitive airs, I want to take hold of him and shake him and say, I am suffering too. Robespierre would tear his hair and vomit if he knew that de Sade had set him off on all this. Unless Danton does something suddenly and soon—but what do I dare expect?

I wouldn’t ask him to act before the time’s ripe, if he aims at a coup. I wouldn’t expect saving my life to be more than an accidental benefit to him. So put that down, on Philippe Fabre’s side: I am, basically, a humble man.

I don’t feel well, the last two or three weeks. They say we’re in for a mild winter. I hope so. I have a terrible cough. I thought of consulting Dr. Souberbielle, but I’m not sure I want to hear his verdict. His medical one, I mean; he’s a juror of the Tribunal, but with that verdict I wouldn’t have a choice.

I’ve no appetite, and I get pains in my chest. Oh well, it may not matter soon.

Danton to the convention, asking for state pensions for priests who have lost their livings:

If a priest is without means of support, what do you expect him to do? He will die, or join the Vendee rebels, or become your irreconcilable enemy … . You have to temper political claims with those of reason and sanity … . There must be no intolerance, no persecution. [Applause]

DANTON: Scuttled Chaumette. I’ll ram his Worship of Reason up—down his throat. We ought to have an end to these anti-religious masquerades. Every day in the Convention we have to listen to a dreary procession of clerics wringing out their souls like laundry, and abjuring their faith takes them as long as a High Mass. There is a limit, and I shall put it to them that the limit has been reached.

CAMILLE: While you were away some sansculottes came in with a skull, they said it was the skull of Saint Denis. They said it was a grisly relic of a superstitious age, and they wanted it off their hands. I’d have had it. I wanted to show it to Saint-Just.

DANTON: Imbeciles.

LOUISE: I wouldn’t have taken Citizen Robespierre for a religious man.

DANTON: He’s not, in your sense. But he doesn’t want to see persecution, and he doesn’t want atheism elevated into a policy. Oh, but there’s one thing he’d like much better than running the Revolution. He’d like to be Pope.

CAMILLE: Vulgarity incarnate! He aims higher.

DANTON: Saint Maximilien?

CAMILLE: He never talks about God anymore, he talks about the Supreme Being. I think I know who that is.

DANTON: Maximilien?

CAMILLE: Right.

DANTON: You’ll get into trouble for laughing at people. Saint-Just says that people who laugh at the heads of governments are suspect.

CAMILLE: What fate is reserved for those who laugh at Saint-Just? The guillotine is too good for them.

Vadier (on Danton): “We’ll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end.”

Danton (on Vadier): “Vadier? I’ll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in.”

Robespierre to the Jacobin Club: the low-key delivery, the fading pauses that do not relate to sense, have now become a practiced technique, hypnotic in effect:

“Danton, they accuse you of having … emigrated, gone off to Switzerland, laden with the spoils of your … corruption. Some people even say that you were at the head of a conspiracy to enthrone Louis XVII, on the understanding that … you were to be Regent … . Now I … have observed Danton’s political opinions—because we have sometimes disagreed I have observed them closely and at times … with hostility. It is true that … he was slow to suspect … Dumouriez, that he failed to show himself implacable against … Brissot and his accomplices. But if we did not always … see eye-to-eye … must I conclude that he was betraying his country? To the best of my knowledge he had always served it zealously. If Danton is on trial here I am on trial … too. Let all those people who have anything to say against Danton come … forward now. Let them stand up, those who are more … patriotic … than we.”

“If you could spare me a few minutes,” Fouquier-Tinville said. His demeanor certainly suggested he didn’t have much time to waste. “Family feeling, you know.”

“Oh yes?” Lucile said.

Fouquier thought, what a prize she is; far too good for anyone in our family. “May I sit?” he said. “A regrettable incident—”

“What has happened?” she said. And actually, he noticed with amusement, put her lovely hand to her throat.

“No, no—my description was a true one. Nothing has happened to him, in the sense that you fear.”

How would you know, she thought, in what senses I fear? She sat down opposite the Public Prosecutor. “Well then, cousin?”

“You recollect the name of Barnave, my dear? He was a deputy in the National Assembly. He had been in prison for some time. We guillotined him today. He had secret dealings with Antoinette.”

“Yes,” she said. “I knew him. Poor Tiger.”

“Were you aware of your husband’s affection for this traitor?”

She looked up quickly. “Please leave your courtroom manner aside. I’m not in the dock.”

Fouquier threw up his hands. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“That is not what you do.”

“Then I’m sorry I offended you. But it is a proven fact that Barnave was a traitor.”

“What can I say? Treason is a betrayal, so there must be some state of trust and acceptance that precedes it. Barnave never pretended to be a republican. Camille respected him—I think it was mutual.”

“Is respect so rare a thing for my cousin to command?”

“Well yes, I think it is really.”

“Despite his abilities?”

“People do not respect writers, do they? They think it is one of those things they can do without. Like money.”

“I don’t think political journalists are expected to sacrifice much for their art. Except veracity. Still, this is trivial.”

“I don’t think so. We have never had a discussion before.”

“Well, perhaps it is not trivial, but I have not time for it.” The Revolution, he thought, is suddenly full of disputatious women. Here is this white-skinned beauty, who has equipped herself with a whole repertoire of her husband’s mannerisms; and one hears tales of that gawk Eléonore Duplay; one hears of Danton’s child bride. Fools to themselves, he thinks; the way to save your neck is to keep out of it, and as women they have an excuse for doing so. “However it comes about,” he said, “it seems that your husband could not let Barnave go to his death without speaking with him. He came to the Conciergerie just as Barnave was about to step into the tumbrel. I was out of earshot, and I took care to remain so. Yet I could not help but notice that your husband showed the liveliest distress and regret at the proper punishment of this traitor.”

“Citizen Fouquier, may one not show distress and regret at the death of a man one has known in happier times? Is there a law to forbid it?”

Fouquier looked at her appraisingly. “I saw them embrace,” he said. “I could not stop myself from seeing it. Of course, I did not put any construction on it. I shall remind them to tie people’s hands, I cannot think how it was omitted. It is really not a matter of what is permitted. It is a matter of how things appear. Many people would not be able to help putting a construction on such a display of friendship towards a traitor.”

“Have you a heart?” she asked in a low voice.

“I do my job, my dear,” he said swiftly. “Now you tell my little cousin from me that his attitude is very dangerous. Whatever he is misguided enough to feel, he cannot afford these extravagant displays of sentimentality.”

“Why should he hide his pity?”

“Because he is compromising his friends. If those friends wish to change their policies, no doubt they would like to say so for themselves.”

“I think you may hear them say so, before long.” I should not have said that, she thought; but he makes me angry, his long face, his hypocrisy. He only worries that he may be out of a job.

Fouquier smiled bleakly. “If they speak in concert, I shall be surprised. Any relaxation of Terror will split the Committee. It is only the Committee that is holding things together—the revenue, the armies, the food supplies.”

“The composition of the Committee could be changed.”

“Indeed? Is that Danton’s plan.”

“Are you spying for someone?”

Fouquier shook his head. “I am no one’s agent. I am the agent of the law. All the conspiracies pass through my hands. The Committee, you know, draws its present unity from being conspired against. I do not know what would happen if the policy of believing in conspiracies were changed. Also, some of the members are by now quite naturally attached to it as an institution. The war, of course, is the major reason for the Committee’s existence. And they say Danton wants peace.”

“So does Robespierre. He’s always wanted it.”

“Ah, but can they work together? Robespierre would demand the sacrifice of Lacroix and Fabre. Danton would not agree to work with Saint-Just. So it goes. Praising each other is all very well. Let us see how they manage when they get to the stage beyond praise.”

“It is a grim outlook then, cousin,” she said lightly.

“All my outlooks are grim,” Fouquier said. “Perhaps it’s the nature of my work.”

“What would you advise my husband to do? I mean, supposing he were inclined to take your advice?”

They both smiled; seeing, separately, the unlikelihood of this. Fouquier considered for a moment. “I think I would advise him to do exactly as Robespierre says—nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

There was a pause. Lucile was disturbed; he had put, for the first time, certain possibilities into her head. Surprising herself, she asked, “Do you think Robespierre can survive?”

“Do you mean, do I think he is too good to live?” Fouquier stood up. “I don’t make predictions. It’s enough to make a person suspect.” He kissed her cheek, in the manner of an uncle with a little girl. “Concentrate on surviving yourself, my love. I do.”

DANTON [in the National Convention]: We must punish traitors, but we must distinguish between error and crime. The will of the people is that Terror should be the order of the day, but it must be directed against the real enemies of the Republic and against them alone. A man whose only fault is lack of revolutionary vigor should not be treated as a criminal.

DEPUTY FAYAU: Danton has, unintentionally I’m sure, employed certain expressions that I find offensive. At a time when the people need to harden their hearts, Danton has asked them to show mercy.

MONTAGNARDS: He didn’t! He didn’t!

PRESIDENT: Order!

DANTON: I did not use that word. I did not suggest showing leniency to criminals. I ask for vigorous action against them. I denounce conspirators!

In the Luxembourg, the ex-Capuchin Chabot declined to let the state of the nation weigh on his spirits. He missed his little bride, it was true—but one must sleep, drink, eat. On November 17 he had bread, soup, four cutlets, a chicken, a pear and some grapes. On the 18th, bread and soup, boiled beef and six larks. On the 19th he omitted the larks and instead ordered a partridge. On December 7, another partridge; next day, a chicken cooked with truffles.

He wrote verses, and had a miniature painted by Citizen Bénard.