A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 3

Three Blades, Two in Reserve

Louis XVI to Frederick William of Prussia: “Monsieur my brother … I have just written to the Emperor, the Empress of Russia, the Kings of Spain and Sweden, and proposed to them a congress of the major powers of Europe, supported by an armed force, as the best means of checking the factions here, of reestablishing a more desirable order of things and of preventing the evil which torments us from gaining hold on other states in Europe … . I hope that Your Majesty … will keep this step on my part in the most absolute secrecy …”

J.-P. Brissot to the Jacobin Club, December 16, 1791: “A people which has just gained its liberty after twelve centuries of slavery needs a war to consolidate itself.”

Marie-Antoinette to Axel von Fersen: “The fools. They do not see that it is in our interests.”

Gabrielle’s pains began in the night, a week earlier than they had expected. He heard her lurch from her bed, and when he opened his eyes she stood over him. “It’s begun,” she said. “Call Catherine for me, would you? I don’t think it will be many hours this time.”

He sat up, put his arms around her bulky body. Candlelight flickered wetly on her dark hair. She cradled his head against her. “Please, after this,” she whispered, “let it be all right.”

How did it come to this? He doesn’t know.

“You’re cold,” he said, “you’re very cold.” He eased her back into her bed, tucked the counterpane around her. Then he went into the drawing room, to put some wood on the embers of the fire.

This was not the place for him now; this was the place for the surgeon and the midwife, for Angélique, for Mme. Gély from upstairs. He spoke to her once more, hovering at the door of the room. Louise Gély sat on the bed, braiding his wife’s hair tightly. He asked her mother in a low voice, was it suitable for the little girl to be here? But Louise heard him and looked up. “Well, M. Danton,” she said, “it is suitable. Or even if it is not, we all have to go through it, and I am fourteen now.”

“And when you are forty,” her mother told her, “it will be time enough for you to be pert. Back to your bed.”

He leaned over Gabrielle, kissed her, squeezed her hand. He stood back to let Louise pass, but she brushed against him, and looked up for a second into his face.

The dawn was late, late and very chill, and his son cried pitifully when he came into the world, with the frost riming the windows, and the icy winds of battle scything the empty streets.

On March 9 the Emperor Leopold died. For a day or two, until the views of the new Emperor became known, peace seemed possible.

“Stock market’s up,” Fabre said.

“Are you interested in the stock market?”

“I dabble, when I have the cash.”

“In the name of God,” said the Queen. “Escape in the carriage of Necker’s daughter? Take refuge in Lafayette’s camp? One could almost laugh.”

“Madame,” said the King, “Madame, they say it is our last chance. My ministers advise me—”

“Your ministers are mad.”

“It could be worse. We are still dealing with gentlemen.”

“It could not be worse,” the Queen said, in frank disbelief.

The King looked at her sadly. “If this administration falls …”

It fell.

March 21: “So, Dumouriez,” said the King, “you think you can hold a government together?” Nagging in the back of his mind, the thought: this man was two years in the Bastille. Charles Dumouriez bowed. “Let us not …” the Kind said hurriedly. “I know you are a Jacobin. I know it.” (But who else is there, Madame? Who else?)

“Sire, I am a soldier,” Dumouriez said. “I am fifty-three years old. I have always served Your Majesty faithfully. I am Your Majesty’s truest subject and I …”

“Yes, yes,” said the King.

“ … and I will take the Foreign Office. After all, I know Europe. I have served as Your Majesty’s agent—”

“I don’t query your abilities, General.”

Dumouriez allowed himself a very small sigh. Time was when Louis heard his ministers out. Louis had less and less appetite for the business of state, no relish for the distasteful details; this was the day of the incomplete statement and the quick payoff. If the King and Queen were to be saved, it was a good thing for them not to know too much: or they would reject his help, as they had rejected Lafayette’s.

“For Finance, Clavière,” he said.

“He was a crony of Mirabeau’s.” The King’s face was expressionless; Dumouriez did not know whether it commended the man or not. “For the Interior?”

“This is difficult. The really able men are in the Assembly, and deputies may not be ministers. Give me a day’s grace, if you please.”

The King nodded curtly. Dumouriez bowed. “General …” The unregal voice trailed after him. The dapper little man turned on his heel. “You aren’t against me, are you …?”

“Against Your Majesty? Because I attend at the Jacobins?” He tried to catch Louis’s eye, but Louis had fixed it at some point to the left of his head. “Factions rise and fall. The tradition of loyalty endures.”

“Oh yes,” Louis said absently. “I don’t so much call the Jacobins a faction, more a power …as once we had the church within the state, now we have the club. This man Robespierre, where does he come from?”

“Artois, sire, or so I understand.”

“Yes, but you know, in a deeper sense …where does he come from?” Louis shifted his heavy body uncomfortably in his chair. Of the two men, he looked rather older. “Like you, I recognize you. You are what we call an adventurer. And M. Brissot is a faddist—he is a man who holds all the ideas of his time, just because they are current. And M. Danton I recognize—for he is one of those brutal demagogues we find in our history books. But M. Robespierre … You see, if only I knew what the man wanted. Perhaps I could give it him, and that would be an end of it.” He slumped. “Something of a mystery there, don’t you think?”

General Dumouriez bowed again. Louis did not notice him go.

A corridor away, Brissot waited for his favorite general. “You have your government,” Dumouriez told him.

“You seem depressed,” Brissot said sharply. “Something gone wrong?”

“No—just the epithets His Majesty has been hanging on me.”

“He was offensive? He is not in a position to be.”

“I did not say he was offensive.”

Their eyes rested on each other, just for a second. They did not trust each other, even slightly. Then Dumouriez touched Brissot on the shoulder, with a sportive air. “A Jacobin ministry, my dear fellow. Seemed unthinkable, only a short while ago.”

“And on the question of war?”

“I did not press him. But I think I can guarantee you hostilities within the month.”

“There must be war. The greatest possible disaster would be peace. You agree?”

Dumouriez turned his cane about in his fingers. “How not? I’m a soldier. I have my career to think of. Wonderful opportunity for all sorts of things.”

“Try it,” said Vergniaud. “Give the court the fright of its life. Can’t resist the idea.”

“Robespierre—” Brissot called.

Robespierre stopped. “Vergniaud,” he said. “Pétion. Brissot.” Having named them, he seemed satisfied.

“We have a proposal.”

“I know your proposal. You propose to make us slaves again.”

Pétion held up a placating hand. He was a larger, stouter man than when Robespierre had first known him, and satin success had settled in his face.

“I think we need not traffic in the small change of the debating chamber,” Vergniaud suggested. “We could have private talks.”

“I want no private talks.”

“Believe me,” Brissot said, “believe me, Robespierre, we wish you would come with us on the war question. The intolerable meddling in our internal affairs—”

“Why do you think of fighting Austria and England, when your enemy is here at home?”

“You mean there?” With a motion of his head, Vergniaud indicated the direction of the King’s apartments in the Tuileries.

“There, yes—and all around us.”

“With our friends in the ministry,” Pétion said, “we can take care of them.”

“Let me go.” Robespierre pushed past them.

“He is becoming morbidly suspicious,” Pétion said. “I used to be his friend. Not to mince matters, I fear for his sanity.”

“He has a following,” Vergniaud said.

Brissot pursued Robespierre, took him by the elbow. Vergniaud watched them. “A good ratting dog,” he observed.

“Eh?” Pétion said.

Brissot was still at Robespierre’s heels.

“Robespierre, we were speaking of the ministry—we are offering you a situation.”

Robespierre broke away. He pulled down the sleeve of his coat. “I want no situation,” he said somberly. “And there is no situation suitable for me.”

“Fourth floor?” said Dumouriez. “Is he poverty-stricken, this Roland, that he lives on the fourth floor?”

“Paris costs money,” Brissot said defensively. His chest heaved.

“Really,” Dumouriez was irritated, “you don’t have to run after me if you can’t stand the pace. I would have waited; I have no intention of going in alone. Now: are you quite sure about this?”

“Proven administrator”—Brissot gasped—“and record of service—and sound attitudes—and wife—great capabilities—utter dedication—to our aims.”

“Yes, I think I followed that,” Dumouriez said. He did not think they had many aims in common.

Manon answered the door herself. She was little disheveled, and she had been very, very bored.

General Dumouriez kissed her hand with an excess of old regime politeness. “Monsieur?” he inquired.

“He is just now sleeping.”

“I think you could put it to Madame,” Brissot suggested.

“And I think not,” Dumouriez muttered. He turned to her. “Be so good as to rouse him. We have a proposition which may be of interest.” He looked around the room. “It would mean your moving house. Perhaps, m’dear, you’d like to pack your china or something?”

“But no,” Manon said. She looked very young, and on the verge of frustrated tears. “You are teasing me. How can you do this?”

There was a slight abeyance of the grayness on her husband’s face. “I hardly think, my sweet, that M. Brissot would joke about so serious a subject as the composition of the government. The King offers the Ministry of the Interior. We—I—accept.”

Vergniaud had also been asleep, in his apartment at Mme. Dodun’s house, No. 5 Place Vendôme. But one got out of bed for Danton. What he knew of Danton compelled his reluctant admiration, but he had one glaring fault—he worked too hard.

“But why this Roland?” Danton said.

“Because there was no one else,” Vergniaud said, listless. He was bored with the subject. He was tired of people asking him who Roland was. “Because he’s pliable. Believed to be discreet. Who would you have us take up? Marat?”

“They call themselves republicans, the Rolands. So do you, I think.”

Vergniaud nodded impassively. Danton studied him. A year under forty, he was not quite tall or broad enough to cut an impressive figure. His pale, heavy face was slightly marked from smallpox, and his large nose seemed to have slight acquaintance with his small, deep-set eyes, as if either feature would just as soon belong in some other face. He was not a man who would be noticed in a crowd; but at the tribune of the Assembly or the Jacobins—his audience silent, the galleries craning—he was a different man. He became handsome, with an assured graceful integrity of smooth voice and commanding body. There he had the presence supposed to belong only to aristocrats; a spark kindled in his brown eyes. “Note that,” Camille said. “That is the spark of self-regard.”

“Oh, but I like to see a man doing what he is good at,” Danton had answered warmly.

Of Brissot’s friends, he decided, this man was much the best. I like you, he thought; but you are lazy. “A republican in the ministry—” he said.

“—is not necessarily a republican minister,” Vergniaud finished. “Well, we shall see.” Carelessly he turned over a few papers on his desk. Danton saw in it a reflection of some slight contempt for the people they spoke of. “You will have to call on them, Danton, if you want to get on in life. Pay your compliments to the lady.” He chuckled at Danton’s expression. “Beginning to think you’re out on a limb? With Robespierre for company? He’d better reconcile himself to war. His popularity has never been lower.”

“Popularity is not the issue.”

“Not with Robespierre, no. But you, Danton, where do you go from here?”

“Up. Vergniaud, I wish you would throw in your lot with us.”

“Who exactly is ‘us’?”

Danton began to speak, then paused, struck for the first time by the disreputable quality of the names he had to offer. “Hérault de Séchelles,” he said at length.

Vergniaud raised a heavy eyebrow. “Just the two of you? Messieurs Camille and Fabre d’Églantine suddenly excluded from your confidence? Legendre too busy butchering? Well, I dare say these people are useful to you. But I don’t seek to attach myself to a faction. I favored the war, so I sat with the others who favored it. But I am not a Brissotin, whatever that may be. I am my own man.”

“I wish we all were,” Danton said. “But you will find it does not work out like that.”

One morning, late March, Camille woke up with a certain thought going around in his head. He had been talking to soldiers—General Dillon amongst others—and they said if there is going to be a war anyway, what is the point of standing out against public opinion and the tide of the times? Was it not better to put yourself at the head of an irresistible movement, rather than be trampled in the rush?

He roused his wife and told her. “I feel sick,” she said.

At 6:30 a.m. he was in Danton’s drawing room, pacing the carpet. Danton called him a fool.

“Why do I always have to agree with you? I’m not allowed any independent thoughts. I can think what I like as long as it happens to be what you think.”

“Go away,” Danton said. “I am not your father.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean that you sound like a fifteen-year-old and what you are trying do is pick a fight, so why don’t you go home for a few days and quarrel with your father? We would be spared political consequences.”

“I shall write—”

“You will not put pen to paper. You do try my temper, exceedingly. Go away, before I make you the first Brissotin martyr. Go to Robespierre, and see if you get a better reception.”

Robespierre was ill. The raw spring weather hurt his chest, and his stomach rejected what he fed it.

“So you desert your friends,” he said, wheezing a little.

“This need not affect our friendship,” Camille said grandly.

Robespierre looked away.

“You remind me—what’s the name of that English King?”

“George,” Robespierre snapped.

“I think I mean Canute.”

“You will have to go away,” Robespierre said. “I can’t argue with you this morning. I have to conserve my strength for important things. But if you commit yourself to paper, I shall never trust you again.”

Camille backed out of the room.

Eléonore Duplay was standing outside. He knew she had been listening, because of the sudden vivacity in her dreary eyes. “Ah, it’s Cornélia,” he said. He had never in his life spoken to a woman in that tone; she would have excited cruelty in a mouse.

“We wouldn’t have let you in if we’d known you were going to upset him. Don’t come again. In any case, he won’t see you.”

She ran her eyes over him. I hoped you would quarrel, they said.

“You and your ghastly family, Eléonore. Do you think you own him? Do you think because he condescends to stay under your roof you have the right to decide who comes and goes? Do you think you are going to keep him away from his oldest friend?”

“You are so sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“With reason,” Camille said. “Oh, Cornélia, you are so transparent. I know exactly what your plans are. I know exactly what you think. You think he’ll marry you. Forget it, my dear. He won’t.”

That was the only spark of satisfaction in the day. Lucile sat waiting for him sadly, her little hands resting on the draped bulk of the child. Life was no fun now. She had reached the stage when women looked at her with lively sympathy: when men’s eyes passed over her as if she were an old sofa.

“There’s a note from Max,” she said. “I opened it. He says he regrets what happened this morning, he spoke hastily and he begs you to forgive him. And Georges called. He said, ‘Sorry.’”

“I had a wonderful row with Eléonore. They’re predatory, those people. I wonder, you know, what would happen to me if Danton and Robespierre ever disagreed?”

“You have a mind of your own.”

“Yes, but you will find it doesn’t work out like that.”

On March 26 the Queen passed to the enemy full details of France’s war plans. On April 20, France declared war on Austria.

April 25, 1792—Scientific and Democratic Execution of Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, highway robber.

There are bigger crowds than for any ordinary execution, and an air of anticipation. The executioners, of course, have been practicing with dummies; they look quite buoyant, and they are nodding to each other, putting each other on their honor not to make a blunder. Yet there’s nothing to fear, the machine does everything. It is mounted on a scaffold, a big frame with a heavy blade. The criminal ascends with his guards. He is not to suffer, because in France the age of barbarism is over, superseded by a machine, approved by a committee.

Moving quickly, the executioners surround the man, bind him to a plank and slide it forward; swoop of the blade, a soft thud and a sudden carpet of blood. The crowd sighs, its members look at each other in disbelief. It is all over so soon, there is no spectacle. They cannot see that the man can be dead. One of Sanson’s assistants looks up at him, and the master executioner nods. The young man lifts the leather bag into which the head has fallen, and picks out the dripping contents. He holds the head up to the crowed, turning slowly to each quarter to show the empty, expressionless face. Good enough. They are placated. A few women pick up their children so that they can see better. The dead man’s trunk is cut free and rolled into a big wicker basket to be taken away; the severed head is placed between the feet.

All in all, including holding up the head (which will not always be necessary), it has taken just five minutes. The master executioner estimates that the time could be cut almost by half, if time were ever important. He and his assistants and apprentices are divided over the new device. It is convenient, true, and humane; you cannot believe that the man feels any pain. But it looks so easy; people will be thinking that there is no skill in it, that anyone can be an executioner. The profession feels itself undermined. Only the previous year, the Assembly had debated the question of capital punishment, and the popular deputy Robespierre had actually pleaded for it to be abolished. They said he still felt strongly about the question, was hopeful of success. But that deep-thinking man, M. Sanson, feels that M. Robespierre is out of step with public opinion, on this point.

An estimate by M. Guérdon, formerly master carpenter to the Parlement of Paris:

To the steps 1,700 livres To three blades (two in reserve) 600 livres To pulley and copper grooves 300 livres To the iron drop-weight (for the blade) 300 livres To rope and rigging 60 livres To constructing the whole, testing it and time spent discussing it 1,200 livres To a small scale model for demonstrations, to prevent accidents 1,200 livres TOTAL 5,360 livres

Warmly recommending the new invention to the Assembly, the public health expert Dr. Guillotin said: “With this machine I can have your head off in a flash and you won’t suffer at all.” (Laughter.)

Danton: Robespierre called at Camille’s apartment late at night, looking for him. I was there with Lucile. It was harmless enough. The servant Jeanette was about the place, sitting up rather pointedly. Though what they all think I would be doing, with the girl six months pregnant … And where was Camille? Everybody must be in when Robespierre calls. Young Maximilien was faintly annoyed. Lucile caught my eye. She didn’t know where he was.

“I can suggest some places,” I said. “But I wouldn’t advise you to try them, Max, not personally.”

He blushed. What it is to be evil-minded, I thought. In fact I had an idea that Camille was across the river, addressing one of these freakish women’s groups with which he and Marat are involved—Society of Young Ladies for Maiming Marquises, Fishwives for Democracy, you know the sort of thing. And I really thought that, as the Incorruptible has such a large female following, if he walked in while they were already adoring Camille the ladies might lose all restraint and begin attacking people on the streets.

He asked if he might wait. It was important.

“What won’t keep till morning?”

“I don’t keep conventional hours,” he explained to me. “Neither, as you know, does Camille. When I need him he is usually available.”

“Not this time,” I said. Lucile looked at me beseechingly.

So we sat for an hour or more, and how hard it is to make small talk with Maximilien. It was then that Lolotte asked him to be godfather to the child. He was pleased. She reminded him that it was his privilege to choose the name. He felt somehow it would be a boy, he said; we should give him a name that was inspiring, the name of a great man, someone distinguished for his possession of the republican virtues; for we already talked of the republic, not as a political phenomenon but as a state of mind. He mulled over in his mind the Greeks and Romans, and decided that he should be named for the poet Horace. I said, “What if it’s a girl?”

Lucile said gently that it was a most suitable name, and I could see her calculating already, we won’t use it, that’s not what he’ll actually be called. Perhaps, she said, for a second name we could call him Camille? Robespierre smiled, saying, “And there is much honor in that too.”

Then we sat and looked at each other; by this time I had made him uncomfortably suspicious that the honorable original was out whoring.

He slipped in about two o’clock, inquired which of us had arrived first; being told, looked knowing but not put out. Lucile did not ask where he had been. Ah, I thought, for such a wife. I said good night, Robespierre began to talk of some business of the Commune’s, as if it were two in the afternoon and harsh words had never been invented.

Robespierre: There were such people as Lucile. Rousseau said so. Robespierre laid the book aside, but marked the passage.

One proof of the amiable woman’s character is that all who loved her loved each other, jealousy and rivalry submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them; and I never saw those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. Let the reader pause a moment, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves this praise, let him attach himself to her if he would obtain happiness.

It must be applicable. Life was strangely calm in the Desmoulins household. Of course, they might be keeping things from him. People did tend to keep things from him.

They had asked him to be godfather to the child—or whatever was the equivalent, because he did not suppose it would be baptized within the Roman rite. It was Lucile who had asked him one evening when he called (late, almost midnight) and found her alone with Danton. He hoped those rumors were not true. He hoped to be able to believe that they were not.

The servant removed herself as soon as he appeared: at which Danton, unaccountably, laughed.

There were things he needed to talk over with Danton, and he could have spoken freely in front of her; she understood situations, and her opinions were worth having. But Danton seemed to be in some singular mood—half—aggressive, half-joking. He had not been able to find the key to this mood, and they had fallen back on desultory conversation. Then at one point he felt an almost physical force pushing against him. That was Danton’s will. He wanted him to go. Ridiculous as it seemed, in retrospect, he had to put out a hand to grip the arm of his chair and steady himself. It was just then that Lucile raised the topic of the baby.

He was pleased. Of course, it was right, because he was Camille’s oldest friend. And he thought it unlikely now that he would have children of his own.

They had spent some time discussing a name. Perhaps it was sentimental of him, but he remembered all the poetry that Camille used to write. Did he write any now? Oh no, Lucile said. She laughed edgily. In fact, whenever he found some of the old stuff, he’d exclaim, “worse than Saint-Just, worse than Saint-Just,” and burn it. For a moment Robespierre felt deeply affronted, wounded: as if his judgement had been called into question.

Lucile excused herself, to go and speak with Jeanette.

“Horace-Camille,” Danton said speculatively. “Do you think it will bring him luck in life?”

Robespierre smiled his thin smile. He was conscious of the thinness of it. If he were remembered into the next generation, people would speak of his thin, cold smile, as they would speak of Danton’s girth, vitality, scarred face. He wanted, always, to be different—and especially with Danton. Perhaps the smile looked sarcastic, or patronizing or disapproving. But it was the only one available to his face.

“I think Horace …” he said. “A great poet, and a good republican. If one discounts the later verse, where I think he was probably forced to flatter Augustus.”

“Yes …” Danton said. “Camille’s writings flatter you—though probably I shouldn’t say flatter, I am choosing the wrong word.”

He had to grit his teeth; that is, he thought of gritting them, and the thought usually suffices.

“As I said, it is an honorable name.”

Danton sat back in his chair. He stretched out his long legs. He drawled. (It is a commonplace, but there is no other word for it, he drawled.) “I wonder what the honorable original is doing now.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“Why, what do you imagine he is doing?”

“Probably something unthinkable in a whorehouse.”

“I don’t know what right you have to think that. I don’t know what you mean.”

“My dear Robespierre, I don’t expect you to know what I mean. I should be very shocked if you did know. Disillusioned.”

“Then why must you pursue the subject?”

“I really believe you haven’t any idea of half the things that Camille gets up to. Have you?” He sounded interested.

“It is a private concern.”

“You surprise me. Isn’t he a public concern? A public man?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Therefore he should be good. Virtuous. According to you. But he’s not.”

“I don’t want to know—”

“But I ought to insist on telling you. For the public welfare, you know. Camille—”

Lucile came back into the room. Danton laughed. “I promise you the details at another time, Maximilien. For your intimate consideration.”

[The Jacobin Club in session, M. Robespierre speaking.]

FROM THE FLOOR: Despot!

M. DANTON: [president]: Silence. Order. M. Robespierre has never exercised any despotism here but the despotism of pure reason.

FROM THE FLOOR: The demagogue’s awake!

M. DANTON: I am not a demagogue, and for a long time now I have kept silent with great difficulty. I shall unmask those who boast of having served the people. The time has come when there is a grave need to speak out against those who, for the past three months, have been impugning the courage of a man to whose bravery the whole Revolution bears witness …

Robespierre to the Jacobins, May 10, 1792: “The more you isolate me, the more you cut off all my human contacts, the more justification I find in my own conscience, and in the justice of my cause.”

Passages from the life of the Brissotin ministry:

General Dumouriez appeared at the Jacobin Club, of which he was a member. He had a proper soldierly bearing, and the workings of a questioning and restless mind showed in his otherwise unremarkable face. On hair lately powdered, he wore a red woolen bonnet, the Cap of Liberty. He had come to pay his respects at the shrine of patriotism (or some such flimsy metaphor) and he besought fraternal advice and guidance.

Ministers had never behaved like this before.

With anxiety, the patriots watched Robespierre’s face. It expressed contempt.

M. Roland, the Minister of the Interior, turned up at the Tuileries to be presented to the King. The courtiers fell back from him in horrified silence. He did not know what was the matter; his stockings had recently been mended. The Master of Ceremonies took Dumouriez aside and spoke in a chilling whisper: “How can he be presented? He has no buckles on his shoes.”

“No buckles?” said the general humorously. “Alas, Monsieur, then all is lost.”

“My dear Mme. Danton,” Hérault de Séchelles said, “such an excellent dinner. And now would it be unpardonable if we talked politics?”

“My wife is a realist,” Danton said. “She knows that politics pays for the dinners.”

“I am used to it,” Gabrielle said.

“Do you take an interest in public affairs, my dear? Or do you find they weary you?”

She could not think what to say, but she smiled to remove any provocation from the only answer she could give: “I make the best of it.”

“Which is what we all must do.” Hérault turned to Danton. “If Robespierre insists on making the worst of it, that’s his affair. These people—Brissotins, Rolandins, Girondins, call them what you will—are running things for the present. They have—what?—hardly cohesion. Hardly a policy, except for the war—which has begun rather disastrously, they must agree.”

“They have zeal,” Danton said. “They are talented debaters. Have a certain lack of dogmatism. And that awful woman.”

“Ah, how has the little creature taken to celebrity?”

Danton snorted with disgust. “We dined. Must I be reminded?”

On the previous evening, he and Fabre had spent two painful hours over a wretched meal with the Minister of the Interior. Dumouriez had been there. From time to time he had muttered, “I should like a private word with you, Danton, you understand?” But he had not found opportunity. It was the minister’s wife who had orchestrated the occasion. The minister was propped in a chair at the head of the table; he ventured few remarks, and Danton had the impression that the real minister was scribbling at a desk elsewhere in the building, while a wax model sat before them, sewn into an ancient black coat. He was possessed by a temptation to lean over and stick a fork in him to see if he would scream, but he resisted it, and dragged his eyes back glumly to his plate. There was a nameless soup, at once both watery and floury; there was a meager portion of a tough fowl, and some turnips which, though small, were past their first youth.

Manon Roland walked now down grand marble staircases, caught the reflection of her plump and pretty person mirrored in walls of Venetian glass. But the dress she wore that Monday evening was three years old, and an ample fichu covered her shoulders. No surrender.

She had let it be known that she would retain the habits of a private person. The trappings of aristocracy were foreign to her. She would not dispense patronage, and her visitors (strictly by invitation) would observe her rules. The grand salons could stay shrouded, unlit, for she did not aspire to hold court there; she had set up for herself a neat, humble little study, quite near the minister’s office. There she would spend her days, at her desk, making herself useful to the minister; and if anyone wished to see the minister privately, without the nuisance of a crowd of civil servants and petitioners, nothing could be easier than for her to send a message, and for the minister to step through to her tiny sanctum, and confer there with his visitor while she sat unobtrusively, listening hard, her hands folded in her lap.

She had made her rules, the rules by which the ministry would be conducted. Dinner would be given twice weekly. The food would be simple and no alcohol would be served. Guests would leave by 9 p.m.—we’ll volunteer to start the exodus, Fabre whispered. No women would be received; with their chatter, their petty rivalries over their clothes, they detracted from the high tone and purpose of Mme. Roland’s gatherings.

This particular Monday had been a difficult one. Robespierre had declined her invitation. Pierre Vergniaud had accepted it. She did not like the man, personally; and these days her personal likes counted for a good deal. She could find no political point on which she differed from him, but he was lazy, reserving his oratory for grand themes and grand occasions. That night his eyes were glazed with boredom. Dumouriez was lively enough—but he was not lively in the right direction. He had told at least one scandalous anecdote, and then begged her pardon. She accorded it with the merest movement of her head; and the general knew that his work tomorrow would be mysteriously obstructed. Soon and easily, she had slipped into the habits of power.

Fabre d’Eglantine had tried to draw the conversation round to the theater, but she had firmly returned it to its proper subject—the maneuvers, both military and political, of the ci-devant Marquis de Lafayette. She had seen Fabre catch Danton’s eye, and cast his own momentarily to the naked goddesses prancing across the ceiling. She had been glad of Jean-Baptiste Louvet, sitting beside her. It was true that she had once been suspicious of him, because of the novel he had written. But she understood what the position of patriots had been, under the old regime, and a great deal could be excused to such a promising journalist. His thinning blond hair flopped forward as he leaned over to listen to her. A partisan. A friend of Mme. Roland.

She talked to Louvet, but her eyes had been drawn, against her will, to Danton. It was Dumouriez who insisted she invite him: “He is a man we ought to cultivate. He has a following on the streets.”

“Among the mob,” she had said scornfully.

“Do you think we shall have no dealings with the mob?”

So here the man sat. He made her shudder. That air of joviality, that affectation of frankness and bonhomie: it covered—just barely—the man’s evident, monstrous ambition. Oh, he was just a good fellow, he was just a simple fellow, his heart was in the farmland of his province—oh was it? She glanced down at the confident hands resting on the cloth, the thick fingers outstretched. He could kill with those hands; he could snap a woman’s neck, or squeeze the breath from a man’s throat.

And that scar, faded to a dead white, slashed across his mouth; how did he get that scar? It twisted his lips, so that his smile was not really a smile, more a kind of sneer. What would it feel like to touch that scar? What would be the texture, under the fingertips? This man had a wife. He had, they said, a bevy of mistresses. Some woman’s fingers had touched that scar, traced its course, its edges.

He caught her eyes resting on him. She looked away quickly, but then she couldn’t bear not to look up again, and spend the rest of the night wondering what he had thought. Cautiously, her glance crept back. Yes, take a good look, his face said; you have never in your safe little life seen a man like me.

And on Tuesday morning, all Danton could say, with tired exasperation: “Well, which one of us is going to sleep with the bitch, because clearly that’s what she wants?”

“Why ask?” Fabre said. “She didn’t take her eyes off you for two hours.”

“Women are peculiar,” Danton said.

“And talking of peculiar women, I understand Théroigne is back. The Austrians have let her go. I can’t imagine why, unless they thought she was the sort to bring the Revolution into disrepute.”

“No such subtlety,” Danton said. “I expect they were afraid she’d cut off their balls.”

“But to return to the subject, Georges-Jacques—if Madame has her eye on you, you might as well, you really might as well. No point oiling around, ‘My dear Mme. Roland, how we all esteem your talents’—why don’t you offer her some solid evidence? Then she might bring all her gentlemen friends into line with our line. Do it, Georges-Jacques—she’ll be easy. I don’t suppose she gets much from that old husband of hers. He looks as if he’s going to die at any minute.”

“I think he probably died years ago,” Camille said. “I think she’s had him embalmed and stuffed, because at heart she’s sentimental. Also I think the whole Brissotin ministry is in the pay of the Court.”

“Robespierre,” Fabre said, nodding significantly.

“Robespierre does not think it,” Camille said.

“Don’t lose your temper.”

“He thinks they are fools and dupes and unintentional traitors. I think it is worse than that. I think we should have nothing to do with them.”

“They certainly think they should have nothing to do with you. Dumouriez said, ‘Where’s your little Camille tonight, why have you left him at home when he could be here sharing the excitement with us?’ Madame heaved her bosom and inhaled most disdainfully.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Danton said. They saw that he was very serious. “I don’t say anything about Dumouriez and the rest, but that woman couldn’t be bought. That woman hates Louis and his wife as if they had done her some desperate injury.” He laughed sourly. “Marat thinks she has a monopoly on hate?”

“You trust them, then?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think they’re bad people. That’s all I’m prepared to say.”

“What do you think Dumouriez wanted with you?”

The question seemed to cheer Danton. “No doubt he wants me to do something, and is anxious to know my prices.”