A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 9

East Indians

July 25: Danton threw his weight back in his chair, threw his head back, laughed uproariously. Louise flinched; she was always worrying about the furniture, and he was always assuring her that there was plenty of money for replacing it. “The day I parted company with the Committee,” he said, “I saw something I thought I’d never see—I saw Fabre d’Eglantine deprived of speech.” Danton was slightly tipsy; every so often he would lean across the table to squeeze the hand of his new wife. “So, Fabre, still struck dumb, are you?”

“No, no,” Fabre said uncertainly. “It’s true, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, sitting on a committee with Saint-Just. And it’s true, as you say, that Robert Lindet’s elected, and he’s a solid patriot who we can trust. And Hérault’s elected, and he’s our friend …”

“You’re not convinced. Look, Fabre, I am Danton, can you get that through your skull? The Committee may need me, but I don’t need the Committee. Now, allow me to propose a toast to myself, since no one else has the grace to do it. To me—the newly elected president of the Convention.” He raised his glass to Lucile. “Now more toasts,” he demanded. “To my friend General Westermann, may he prosper against the rebels in the Vendée.”

He was lucky, Lucile thought, to get Westermann his command back, after that last defeat; Westermann is lucky to be at large. “To the Sacred Heart of Marat,” Danton said. Louise gave him a sharp look. “I’m sorry, my love, I don’t mean to blaspheme, I’m just repeating what is said by the poor deluded rabble on the streets. Why did the Gironde go after Marat? He was half-dead anyway. Then again, if the bitch was acting on her own initiative, as she claimed, doesn’t it just prove what I’ve always said, that women have no political sense? She should have gone for Robespierre, or me.”

Oh, don’t say that, Louise begged him; at the same time she found it difficult to imagine a kitchen knife slicing through those solid layers of muscle and fat. Danton looked down the table. “Camille,” he said, “one drop of ink disposed by you is worth all the blood in Marat’s body.”

He refilled glasses. He will drink another bottle, Louise thought, and then perhaps he will fall asleep right away. “And to Liberty,” he said. “Raise your glass, General.”

“To Liberty,” said General Dillon, feelingly. “Long may we, if you know what I mean, be at liberty to enjoy it.”

July 26: Robespierre sat with his head bowed, his hands knotted together between his knees; he was the picture of misery. “Do you see?” he asked. “I have always resisted such involvement, I have always refused office.”

“Yes,” Camille said. He had a headache, from last night. “The situation changes.”

“Now, you see—” Robespierre had developed a minute facial tic, distressing to him; every so often he would break off what he was saying and press his hand against his cheek. “It’s clear that a firm central authority … with the enemy advancing on every front … You know I have always defended the Committee, always seen the need for it … .

“Yes. Stop apologizing. You’ve won an election, not committed a crime.”

“And there are factions—shall I say Hébert, shall I say Jacques Roux—who wish France to have no strong government. They take advantage of the natural discontents of the man in the street, exploit them and make all the trouble they can. They put forward measures that can only be called ultra-revolutionary, measures that seem disgusting and threatening to decent people. They bring the Revolution into disrepute. They try to kill it by excess. That is why I call them agents of the enemy.” He put his hand to his face again. “If only,” he said, “Danton were not so chronically careless.”

“Clearly he doesn’t think the Committee as important as you do.”

“Put it on record,” Robespierre said, “that I didn’t seek the office. Citizen Gasparin fell ill, it was thrust upon me. I do hope they won’t start calling it the Robespierre Committee. I shall be just one among many …”

One best friend off the Committee. The other best friend on. Camille is used to being the experimental audience for speeches Robespierre is rehearsing; it has been like this since ‘89. Ever since that charged, emotional moment at the Duplays’ house—“you were always in my heart”—he has felt that more is expected of him. Robespierre is becoming one of those people in whose company it is impossible to relax for a moment.

Two days later the Committee of Public Safety is given the power to issue warrants for arrest.

Jacques Roux, whose following grows, announced that the new author of his news sheet was “the ghost of Marat.” Hébert advised the Jacobins that if Marat needed a successor—and the aristocrats another victim—he was ready. “That talentless little man,” Robespierre said. “How dare he?”

On August 8, Simone Evrard appeared at the Bar of the Convention, and made an impassioned denunciation of certain persons who were leading the sansculottes to perdition. All her views, she said, were those expressed by the martyr, her husband, in his last hours. It was a fluent, confident tirade; just occasionally she paused to peer more closely at her notes, to puzzle out Citizen Robespierre’s tiny, uneven handwriting.

A week later there is another addition to the Committee of Public Safety: Lazare Camot, the military engineer whom Robespierre had first met at the Academy of Arras. “I don’t particularly get on with military men,” Robespierre said. “They seem to be full of personal ambition, and to have a strange set of priorities. But they are a necessary evil. Camot always,” he added distantly, “seemed to know what he was talking about.”

Thus Carnot, later to be known as the Organizer of Victory; Robespierre, the Organizer of Carnot.

When the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal was arrested (suspected of mishandling the trial of Marat’s assassin) his replacement was Citizen Hermann, late of the Arras Bar. Hadn’t he, all those years ago, been the only one to recognize that Robespierre was talking sense? “I knew him,” he said to Mme. Duplay, “when I was a young man.”

“What do you think you are now?” she asked him.

The outgoing president was taken away by gendarmes while the Tribunal was actually in session. Fouquier-Tinville liked a drama; his cousin had no monopoly.

When the Minister of the Interior resigned, the two rivals for the post were Hébert and Jules Pare, now a lawyer of note. The latter was appointed. “We all know why, of course,” said Hébert. “He was once Danton’s managing clerk. We get so big for our boots that we don’t actually do any work ourselves, we just let our minions exercise power on our behalf. He has his other clerk, Desforgues, at the Foreign Office. Pare and Danton are as thick as thieves. Just as,” he added, “Danton was with Dumouriez.”

“Odious runt,” Danton said. “Isn’t it enough for him to have his creatures all over the War Office, and his so-called newspaper distributed to the troops?”

He asserted himself at the Jacobin Club; won some applause. As he quit the rostrum, Robespierre rose to speak. “No one,” he told the club, “has the right to voice the least breath of criticism against Danton. Anyone who seeks to discredit him must first prove a match for him in energy, forcefulness and patriotic zeal.”

More applause; some members rose to their feet. Danton was cheered; sprawled on the bench, sans cravat and badly shaven, he inclined his head. Robespierre was cheered; patting his cuffs into place—a gesture like some ersatz Sign of the Cross—he bobbed his head to his admirers and gave the club his diffident smile. Then—presumably for simply existing—Citizen Camille was applauded. This is what he likes, isn’t it? He was back center stage, the sweetheart of the Revolution, the enfant terrible whose whims will always be indulged. Presumably somewhere on the benches skulked Renaudin the violin maker, with his memorable right hook; but for the moment the only danger was the enthusiasm of the patriots, ambushing him with bear hugs. For the second time, he found himself crushed against Maurice Duplay’s shoulder. He thought of the first time, when he had his precarious escape from Babette.

“What are you looking so worried for?” Danton asked him.

“I’m worried about preserving this accord between you.” He made a small gesture, to show how he was preserving it; it seemed to be the size of a hen’s egg, and as fragile.

Late August, conscription came in, and General Custine (ci-devant Comte de Custine) lost his head; it encouraged the others. On the 26th Elisabeth Duplay married Deputy Philippe Lebas: a young man who was decidedly not handsome, but who was a good republican, and who had a pleasant, loyal, steadfast nature. “At last!” Camille said. “What a relief!” Robespierre was surprised. He approved of the match, true; but she’s only seventeen, he said.

The queues outside the bakers’ shops grew restive. Bread was cheap, but there wasn’t much of it, and it was poor stuff. The Montagnard deputy Chabot took issue with Robespierre about the new constitution; he waved documents in his face. “It fails to abolish beggary from the Republic. It fails to assure bread to those who have none.”

Robespierre was stopped in his tracks. This was the dearest wish of his heart: to ensure bread to those who had none. Every aim apart from this could be picked to pieces, hacked apart, assassinated. Surely this aim was simple, achievable? Yet he could not address the larger problem, because of all the petty problems that got in the way. He said, “I wish I could do that. I wish the poor would be no longer with us. But we are working within the bounds of possibility.”

“You mean that the Committee, with all the powers we have given It—

“You have given the Committee some powers and many more problems, you have charged us with questions we can’t possibly answer. You have given us—for instance—a conscript army to provision. You expect everything from the Committee, and yet you’re jealous of its powers. If I could produce a miracle of loaves and fishes, I suppose you’d say we’d exceeded our mandate.” He raised his voice, for those around to hear. “If there’s no bread, blame the English blockade. Blame the conspirators.”

He walked away. He had never liked Chabot. He tried not to be prejudiced by the fact that Chabot looked, as everyone said, like a turkey: red, mottled, swelling. He had once been a Capuchin friar. It was hard to imagine him obedient to his vows: poverty, chastity. He and Deputy Julien were members of a committee formed to stamp out illegal speculation. Put there, Robespierre supposed, on the principle of setting a thief to … Julien was a friend of Danton, unfortunately. He thought of that egg cradled between Camille’s narrow palms. They said that Chabot was thinking of marrying. She was a Jewess, sister of two bankers called Frei; at least, they claimed that was their name, and that they were refugees from the Hapsburgs. After the marriage, Chabot would be a rich man.

“You dislike foreigners on principle,” Camille said to him.

“It doesn’t seem a bad principle to have, when we are at war with the rest of Europe. What do they want in Paris, all these Englishmen and Austrians and Spaniards? They must have loyalties elsewhere. Just businessmen, people say. What sort of business, I ask myself. Why should they stay here, to be paid in worthless paper and to be at the dictates of the sansculottes? In this city the women who do laundry fix the price of soap.”

“Well, why do you think?”

“Because they’re spies, saboteurs.”

“You don’t understand finance, do you?”

“No. I can’t understand everything.”

“There is often a lot of money to be made out of deteriorating situations.”

“Cambon is our government’s financial expert. He should explain things to me. I will remind him.”

“But you’ve already formed your conclusions. And I suppose you will agree to imprisoning these people on suspicion.”

“Enemy aliens.”

“Yes, you say that now—but will it stop there? Every internment law perverts justice.”

“You must see—”

“I know,” Camille said. “National Emergency, extraordinary measures. You can’t say I’ve been soft on our opponents. I’ve never flinched—and incidentally, why are you delaying the trial of Brissot’s people—but what is the point of combating the tyrants of Europe if we behave like tyrants ourselves? What is the point of any of it?”

“Camille, this isn’t tyranny—these powers we are taking, we may never need to use them, or not for more than a few months. It’s for our self-preservation, our survival as a nation. You say you have never flinched, but I’ve flinched—I flinch all the time. Do you think I’m bloodthirsty? I thought you would have trusted me to do the right thing.”

“I do—yes, I think I do. But do you control the Committee, or are you just their public front?”

“How could I control them?” He threw his hands out. “I’m not a dictator.”

“You affect surprise,” Camille observed. “If you are not in control, is Saint-Just leading you by the nose? I ask you this to remind you not to let your grasp on events slip. And if I do think it is tyranny, I shall tell you. I have the right.”

You see what the Revolution has boiled down to, a more biting concentrate: menials now ministers, and old friends who understand one’s mind. Up to September the Tribunal has condemned no more than thirty-six of the 260 accused brought before it; this ratio will begin to alter. While the issues grow greater, the manpower diminishes; at any one point, the survivors feel they have known each other a long time.

Camille knew that this summer he had made a bad move; he should have left Arthur Dillon to the Republic’s judgement. At the same time, he had demonstrated his personal power. But it was isolation he sensed, as mornings grew fresh, as logs were got in for the winter, as the pale gold sun anatomized the paper leaves in the public gardens. With no particular end in view, he made a chance annotation among his papers:

Pytheus said that in the island of Thule, which Virgil called Ultima Thule, six days’ journey from Great Britain, there was neither earth, nor sea, but a mixture of the three elements, in which it was not possible to walk, or go in a vessel; he spoke of it as a thing which he had seen.

September 2, 1793: Address of the Sans-Culottes Section (formerly known as Jardin-des-Plantes) to the Convention: “Do you not know there is no basis to property other than the extent of physical needs? … A maximum should be fixed to personal fortunes … no one should be able to own more land than can be tilled with a stipulated number of ploughs … . A citizen should not be allowed to own more than one shop or workshop … the industrious workman, tradesman or farmer should be able to get for himself not only those things essential for eking out a bare existence, but also those things that may add to his happiness … .”

Antoine Saint-Just: “Happiness is a new idea in Europe.”

On September 2, the news reached Paris that the people of Toulon had handed their town and their navy over to the British. It was an unprecedented act of treason. France lost sixteen frigates and twenty-six out of her sixty-five ships of the line. This time last year, the gutters ran with blood.

“Look,” Danton said. “You use this. You don’t just let it wash over you.” The noise from the hall of the Convention was a dull roar, punctuated by the occasional scream. “You get hold of it.” His fingers made a motion of folding themselves around something: a throat? “As a September murderer, I have never felt so popular.”

Robespierre began to say something.

“You’ll have to speak up,” Danton said.

They were in one of the little rooms, bare and dusty, entered from the warren of dark passages that led from the debating chamber. They were alone, but they did not feel it, because of the tumult and close press of the mob; it was almost possible to smell them. Camille and Fabre effaced themselves against the dank far wall. September 5, 1793: the sansculottes are holding among their representatives a demonstration, or riot.

“I said, Danton, why are you leaning against the door?”

“To stop Saint-Just getting in,” Danton said swiftly. Never explain. Robespierre opened his mouth. “Now be quiet,” Danton said. “Hébert and Chaumette organized this.”

Robespierre shook his head.

“Oh well,” Danton said, “there may be a measure of truth in that. Maybe the sansculottes organized themselves, and that is a precedent I dislike. So make sure we stay ahead of events. Wrap up their demands in one package and give them back as a present from the Mountain. Economic controls, price maximums—very well. Arrest of suspects, very well. Then we stop there—no interference with private property. Yes, Fabre, I know what the businessmen will think of the economic controls, but this is an emergency, we have to give way, and why should I justify myself to you?”

“We have to present a moving target to Europe,” Robespierre said quietly.

“What did you say?”

Nothing: Robespierre waved it away, tense and out of patience.

“You have come around to the idea of interning suspects—Camille, the definition must wait. Yes, I know it is the heart of it, but I need a piece of paper for framing legislation. Will you keep quiet? I won’t listen to you now.”

“Will you listen to me?” Robespierre shouted at him. Danton stopped. He looked at Robespierre warily.

“All right. Go on.”

“Tomorrow the Committee is due for re-election. We want to add to it Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varennes. They are giving us a lot of trouble, criticizing us all the time. We can’t think of any other way of keeping them quiet. Yes, I know it is a craven policy. We need our spines stiffening, don’t we? The Committee wants you back.”

“No.”

“Please, Danton,” Fabre said.

“I’ll give you all the support you need. I’ll press for extension of your powers. Just tell me what you want from the Convention and I’ll fix it. But I won’t sit with you. The business wears me down. God blast it, can’t you see? I’m not the type for committees. I like to work on my own, I have an instinct and I like to act on it, I hate your bloody agenda and your minutes and your procedures.”

“Your attitude is extremely exasperating,” Robespierre yelled at him.

The noise from outside increased. Danton nodded his head in its direction. “Let me handle this for you. I’m probably the only one who can make his voice heard out there.”

“I resent you—” Robespierre said. His words were lost. “The People,” he shouted, “are everywhere good, and if they obstruct the Revolution—even, for example, at Toulon—we must blame their leaders.”

“What are you going on about this for?” Danton asked him.

Fabre launched himself from the wall. “He is trying to enunciate a doctrine,” he shrieked. “He thinks the time has come for a bloody sermon.

“If only,” Robespierre yelled, “there were more vertu.”

“More what?”

“Vertu. Love of one’s country. Self-sacrifice. Civic spirit.”

“One appreciates your sense of humor, of course.” Danton jerked his thumb in the direction of the noise. “The only vertu those bastards understand is the kind I demonstrate every night to my wife.”

Robespierre’s face crumpled, like a child’s on the verge of tears. He followed Danton out into the dark passage.

“You wish he hadn’t said that, don’t you?” Fabre inquired. He gently prized Camille from the wall.

Maximilien Robespierre, private notebooks: “Danton laughed at the idea of vertu, comparing it to what he did every night with his wife.”

When Danton began to speak, the demonstrators cheered; the deputies stood up and applauded. It was some moments before he could continue. Shock and gratification chased each other across his face; now what have I done right? Once again he exhorted, conceded, unified, endorsed—saved the day. The day following, when he was elected once more to the Committee, Robespierre called at his house. Stiff-featured, he sat on the very edge of his chair and refused refreshment. “I have come to urge you to see your duty,” he said. “If the word retains any meaning for you.”

Danton was in a good humor. “Don’t run away, Louise. You’ve never met Citizen Robespierre face-to-face, have you?”

“I am sick of this taunting,” Robespierre said. He choked the words out, and at the same time his left eyelid began to jump in spasm. He took off his spectacles and pressed his fingers to it.

“You’ll have to calm down,” Danton said. “Think of Camille, living all his life with a stutter. Though I confess Camille’s stutter has considerably more charm.”

“The Convention may override you. May order you to join us.”

“I intend to be,” said Danton pleasantly, “a thorn in the flesh of all committees.”

“There isn’t really any more to say, is there? People are screaming for trials and purges and killings. You prefer to walk away.”

“What do you want me to do? Sweat blood for the Republic? I’ve told you I’ll support you.”

“You want to be the idol of the Convention. You want to get up and make big speeches and cover yourself in glory. Well, let me tell you, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“You’ll make yourself ill if you go on like this.”

“You blame me for turning to Saint-Just for support. At least he doesn’t make his personal pleasures a touchstone for the Revolution.”

“Who said I did that?”

“You will at least, I hope, try to be civil to me in public?”

“I shall be positively affectionate,” Danton promised.

Robespierre left his door in a government conveyance. Two large men climbed in beside him. “Bodyguards,” Danton said, watching from the window. “They were forced upon him in the end. He was suspected of a plot to put his dog on the Committee of Public Safety. Actually, he’d quite like to be assassinated.” He stretched out a hand for Louise. “It would be the crowning glory of the hard, miserable life he’s made for himself.”

On the day of the demonstration, the sansculotte leader Jacques Roux was arrested. For some time no proceedings were taken against him, but when in the end he was called before the Tribunal he killed himself in his cell. September saw the institution of Terror as a form of government. The new constitution was to be suspended till the end of the war. On September 13, Danton proposed that all committees be renewed, and that in future their members be appointed by the Committee of Public Safety. There was a moment when he and Robespierre stood together, as if to acknowledge jointly the applause of the Mountain. “All right?” he said to Robespierre, and Robespierre answered calmly, “Yes, that’s fine.”

The decree was passed. The moment passed. And now, thought Danton, we ought to be able to bow and walk off stage. Weariness like a parasite seemed to burst into flower from his bones.

The following morning he found he could hardly lift his head from the pillow. He could not remember anything about the previous day. His memory had been taken out, and replaced by a leaden, pulsating pain. A few incidents floated across the pain—disconnected, some from years back. He did not know the date. He thought he saw Gabrielle come into the room, look down at him, smooth his pillow. Only later he remembered that Gabrielle was dead.

Several doctors came. They argued with each other as if their lives depended on it. When Angélique arrived, Louise crumpled into a little sniffling heap on a sofa. Angélique sent the children off to their uncle, and made Louise drink warm milk. Then she routed the doctors. Souberbielle remained. “He should get out of Paris,” he said. “A man like that needs to breathe his own air. He has spent all his adult life going against the grain. He has abused his strength, wrecked his constitution.”

“He will get better?” Louise said.

“Oh yes. But he must recover himself outside this city. The Convention must give him leave of absence. Citizeness, may I advise you?”

“Of course.”

“While he is ill, don’t discuss his affairs with anyone. Don’t trust anyone to have his interests at heart.”

“I don’t.”

“Stay out of arguments. It’s known, Citizeness, that you like to air your views. By doing so, you increase the stress on him.”

“I only speak as my conscience dictates. Perhaps this illness is providential. He must give up the Revolution.”

“It’s not so simple. My dear, you were twelve years old when the Bastille fell.”

“Gabrielle was weak.”

“That was not my view of her. She confined herself to her sphere.”

“I want to rescue him from himself.”

“Strange,” the doctor said. “Robespierre has the same ambition.”

“You know Robespierre?”

“Pretty well.”

“Is he a good man?”

“He is honest and scrupulous and he tries to save lives.”

“At the cost of certain other lives.”

“That is sometimes unavoidable. He regrets it.”

“Do you think he likes my husband?”

The doctor shrugged. “I hardly know. They’re different types of men completely. Does it matter?”

Of course it matters, she muttered to herself, as he took his leave. The doctors were replaced by Angélique’s daughters-in-law, strong and decisive women whom she hardly knew. They chivvied her about and sent her upstairs, to sleep in her old room. She crept out and sat on the stairs. She almost expected to see Gabrielle, returning to her sphere. You’re not pregnant, are you? her mother asked her. She could see the way her mother’s mind was working; if something’s really wrong, if he takes a turn for the worse, if he dies, how fast can we extricate her? If I’m not pregnant, she said, it’s not for the want of trying. Her mother shuddered. He is a savage, she said.

David of the Police Committee called, with another deputy, and demanded to see Danton on business. Angélique showed them the door. As they departed, with certain ungallant threats, squawking about their authorization, Angélique said something dark in Italian. They don’t, she said, plan that he should have an easy time when he recovers.

At the Desmoulins’s apartment, Fabre sat and worked himself into a panic. “If we are to have fixed prices,” he said, “then we must have fixed wages. What I want to know is, what’s the official daily rate for a spy? How, please, are we going to win any battles when so much of the able-bodied population is employed in spying for the Committee?”

“Are they spying on you?”

“Of course they are.”

“Have you told Robespierre?”

Fabre looked at him wildly. “Tell him how? Tell him what? My affairs are so complicated that I lie awake at night trying to explain them to myself. I am being harassed. I am being forced into difficulties. Do you think that officious chit will let me see Georges?”

“No. Anyway, why should he listen? If you can’t tell Robespierre, why should Georges concern himself?”

“There are reasons.”

“You mean you’ve already dragged his name into it.”

“No. I mean he is under certain obligations to me.”

“I should have thought it was the other way around, and I should have thought that one of your obligations would have been to keep him out of any consequences of your inept fumbling with the stock market.”

“There’s more to it than that, it’s—”

“Fabre, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.”

“It won’t be any use your saying that to the police.”

Camille put his finger to his lips. Lucile came in. “I heard,” she said.

“Just Fabre’s shock tactics. He loses his head.”

“That is an unfortunate phrase,” Lucile said.

Fabre jumped up. “You’re persecuting me. Your hands aren’t so clean. My God,” he said. He drew his finger across his throat. “When you fall between two stools, Camille, nobody’s going to help you up. They’re just going to stand and laugh.”

“He waxes metaphorical,” Lucile said.

“The whole thing—” Fabre made a shape with his hands, and then exploded it—“the whole thing is splitting apart like rotten fruit.” Suddenly he was beside himself. “For God’s sake, Camille, put in a good word for me with Robespierre.”

“Yes, all right,” Camille said hurriedly. He wanted to placate him, stop him continuing the scene in front of Lucile. “Do keep your voice down, the servants can hear you. What do you want me to say to Robespierre?”

“If my name should come up,” Fabre said, breathing hard, “just drop into the conversation that I’ve—that I’ve always been a patriot.”

“Sit down and calm yourself,” Lucile suggested.

Fabre looked round, distractedly. He seized his hat. “Got to go. Beg your pardon, Lucile. See myself out.”

Camille followed him. “Philippe,” he whispered, “there are a lot of what Robespierre calls small fry who have to be landed before you need worry. Try to ride this out.”

Fabre’s mouth opened a fraction. “Why did you call me that? Why did you call me by my first name?”

Camille smiled. “Take care,” he said.

He returned to Lucile. “What were you whispering?” she asked.

“Consolation.”

“You are not to keep things from me, please. What has he done?”

“In August—you have heard of the East India Company? Good, because we have made quite a lot of money out of it. You remember the share prices fell, then they went up again—it was just a matter of buying and selling at the right time.”

“My father mentioned it. He said he expected you did very well out of it. My father has some respect for your inside information, but he says, in my day, of course, they would simply have been called crooks, but in my day the august and virtuous members of the National Convention didn’t exist to set these things up for each other.”

“Yes, I can imagine your father saying that. Does he know how it was managed?”

“Probably. But don’t try and explain it to me. Just tell me the consequences.”

“The company was to be liquidated. There was a discussion in the Convention about how it was to be done. Perhaps the liquidation was not carried out in quite the way the Convention intended. I don’t know.”

“But you do know, really?”

“Not the details. It does seem that Fabre may have broken the law—which we didn’t do in our earlier dealings—or he may be about to break it.”

“But he spoke as if you were threatened, and Danton.”

“Danton might be implicated. Fabre is saying, you understand, that investigation into Danton’s affairs might not be a good thing.”

“Surely,” she struggled for some tactful way of putting it, “wouldn’t Danton evade—I mean, he’s adept at shifting the blame?”

“Fabre is his friend, you see. When we were at the ministry I tried to warn him that Fabre was exceeding what were more or less agreed limits. He said, ‘Fabre is my friend and we’ve been through a lot together. We know a lot about each other too.’”

“So Georges will protect him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want either of them to tell me anything about it. If they do I will feel bound to tell Robespierre, who will feel bound to tell the Committee.”

“Perhaps you should. Tell Robespierre. If there’s any danger you could be dragged into it, it might be better if you were the one to uncover it.”

“But that would be helping the Committee. And I don’t feel like helping the Committee.”

“If the Committee is our only chance of firm government, isn’t it irresponsible not to help it?”

“I loathe firm government.”

“When will the big trials begin?”

“Soon. Danton won’t be able to hold things up now, he’s too ill. And Robespierre won’t, not on his own.”

“I suppose we still welcome the trials?”

“How not? Royalists, Brissotins …”

Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny …); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given proof of constant and extraordinary revolutionary fervor; or who have emigrated.

It will be alleged later (by Citizen Desmoulins) that 200,000 people are detained under this law. The Watch Committee in each Section is to draw up lists of suspects, take away their papers and detain them in a secure place. These places will be called “National Buildings”—convents, vacated châteaux, empty warehouses. Collot d’Herbois has a better idea. He suggests that suspects be herded into mined houses, which can then be blown up.

Since he became a member, Collot no longer criticizes the Committee of Public Safety. When he enters the Committee’s chambers, Citizen Robespierre leaves, if he can, by another door.

Decree of the National Convention: “The government of France is revolutionary until the peace … . Terror is the order of the day.”

Antoine Saint-Just: “You must punish anyone who is passive in the affairs of the Revolution and who does nothing for it.”

“So they’ve changed the calendar,” Danton said. “It’s too much for an invalid.”

“Yes,” Camille said. “The week now has ten days. It is tidier, and very good for the war effort. Our dates now run from the foundation of the Republic, so we are in Month I, Year II. But Fabre has been asked to think up some ridiculous poetic names for the months. He plans that the first should be Vendémiaire. Then today,” Camille frowned, “yes, today would be 19 Vendémiaire.”

“In my household, it remains October 10.”

“You had better learn it. We are supposed to put it on official letters.”

“I have no plans,” Danton said, “for writing official letters.”

He was out of bed, but he spoke and moved slowly; occasionally he let his head fall against the back of his chair, and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Tell me about the battle near Dunkirk,” he said. “When I left the world, it was being hailed as a great victory for the Republic. Now I hear that General Houchard is under arrest.”

“The Committee and the War Office put their heads together. They decided he could have inflicted more damage on the enemy. They are charging him with treason.”

“And yet it was the Committee who appointed him. There were scenes in the Convention, I suppose.”

“Yes, but Robespierre had the best of it.”

“He has become a very good committeeman.”

“He undertook it, and he does everything well.”

“I must leave him to it. They say I am fit to travel now. Will you come out to Arcis, as soon as you have a few spare days?”

“There are no spare days.”

“I know that dire turn of phrase. You have been seeing too much of Robespierre.”

“Georges, do you know about Deputy Julien?”

“No.”

“Does Louise let you have no news?”

“I don’t think that anything that Julien did would seem of the least importance to her. I don’t think she knows he exists.”

“The police have raided his apartment. They’ve impounded his papers.”

He opened his eyes. “And?”

“Chabot took me aside. He said, ‘I’ve burned everything, you know.’ I imagine that was a message I was meant to pass on to you.”

Danton hunched his body forward. Attention broke into his eyes: like the shattering of glass. “Fabre?”

“Fabre has been panicking.”

“Fabre has an excitable temperament.”

“So have I, Georges-Jacques, so have 1. What am I expected to do? I think Fabre has committed a forgery. When the East India Company was liquidated, I think certain documents were falsified in the company’s interests. These documents were decrees of the Convention, and only a deputy would be able to do it. Chabot is involved, perhaps half a dozen other people. They themselves don’t know, I think, who did the actual falsification. Julien might blame Chabot, Chabot might blame Julien. They have secrets, one from the other.”

“But Fabre has confessed to you?”

“He’s tried. I won’t let him. I tell him I mustn’t know. What I am telling you is just what I have been able to work out. It will take longer for the police to come to their conclusions. And to collect evidence, that will take longer still.”

Danton closed his eyes. “The harvest will be in,” he said. “We have nothing to do but to keep ourselves warm for the winter.”

“There are other things you should know.”

“Get them over with.”

“François Robert is in trouble. Does she tell you nothing?”

“She wouldn’t know that was important, either. He isn’t involved in this?”

“No—it’s the most ridiculous thing—he’s been accused of dealing on the black market. Eight barrels of rum. For his shop.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Danton said. He hit the arm of his chair. “You offer them a chance to make history, and they prefer to remain grocers.”

Louise ran in. “You were not to upset him!”

“I line their pockets. I don’t ask them to exert themselves. I raise them to office and I accede to their little whims. All I ask is their vote, an occasional speech—and that if they choose to become petty criminals they leave me out of it.”

“The rum is petty. The East India Company is not. But still, François Robert is our associate. It reflects on us. Will you send your wife away, please?”

“You were told to keep calm,” she said mutinously.

“You can leave us, Louise. I’ll be calm. I promise. I’m quite calm now.”

“What are you trying to keep from me?”

“No one is keeping anything from you,” Camille said. “It is not worth the trouble.”

“She’s a child. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know who these people are.”

“It was our own Section, the Cordeliers, who denounced François. The Convention agreed with you that it was petty. They refused to lift his immunity. Otherwise—the penalties are severe. He and Louise will have to creep away now and try to be forgotten.”

“What a way to end up,” Danton said. His expression was morose. “I think back to those days after the Bastille fell, the Mercure Nationale run from the back of the shop, that little Louise sticking her well-bred nose in the air and flouncing off to bawl out their printer—and you know, he was a good lad, François. I’d say, ‘Go and do this, this, this, go and tie some bricks to your boots and jump in the Seine,’ and he‘d”—Danton touched an imaginary forelock—‘right away, Georges-Jacques, and do you need any shopping while I’m out?’ Jesus, what a way to end up. When you see him, tell him I’d be obliged if he forgets he knows me.

“I don’t see him,” Camille said.

“Our own Section, Camille. Oh, I should have left the Jacobins to Robespierre, and stayed on my own side of the river. I should have hung on to power in my own district. Who runs it now? Hébert. We old Cordeliers should have stuck together.”

They were silent for a moment. We old Cordeliers … It’s four years since the Bastille fell, four years and three months. It feels like twenty. Danton sits here, overweight, his brow permanently furrowed, God knows what going on amid his internal organs. Robespierre’s asthma is worse, and one can’t help noticing that his hairline is receding. Hérault’s fresh complexion is not so fresh as it used to be, and the double chin on which Lucile passed a damning judgement promises a jowly, disappointing middle age. Fabre has developed breathing difficulties; as for Camille, his headaches are worse, and he can hardly keep any flesh on his small bones. He looks up at Danton now: “Georges-Jacques, do you know a man called Comte? Just tell me yes or no.”

“Yes. I employed him as an agent in Normandy, on government business. Why?”

“Because he has turned up here in Paris and made a certain allegation. That you were in league with Brissot’s people, to put the Duke of York on our throne.”

“The Duke of York? Lord,” Danton said bitterly, “I thought only Robespierre could dream up anything so wholly fantastic as the Duke of York.”

“Robespierre was deeply disturbed.”

Danton looked up slowly. “He gave it credence?”

“No, of course not. He said it was a conspiracy to discredit a patriot. It is a good thing that we still have Hérault on the Committee, though. He had Comte arrested before he could do anymore damage. It was because of this that David called on you, on behalf of the Police Committee. Just a formality.”

“I see. ‘Morning, Danton—are you a traitor?’ ‘Certainly not, David—do run away back to your easel.’ ‘I’ll do that—left a daub half-finished. Get well soon!’ That sort of formality? And I suppose that for Robespierre, it’s fuel to his flames? It feeds his notions of gigantic conspiracies?”

“Yes. We suppose Comte must be a British agent. After all, we reason with ourselves—we stretch our imaginations to suppose that it might be true—and then we reason with ourselves, how would this nonentity Comte, this servant, this menial, know anything of the plans of a man like Danton? That is how we reason, Robespierre and I.”

“I know what you mean, Camille,” Louise said warningly. “Why don’t you ask him straight out if there is anything in it?”

“Because it is absurd.” Camille lost his temper. “Because I have other loyalties, and if it is true, they will kill him.”

Louise stepped back. Her hand fluttered to her throat. Camille saw her difficulty at once: she wanted and didn’t want him dead.

“Louise, take no notice,” Danton said. “Go now and make sure our packing is done.” Tiredness crept back into his voice. “You must learn a little better to distinguish—it is a ridiculous story. It is as Robespierre says. It is a slander.”

She hesitated. “We’re still going to Arcis?”

“Of course. I have written to them to expect us.”

She left the room.

“I have to go,” Danton said. “I must recover my health. Without that, nothing.”

“Yes, of course you must go.” Camille averted his face. “You are avoiding the big trials, are you not?”

“Come here.” Danton put out a hand to him. Camille pretended not to see it. “I’m sick of the city,” Danton said. “I’m sick of people. Why don’t you come with me, get a change of air?” He thought, I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him to Robespierre and that rarefied climate of perpetual chill.

“I’ll write to you,” Camille said. He crossed the room, touched his lips to Danton’s cheekbone. It felt like the least that could be done.

It was late when they reached Arcis, and growing cold. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he felt the power draining from the sun, the soil losing its summer warmth. He put out an arm for Louise. “Here,” he said. “Here is where I was born.”

Pulling her traveling cape about her, she looked up wonderingly at the manor house, at the milky darkness rolling in from the river. “No, not here,” he said. “Not in this very house. But close by. Come now,” he said to the children. “You’ve come to your grandmother. You remember?”

Silly question. Somehow Georges always thinks his children are older than they are, he expects them to have long memories. François-Georges was a year old when his mother died; now, a big tough baby, he clung to his stepmother and lashed his heels about her fragile rib cage. Antoine, limp and exhausted by the excitement, hung around his father’s neck like a child fetched up from a shipwreck.

Anne-Madeleine’s husband held a torch high. And there she was—it was Louise’s first sight of these alarming sisters—running and tripping over her feet, like some schoolgirl. “Georges, Georges, my brother Georges!” She hurled herself at him. His arm encircled her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, kissed him on both cheeks, broke away and scooped up the nearest of her children and held up the little boy for inspection. This was Anne-Madeleine, who had pulled him out from under the bull’s feet.

And here was Marie-Cécile; her convent had dispersed, she was home, she was where she should be: didn’t he say he’d look after her? She still had her nun’s deportment; she tried to fold her hands away in the sleeves of a habit she no longer wore. And here was Pierrette, tall, smiling, full-faced, a spinster more matronly than most of the mothers of Paris. Anne-Madeleine’s latest baby dribbled onto her shoulder. They surrounded Louise and squeezed her; they felt, as they did so, the ghost promise of Gabrielle’s opulent flesh. “My little dove!” they said, laughing. “You are so young!”

They dived away, the sisters, into the kitchen. “Bleak little thing! So duty-ridden! No breasts at all!”

“Didn’t you think he’d bring that Lucile-thing? That black-eyed girl? That he’d detach her from her black-eyed husband?”

“No, that evil pair, they were born for each other.” The sisters fell about, laughing. The visit of the Desmoulinses had been one of the high points of their lives; they couldn’t wait for them to come back again, creating a similar metropolitan frisson.

They began to play out the scene taking place between Georges-Jacques and their mother. “It’s a comfort,” croaked Marie-Cécile, “to see you again before I die.”

“Die?” Anne-Madeleine said. “You old fraud, you’ll not die. You’ll outlive me, I swear it.”

“And how Georges-Jacques does swear!” said Pierrette. “How he does! Do you think he’s fallen into bad company?”

In the parlor of the manor house, Mme. Recordain’s blue eyes were sparkling into the dusk. “Come in from the night air, daughter. Sit here by me.” Diagnostic fingers studded themselves into her waist. Two months! And not pregnant! The Italian girl, who was dead, did her duty by Georges-Jacques—now we have one of these skimpy Parisiennes on our hands.

As if fearing that this examination might be taking place, the sisters came surging out from somewhere in the depth of the house. They swarmed about their brother, proposing various kinds of food he might eat, patting his head and making family jokes-soft-bodied country-women, in their strange, dowdy, practical clothes.

“It might be better if you were the one to uncover it.” Fabre had not heard Lucile say this, but it was his own thought. On the day Danton left Paris he sat alone in his apartment, fighting his desire to shriek and smash and hammer the walls, like a bad child to whom promises have been broken. He took up again the brief, polite noncommittal note that Danton had sent around before his departure; he tore it into tiny strips and burned it shred by shred.

After a tiring and disputatious meeting of the Jacobin Club, he intercepted Robespierre and Saint-Just as they walked side by side from the hall. Saint-Just did not attend assiduously at the evening meetings; he thought the sessions pointless, though he did not say so, and to himself he called the members opinion mongers. He was not much interested in anyone’s opinions. In a few days he would be in Alsace, with the armies. He was looking forward to it.

“Citizens.” Fabre beckoned. “Word with you?”

The irritation on Saint-Just’s face deepened. Robespierre thought of the pretty new calendar, and fetched up a wintery smile.

“Please?” Fabre said. “Something of extreme importance. Would you grant me a private interview?”

“Is it a lengthy matter?” Robespierre asked politely.

“Now look, Fabre,” Saint-Just said, “we’re busy.” Robespierre had to smile again at young Antoine’s tone: Max is my friend and we’re not playing with you. He half-expected that Fabre would step back a pace and survey Saint-Just through his lorgnette. But that didn’t happen; pale, clumsily urgent, Fabre solicited his attention. Saint-Just’s rudeness had thrown him off balance. “I have to see the Committee,” he said. “This is business for them.”

“Then don’t shout about it.”

“Only conspirators whisper.” Seeing his chance, Fabre recovered suddenly into a grand resonance. “Soon the whole Republic must know my news.”

Saint-Just looked at him with distaste. “We are not on the stage,” he observed.

Robespierre darted a glance at Saint-Just, rather shocked. “You’re right, Fabre. If your news concerns the Republic, it must be broadcast.” At the same time, he looked around swiftly to see who had heard.

“It is a matter of public safety.”

“Then he must come to the Committee.”

“No,” Saint-Just said. “Tonight’s agenda will keep us working till dawn. There is no single item that is not a matter of extreme urgency. There is nothing that can be postponed, and I, Citizen Fabre, have to be at my desk by nine tomorrow.”

Fabre ignored him, and took Robespierre by the arm. “I have to reveal a conspiracy.” Robespierre’s eyes widened. “However, it will not mature overnight—if we move with energy tomorrow, there will be time enough. Young Citizen Saint-Just needs his rest. He is not accustomed to watching late, like we elder patriots.”

It was a mistake. Robespierre looked at him icily. “I happen to be informed, Citizen Fabre, that most of your watching late is done in a gambling house whose existence is unknown to the patriots of the Commune, in the company of Citizen Desmoulins’s winning streak and several women of dubious reputation.”

“For the love of God,” Fabre said, “take me seriously.”

Robespierre considered him. “Is it a complicated conspiracy?”

“Its ramifications are enormous.”

“Very well. Citizen Saint-Just and myself meet tomorrow with the Committee of General Security.”

“I know.”

“Will that be suitable?”

“The Police Committee will be most suitable. It will expedite matters.”

“I see. We meet at—”

“I know.”

“I see. Good night.”

Saint-Just shifted from foot to foot. “Robespierre, you’re expected. The Committee will be waiting.”

“They will not, I hope,” Robespierre said. “They will be getting on with the business, I hope. No one should be waited for. No one is indispensable.” But he followed.

“The man is untrustworthy,” Saint-Just said. “He is theatrical. He is hysterical. I have no doubt that this conspiracy is a figment of his too-active imagination.”

“He is a friend of Danton’s and a proven patriot,” Robespierre corrected snappily. “He is a great poet.” He brooded as they walked. “I am inclined to credit what he says. He was very white in the face, and he had not his lorgnette.”

It seemed, it seemed all too credible. Taut, quiet, motionless, his hands palm down on the table, Robespierre took over the interrogation. He had moved from a corner of the table to a place directly opposite Fabre, and the committeemen, moving fast, had clumsily scraped their chairs out of his way; now they sat silent, skipping to the beat of his intuitions. He would ask sharply for Fabre to stop; he would make a note, and then wiping his pen and putting it aside deliberately he would spread out his fingers on the tabletop and glance up at Fabre to indicate that he should begin again.

Fabre slumped in his chair. “And when,” he said, “within a month, Chabot comes to you and says, there is a plot, I hope you will remember who first gave you these names.”

“You,” Robespierre said, “shall interrogate him.”

Fabre swallowed. “Citizen,” he said, “I am very sorry to be the agent of your disillusionment. You must have believed many of these people to be staunch patriots?”

“I?” Robespierre looked up with a small joyless smile. “I already have the names of these foreigners in my notebooks. Anyone may see them. That they were corrupt and dangerous I was well aware, but now you speak to me of systematic conspiracy, of money from Pitt—do you think I don’t see it clearly, and more clearly than any of you do? The economic sabotage, the extremist policies which they advocate at the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, the blasphemous, intolerant attacks on the Christian religion, which disturb the good people and turn them away from the new order—do you think I suppose these things are not related?”

“No,” Fabre said. “No, I should have realized that you would make the connection for yourself. You intend to order arrests?”

“I think not.” Robespierre looked around the table, expecting no contradiction. “As we are fully aware of their maneuvers now, we can afford to let them exhaust themselves in their labors for a week or two.” He glanced around again. “In that way we will discover all their accomplices. We will purify the Revolution once and for all. Have you heard enough?” One or two people nodded, their faces strained, at a loss. “I haven’t, but we won’t take up any more of your time.” He stood up, tapping his papers together with his fingertips. “Come,” he said to Fabre.

“Come?” Fabre said stupidly.

Robespierre motioned with his head towards the door. Fabre got up and followed him. He felt weak and shaky. Robespierre turned into a small room, barely furnished, rather like the one they had occupied on the day of the late riot.

“Do you often work in here?”

“As occasion demands. I like to have somewhere private. You can sit down, it’s not dusty.”

Fabre saw an army of locksmiths, window cleaners, old women with brooms, scouring the attics and cellars of public buildings to make clean hiding places for Robespierre. “Leave the door open,” Robespierre said, “as a precaution against eavesdroppers.” He tossed his notes onto the table; Fabre thought, that’s an acquired gesture, he got that from Camille. “You seem nervous,” Robespierre commented.

“What—I mean, what more would you like me to tell you?”

“Just whatever you like.” Robespierre was accommodating. “Minor points we could clear up now. The real names of the brothers Frei.”

“Emmanuel Dobruska. Siegmund Gotleb.”

“I’m not surprised they changed them, are you?”

“Why didn’t you ask me in front of the others?”

Robespierre ignored him. “This man Proli, Hérault’s secretary, we see him at the Jacobins. Some people say that he is the natural son of Chancellor Kaunitz of Austria. Is that true?”

“Yes. Well, quite possibly.”

“Hérault is an anomaly. He’s an aristocrat by birth, yet he is never attacked by Hébert.” Hérault, Fabre thinks: and his mind drifts back—as it tends to, these days—to the Café du Foy. He’d been giving readings from his latest—Augusta was dying the death at the Italiens—and in came this huge, rough-looking boy, shoe-horned into a lawyer’s black suit, whom he’d made a sketch of in the street, ten years before. The boy had developed this upper-class drawl, and he’d talked about Hérault—“his looks are impeccable, he’s well traveled, he’s pursued by all the ladies at Court”—and beside Danton had been this fey wide-eyed egotist who had turned out to be half the city’s extramarital interest. The years pass … plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose … “Fabre, are you with me?” said Robespierre.

“Oh, very much so.”

Robespierre leaned forward and plaited his fingers together; and Fabre, dragged up from the deeps of ’87, ’88, began to sweat. He heard what Robespierre was saying, and it was enough to chill the blood. “As Hérault is never attacked by Hébert, I feel they must have a common allegiance. Hébert’s people are not just misguided fanatics—they are in touch with all these foreign elements you denounce. The object of their violent speeches and actions is to produce fear and disgust. They set out to make the Revolution appear ridiculous, and to destroy its credibility.”

“Yes,” Fabre looked away. “I understand that.”

“Hand in hand with this go the attempts to discredit great patriots. For example, the allegations against Danton.”

“It is clear,” Fabre said.

“One wonders why such conspirators should approach you.”

Fabre shook his head: wonderingly, glumly. “They have already met with some success, in the very heart of the Mountain. I suppose it encourages them. Chabot, Julien … all trusted men. Naturally, when these are examined, they will claim I’m implicated.”

“Our orders to you,” Robespierre put his fingertips together, “are to keep a careful eye on those people you’ve named—especially those you suspect of economic crimes.”

“Yes,” Fabre said. “Er—whose orders?”

Robespierre looked up, surprised. “The Committee’s.”

“Of course. I should have known you spoke for all.” Fabre leaned forward. “Citizen, I beg you not to be taken in by anything Chabot says. He and his friends are very glib and plausible.”

“You think I’m a complete fool, do you, Fabre?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You may go now.”

“Thank you. Trust me. Over the next month you’ll see everything come to fruition”

Robespierre dismissed him with a wave of his hand, as thoughtlessly peremptory as any anointed despot. Outside the door Fabre took out a silk handkerchief and dabbed his face. It had been the most unpleasant morning of his life—if you excepted the morning in 1777 when he’d been sentenced to hang—and yet in another way it had been easier than he’d expected. Robespierre had swallowed every suggestion, as if they merely confirmed conclusions he had already reached. “This foreign plot,” he’d kept saying. Clearly he was interested in the politics, and hardly at all in the East India Company. And will it, as he promised, come to fruition? Oh yes: because you can rely on Hébert to rant, on Chabot to cheat and lie and steal, on Chaumette to harass priests and close down churches—and now, every time they speak they’ll condemn themselves out of their own mouths; all these separate strands he sees as knotted together in conspiracy, and who knows, perhaps they are, perhaps they are. A pity he suspects Hérault. I could warn him, but what use? Life anyway is so precarious for the ci-devants, perhaps his days were already numbered.

And the main thing is this—he trusts Danton. I’m Danton’s man. And so perhaps I’ve cleared myself. By telling him what he wants to hear.

Saint-Just smiled when he saw him. I’m in favor, he thought. Then he noticed the expression in his eyes. “Is Robespierre in there?”

“Yes, yes, I’ve just come from him.”

Saint-Just shouldered past. He had to flatten himself against the wall. “Leave the door open as a precaution against eavesdroppers,” he called. Saint-Just slammed it behind him. Fabre began to hum. He was working on a new play called The Maltese Orange, and it suddenly came to him that he might turn it into an operetta.

Inside the room Robespierre looked up. “I thought you were getting ready for your trip to the frontier?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What do you think?”

“Of Fabre’s plot? It fits all your preconceived ideas. I wonder if he knows that?”

Robespierre bridled. “You cast doubt on it?”

“Any pretext,” Saint-Just said, “will do to rid us of foreigners and speculators and Hébertists. As long as you bear in mind that Fabre himself is unlikely to be free from blame.”

“So you don’t trust him.”

Saint-Just laughed; as much as he ever did laugh. “The man’s old in deception. You’re aware that he calls himself ‘d’Églantine’ in commemoration of a literary prize from the Academy of Toulouse?” Robespierre nodded. “In the year when he claims to have taken the prize, no prize was awarded.”

“I see.” Robespierre looked away: a delicate, sly, sidelong glance. “You could not be mistaken?”

Saint-Just flushed. “Of course not. I’ve inquired. I’ve checked the records.”

“No doubt,” Robespierre said meekly, “he thought he ought to have won the prize. No doubt he thought he had been cheated.”

“The man’s founded his whole life on a lie!”

“Perhaps more a self-delusion.” Robespierre smiled distantly. “After all, despite what I said, he’s not a great poet. Just a mediocre one. This is petty, Saint-Just. How much time have you wasted on it?” The satisfaction wiped itself out of Saint-Just’s face. “You know,” Robespierre went on, “I’d have liked to win one of those literary prizes myself—something distinguished, not local stuff—Toulouse or somewhere.”

“But those prizes were institutions of the old regime.” Saint-Just sounded hurt. “That’s done with, finished. It’s from before the Revolution.”

“There was such a time, you know.”

“You are too much wedded to the manners and appearances of the old regime.”

“That,” Robespierre said, “is a very serious accusation.”

Saint-Just looked as if he would rather back down. Robespierre rose from his chair. He was the shorter by perhaps six inches. “Do you wish to replace me, with someone more thoroughly revolutionary?”

“I have no such thought, I protest.”

“I feel you wish to replace me.”

“This is a mistake.”

“If you attempt to replace me, I will look for your part in this plot and I will demand your head in the Convention.”

Saint-Just raised his eyebrows. “You are deluded,” he said. “I am going to the armies.”

Robespierre’s voice reached out to him as he crashed out of the room: “I’ve known about Fabre’s prize for years. Camille told me. We laughed about it. What does it matter? Am I the only one who knows what matters? Am I the only one with any sense of proportion at all?”

Maximilien Robespierre: “Over the last two years, 100,000 men have been slain as a result of treason and weakness; it is our feeble attitude towards traitors that is our undoing.”

The Palais de Justice: “You seem unhappy, cousin,” Camille said.

Fouquier-Tinville shrugged. His dark face was morose. “We’ve been in court for eighteen hours. Yesterday we started at eight in the morning and finished at eleven at night. It is tiring.”

“Imagine what it’s like for the prisoner.”

“I really can’t imagine that,” the Public Prosecutor said truthfully. “Is it a fine night?” he asked. “I could do with some fresh air.”

He had no feelings, one way or the other, about trying women on capital charges; he was sensitive, however, to the questions it raised in some minds. The guillotine allowed some dignity in death; the ordeal came beforehand. He liked his prisoners in better condition than this one—scruffy, in need of medical attention. He had organized a man to stand by and fetch her glasses of water, but so far water had not been needed, and neither had the smelling salts. It was after midnight now; a jury retiring at this hour was unlikely to agonize over their verdict.

“Hébert, yesterday,” he said abruptly. “Terrible mess. What he has to do with it, why I had to call him, God knows. I take a pride in my work. I’m a family man—I don’t want to hear that sort of thing. The woman showed dignity in her replies. She got sympathy from the crowd.”

Hébert had alleged yesterday that, in addition to her other crimes, the woman prisoner had sexually abused her nine-year-old son; that she had taken him into bed beside her, and taught him to masturbate. His guardians had caught him at it, Hébert said, and—tut-tut, where did you learn such behavior? Mama taught me, said the shifty, frightened little boy. Hébert adduced documentary evidence—the child had freely signed a statement about it. The child’s writing—the ancient, wavering hand—had given Citizen Fouquier a moment’s disquiet. “One has children oneself,” he murmured. Citizen Robespierre had done more than murmur. “That fool Hébert!” he said, enraged. “Has any more unlikely allegation come before a court in our lifetime? Depend on it—he’ll save the woman yet.”

I wonder, Fouquier thought, what sort of a lawyer was Citizen Robespierre, when he practiced? A bleeding heart, I’ll be bound.

He was turning back to his cousin when President Hermann appeared, crossing the hall from the darkness into the pool of candlelight that bathed the lawyers, the prisoner’s chair and the empty place where the witnesses stood. The president held up one finger for Fouquier to follow him.

“Have a word with Chauveau-Lagarde,” Fouquier said. “Poor devil, he defended the Marat girl too. I doubt his career will ever recover.”

Lagarde looked up. “Camille—what are you doing here? I wouldn’t be here if I could be anywhere else.” Still, he was glad to see him. He was tired of trying to talk to his client. She was not forthcoming.

“Where else should I be? Some of us have waited a long time for this day.”

“Yes—well, if it suits you.”

“I should think it suits us all to see treason punished.”

“You’re pre-judging. The jury is still out.”

“There’s no chance the Republic will lose this case,” Camille said. He smiled. “They do give you all the best jobs, don’t they?”

“No lawyer in Paris has more experience of impossible defenses.” Lagarde was twenty-eight years old; he tried to put the best face on things. “I asked for mercy,” he said. “What else could I do? She was accused of being what she was. She was charged with having existed. There was no defense to the charges. Even if there had been—they gave me the indictment on Sunday night, and said you’re in court tomorrow morning. I asked your cousin for three days. No chance. When her husband was tried, those were more leisurely times. And when she goes to her death, she’ll go in a cart.”

“The closed carriage was somewhat undemocratic, I feel. This is something the people have a right to see.”

Lagarde looked at him sideways. “Hard bastards they breed in your part of the country.” Yet one could understand them, he thought, one could find them—it was a sign of the times—quite reassuring: deadpan Fouquier, lawyer’s lawyer, and his volatile, highly placed relative who had got him the job. One could find them preferable to some of the Republic’s servants—preferable to Hébert, with his obscene mouthings, his maggot whiteness. There had been times during yesterday’s session when he had felt physically sick.

“I know who you’re thinking of,” Camille said. “That expression commonly crosses people’s faces. I suspect that Hébert has laid his paws on War Office money, and if I find the proof he’ll be one of your next big clients.”

Fouquier hurried over. “The jury is returning,” he said. “My commiserations in advance, Lagarde.”

The prisoner was helped across the hall to her chair. One moment she was in darkness; the next moment, light struck her lined and shattered face.

“She seems old,” Camille said. “She seems hardly able to see where she’s going. I didn’t know her eyesight was so poor.”

“I can hardly be blamed for that,” the Public Prosecutor said. “Though no doubt,” he added with foresight, “when I am dead, people will blame me for it. Excuse me, cousin, please.”

The verdict was unanimous. Leaning forward, Hermann asked the prisoner if she had anything to say. The former Queen of France shook her head. Her fingers moved impatiently on the arm of her chair. Hermann pronounced the death sentence.

The court rose. Guards moved forward to take the prisoner out. Fouquier didn’t watch her go. His cousin hurried to help him with his pile of papers. “Easy day tomorrow,” Fouquier said. “Here, take these. Somehow you’d think that the Public Prosecutor would have a clerk available.”

Hermann nodded civilly to Camille, and Fouquier bade the president good night. Camille’s eyes were on the widow Capet’s shuffling withdrawal. “It hardly seems much, really, to be the summit of our ambitions. Cutting some dreary woman’s head off.”

“I swear you are changeable, Camille. I’ve never known you to give the Austrian a good word. Come. I usually preserve my dignity in my official carriage, but I need some air. Unless you are reporting to Robespierre?”

He was always proud of his cousin, when they were together in public. Especially when he saw him with Danton—he noted those private allusions they shared, the jokes, the sidelong glances, and he saw, as often as not, Danton’s beefy arm draped around his cousin, or his cousin in some late-night public assembly close his dangerous eyes and lean comfortably against Danton’s shoulder. With Robespierre, of course, it was not like that. Robespierre almost never touched anyone. His face was distant, aloof. But Camille could conjure onto it an expression of lively amiability; they shared memories, and possibly too they shared private jokes. People said—though this felt like a heresy—that they had seen Camille make Robespierre laugh.

Now his cousin shook his head. “Robespierre will be asleep now. Unless the committee is still sitting. It’s not as if there was any chance of your losing, is it?”

“God forbid.” Fouquier put his arm into his cousin’s, and they stepped out into the frosty early hours. A policeman saluted them. “The next big one is Brissot—and all of that crew we’ve managed to lay hold of. I base my prosecution on your writings—your ‘Secret History,’ and the other article you wrote about Brissot after you had that row about your gambling case. Good stuff: I’ll lift some of your phrases if you don’t mind. I hope you’ll be in court to take the credit.”

Think now of those post-Bastille days: Brissot in Camille’s office, perched on the desk. Théroigne swishing in and planting a big kiss on his dry cheek. He was my friend, Camille thinks; then along came the gambling case, and we were suddenly on opposite sides, he made it personal, and I can’t stand criticism. He knows this about himself; he either flares up or folds up, he takes some kind of offensive or—or what? “Antoine,” he says to his cousin, “I seem to know all forms of attack. But I seem to know no forms of defense at all.”

“Come now,” the Prosecutor said. He did not understand in the least what his cousin was talking about, but that was nothing new. He put out a hand, ruffled his cousin’s hair. Camille flicked his head away as if a wasp had touched him. Fouquier took it quietly. He was in a good humor—looking forward to the bottle of wine he had promised himself when it was all over; he tried not to drink during the big cases. He felt, however, that sleep might elude him: or bring his nightmares back. Perhaps his cousin, with whom he really spent too little time, would like to sit up and talk. For two boys from the provinces, he thought, we are doing extremely well these days.

Soon after eleven the next morning Henri Sanson entered her cell for the preparations. He was the son of the man who had executed her husband. She wore a white dress, a light shawl, black stockings and a pair of high-heeled plum-colored shoes, which during her imprisonment she had carefully preserved. The executioner tied her hands behind her back and cut off the hair which, according to her maid, she had thought it proper to “dress high” to meet her judge and jury. She did not move, and Sanson did not allow the steel to touch her neck. Within a few seconds the long tresses, once the color of honey and now streaked coarsely with gray, lay on the floor of the cell. He scooped them up to be burned.

The tumbrel waited in the courtyard. It was an ordinary cart, once used for carrying wood, now with planks across it for seats. At the sight of it, she lost her composure; she gaped in fear, but she did not cry out. She asked the executioner to untie her hands for a moment, and when he did so she squatted in a corner, by a wall, and urinated. Her hands were tied again, and she was put into the cart. Under the shorn hair and the plain white cap, her tired eyes searched for pity in the faces around her. The journey to the place of execution lasted for an hour. She did not speak. As she mounted the steps, paid, indifferent hands kept her balanced. Her body began to shake, her limbs to give way. In her blindness and terror, she stepped on the executioner’s foot. “I beg your pardon, Monsieur,” she whispered. “I did not mean to do it.” A few minutes after noon her head was off: “the greatest joy of all the joys experienced by Père Duchesne.”