A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 11

The Old Cordeliers

Another diary finished: not one of the red books, but one of the little insignificant brown ones. The early works are a feast of embarrassment, Lucile thought; she had taken to ripping the pages out, to burning them, and because of this the books were falling apart.

Nowadays, what she put in the official diaries—as she thought of them—was very different from what went into the brown notebooks. The tone of the official diaries became more and more anodyne, with the occasional thoughtful or striking passage to titillate or mislead. The private diaries were for dark, precise thoughts: unpalatable thoughts, recorded in a minute hand. When one book was finished she sealed it up in a packet, breaking the seal only to place another one beside it, perhaps a year later.

On a chilly, misty day, footfalls muffled in the streets, the great buildings distant and shimmering, she went into Saint-Sulpice, to the High Altar where she had been married three years before. On the wall letters in red paint told her THIS IS A NATIONAL BUILDING: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, OR DEATH. The Virgin held in her arms a headless child, and her face was battered beyond recognition.

Perhaps if I had not met Camille, she thought, I could have had an ordinary kind of life. No one would have encouraged my fantasies. No one would have taught me to think. When I was eleven, all the possibilities of being ordinary stretched out in front of me. When I was twelve, Camille came to the house. I was committed to him the first time I saw him.

Her life is rewriting itself for her; she believes this.

At the apartment Camille was working in a bad light. He was living on alcohol and sleeping three hours a night. “You’ll ruin your eyes,” she said automatically.

“They’re ruined already.” He put his pen down. “Look, a newspaper.”

“So you are going to do it.”

“I think I must call it more a series of pamphlets, as I shall be the sole author. Desenne is going to print for me. In the first issue—here—I just talk about the British government. I shall point out that, after Robespierre’s recent speech in praise of Danton, anyone who criticizes Danton gives a public receipt for the guineas of Mr. Pitt.” He stopped to write down the last phrase. “It will not really be controversial, but it will be another setback to Danton’s detractors, and it will prepare the way for an appeal for mercy in the courts and the release of some of the suspects.”

“But Camille, do you dare do that?”

“Of course, if I have Danton and Robespierre to back me. Don’t you think?”

She put her hands together. “If they are in agreement,” she said. She had not told him that Fouquier had called.

“They are,” he said calmly. “Only Robespierre is cautious, he needs pushing on a bit.”

“What did he say to you about the Barnave affair?”

“There wasn’t a ‘Barnave affair.’ I went to say good-bye to him. I didn’t think he should have been executed. I told him so.” That was what Fouquier escaped hearing, she thought. “Not that it did him much good for me to absolve him, but it did me good to be forgiven, for whatever part I had in bringing him there.”

“But what did Max say?”

“I think he understood. It wasn’t really his business, was it? I met Barnave at my cousin de Viefville’s apartment in Versailles. I hardly spoke with him, but he took notice of me, as if he thought he would see me again. That night I decided to go to Mirabeau.” He closed his eyes. “The print order is 50,000.”

In the afternoon Louise came. She was lonely, though she didn’t admit it. She didn’t want her mother’s company, which was forced on her if she stayed at home. Angélique had taken the children for a few days; in her absence, and especially when her husband was not in the house, she would become once again a shy girl darting up and down the stairs. Danton’s answer to her lack of occupation was, “Go and spend some money.” But there was nothing she wanted for herself, and she hesitated to make any changes in the apartment. She did not trust her taste; besides, she thought that her husband might prefer Gabrielle’s arrangements left as they were.

A year, eighteen months before, she would have been taken as Danton’s wife to the afternoon salons with their mordant gossip, to sit stiffly among the wives of ministers and Paris deputies, self-possessed women of thirty and thirty-five who had read all the latest books and discussed their husband’s love affairs with drawling boredom. But that had not been Gabrielle’s way; and there was enough of a battle of wits with the visitors she did receive. Either she was tongue-tied, or far too forthright. The things they talked about seemed so trivial that she was convinced that they must have a double meaning to which she was not privy. She had no choice but to join their game; in consideration of her status they had tossed her a book of rules, but they had left her to read it by flashes of lightning.

So—and she could not have predicted this—the apartment round the corner was the most comforting place to be. These days Citizeness Desmoulins kept to her family and a few close friends; she could not be bothered with the stupidities of society, she said. Louise sat in her drawing room day by day, trying to reconstruct the recent past from hints that came her way. Lucile never asked personal questions; herself, she didn’t know any other kind to ask. Sometimes they talked about Gabrielle: softly, naturally, as if she were still alive.

Today Louise said, “You’re very gloomy.”

“I have to finish writing this,” Lucile said. “Then I’ll be with you and we’ll try to cheer up.”

Louise played for a while with the baby, a doll-like creature who could not possibly have been Danton’s child. He talked a lot now—mostly in a meaningless language, as if he knew he were a politician’s child. When he was taken away to sleep, she picked up her guitar and fingered it softly. She scowled. “I don’t think I have any talent,” she said to Lucile.

“You should concentrate when you are playing, and do the easier pieces. But I cannot preach, as I never practice.”

“No, you never do now. You used to go to art exhibitions and concerts in the afternoon, but now you only sit and read and write letters. Who do you write to?”

“Oh, several people. I have a great correspondence with Citizen Fréron, our old family friend.”

Louise was on the alert. “Very fond of him, aren’t you?”

Lucile seemed amused. “More so when he’s away.”

“Would you marry him, if Camille died?”

“He’s married already.”

“He’d get a divorce, I expect. Or his wife might die.”

“That would be altogether too much of a coincidence. What is all this about dying?”

“There are hundreds of diseases. You can never tell.”

“I used to think that. When I was first married, and everything frightened me.”

“But you would not stay a widow, would you?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Camille wouldn’t want that, surely?”

“I don’t know why you think he wouldn’t. He is very egotistical.”

“If you died, he’d remarry.”

“Within the week,” Lucile agreed. “If my father died too. In your scheme of things, with people passing away in pairs, that would be quite likely.”

“There must be other men you would like enough to marry.”

“I can’t think of any. Unless Georges.”

That was how she ended conversations, when she thought Louise had probed too far—reminding her with a neat brutality of where they stood. She did not enjoy it; but she knew that other people had less scruple. Louise sat gazing into the ruins of the year, in the shifting gray and blue light, trying out pieces that were too difficult for her. Camille was working. The only sounds in the apartment were the dissonant chords and broken notes.

At four o’clock he came in with a stack of papers. He sat on the floor in front of the fire. Lucile gathered up the papers and began to read. After a while she looked up. “It’s very good,” she said shyly. “I think it’s going to be the best thing you’ve done.”

“Do you want to read it, little Louise?” he asked. “It says nice things about your husband.”

“I like to take an interest in politics, but he doesn’t want me to.”

“Perhaps,” he said, exasperated, “he wouldn’t mind if your interest were an informed one. It’s your silly, vulgar prejudices he doesn’t want to hear.”

“Camille,” Lolotte said softly, “she’s a child. How do you expect her to know things?”

At five o’clock Robespierre came. He said, “How are you, Citizeness Danton?” as if she were a grown-up person. He kissed Lucile on the cheek and patted Camille on the head. The baby was brought; he held him up and said, “How goes it, godson?”

“Don’t ask him,” Camille said. “He makes five-hour speeches, like Necker used to do, and they’re just as incomprehensible.”

“Oh I don’t know.” Robespierre held the little boy against his shoulder. “He doesn’t look like a banker to me. Is he going to be an ornament of the Paris Bar?”

“A poet,” Camille decided. “Live in the country. Generally have a very nice time.”

“Probably,” Robespierre said. “I doubt his boring old godfather will manage to keep him on the straight and narrow.” He handed the child over to his father. He was all business now, sitting in his upright way in a chair by the fire. “When the proofs are ready, tell Desenne to send them straight round to me. I’d read it in manuscript but I detest wrestling with your handwriting.”

“You must correct the proofs then, or it will all take too long. Don’t mess about with my punctuation.”

“Ah, Camille d’Églantine,” Robespierre said mockingly. “No one is going to be interested in the punctuation, only in the content.”

“It is easy to see why you will never win a literary prize.”

“I thought you were heart and soul in this new paper, I thought you felt passionately?”

“I do feel passionately, and about punctuation too.”

“When will the second issue be out?”

“It will be every five days, I hope—December 5, 10, ci-devant Christmas, so on—till the job is done.”

Robespierre hesitated for a moment. “But show me everything, won’t you? Because I don’t want you attributing to me things I haven’t said, and foisting on me opinions I don’t hold.”

“Would I do that?”

“You would, and you do. Look at your baby, turning his eyes on you. He knows your true character. What are you going to call it?”

“I thought the ‘Old Cordelier.’ It was a phrase Georges-Jacques used. ‘We old Cordeliers,’ he said.”

“Yes, I like that. You see,” he said, turning to the women, “it puts the new Cordeliers—Hébert’s people—neatly in their place. The new Cordeliers don’t represent anything, they don’t stand for anything—they just oppose and criticize what other people do, and try to destroy it. But the Old Cordeliers—they knew what kind of revolution they wanted, and they took risks to get it. Those early days, they didn’t seem so heroic at the time, but they do looking back.”

“Was it in those days they used to call you ‘The Candle of Arras,’ Citizen Robespierre?”

“In those days!” Robespierre said. “The child talks as if it were in the reign of Louis XIV. I suppose your husband told you about that?”

“Oh yes—I don’t know anything by myself.”

Camille and his wife exchanged glances: strangle her now, or later?

“It’s quite true,” Robespierre said. “It was because they called Mirabeau ‘The Torch of Provence.’ The idea was,” he added remorselessly, “to bring home to me my own insignificance.”

“Yes. He explained that. Why do you think then that those days were heroic?”

“Why do you think that all heroes are people who make a great stir in the world?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose, because of books.”

“Someone should direct your reading.”

“Oh, she is a married woman,” Camille said. “She is beyond education.”

“I see you don’t like to be reminded of it,” Louise said. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to give offense.”

Robespierre smiled, shook his head. But he turned away from her: no time for this little girl now. “Camille, remember what I say. Go carefully. We can’t take any power from the Tribunal. If we do, and there are any reverses in the war, it will be like September again. The people will take the law into their own hands, and we’ve seen that, and it’s not pleasant. The government must be strong, it can’t be tentative—otherwise, what are the patriots at the front to think? A strong army deserves a strong government behind it. We must aim at unity. Force can overturn a throne, but only prudence can maintain a republic.”

Camille nodded, recognizing the unclothed bones of a speech to come. He felt guilty, about laughing at Max and saying he wanted to be God; he wasn’t God, God’s not so vulnerable.

Max left. Camille said, “I feel like an egg in a dog’s mouth.” He looked up at Louise. “I hope you are sufficiently reproved? Otherwise, please go home to your husband, and tell him to beat you.”

“Oh dear,” Louise said. “I thought it was all in the past.”

“One doesn’t really forget. Not that kind of thing.”

Danton came in a few minutes later. “Ah, the Old Cordelier himself,” Lucile said.

“There you are,” he said to his wife. “Have I just missed our friend?”

“You know damn well you have,” Camille said. “You must have skulked in a doorway till you saw him go.”

“We work together better when we’re apart.” He collapsed into a chair, stretched his legs, regarded Camille. “What’s so worrying?” he asked him abruptly.

“Oh … he keeps telling me to go carefully, as if—as if, I mustn’t do anything he wouldn’t do himself, but he won’t tell me what it is he would do.”

Camille was still sitting on the floor, and now Lucile was kneeling beside him: their flattering, wide-eyed attention fixed on Georges-Jacques, and the baby rolling about between them. Really, Louise thought, hating them, it’s as if they’re always waiting for somebody to come along with a crayon and a sketching block. When you think of her with her string of lovers … It’s sickening, how easy they find it to put on their act. Camille was saying, “Max doesn’t like to be cornered with an untried opinion. But there you are—some risks have to be taken. I don’t mind if I’m the first to take them. Would that count as a heroic sentiment, Louise?”

She spoke sharply: “Hero’s your vocation, isn’t it?”

So everybody laughed, at Camille.

December 5: “To the Old Cordeliers.” Fabre raised his glass. His face was hollow and flushed. “May the second issue prosper like the first.”

“Thank you.” Camille actually looked modest; at least he lowered his head and dropped his eyes, which is the outward sign of the inward grace. “I didn’t expect it to be so successful. As if people were waiting for it … I feel quite overwhelmed by the public support.”

Deputy Phillippeaux—one of these mystery deputies who are always on mission, whom he hardly knew until last week—leaned forward and patted his hand. “It’s wonderful, that’s why! It—well, you know, I’ve written my own pamphlet, but I feel that if you’d seen the things I’ve seen, you’d have done it so much better. You can”—the deputy touched his elegant cravat—“you can move the heart, I can only appeal to the conscience. Slaughter is what I’ve seen, you know?” Strong language didn’t come easily to him. He’d sat with the Plain, not the Mountain, and carefully trimmed his opinions, until now.

“Oh, slaughter,” Fabre said. “Our boy couldn’t stand it. One Brissotin with a small dagger hidden in his defense papers, that’s enough for him. He couldn’t take an atrocity, I’m afraid. Faints, I fear. Gracefully, mind.”

Amazing, how resilient Fabre is. Camille too. A small part of him feels like lead; the rest of him is ready for the fray, making the most of his capacity to drive people to a finger-twitching fury, or into a long, swooning, sentimental decline from sense. He feels light, very young. The artist Hubert Robert (whose specialty, unfortunately, is picturesque ruins) is always on his heels these days; the artist Boze is constantly giving him hard looks, and occasionally walks over to him and with unfeeling artist hands pulls his hair about. In his worse moods he thinks—get ready to be immortalized.

The main thing is, the constraints have come off style. What we are saying now is that the Revolution does not proceed in a pitiless, forward direction, its politics and its language becoming ever more gross and simplistic: the Revolution is always flexible, subtle, elegant. Mirabeau said: “Liberty’s a bitch who likes to be fucked on a mattress of corpses.” He knows this is true: but he will find some gentler way of presenting it to his reader.

He could be himself now … that is to say, as different from Hébert as one could imagine. He need make no concession to street language, he need not rant, he need not present himself as Marat’s heir; though still he thought of Simone’s plump body slumped in his arms, and of the fashion plate who killed his friend. Forget Marat, and the black distress he bred; he’s going to create a new, Ultima Thule atmosphere, very plain, very bright, every word translucent, smooth. The air of Paris is like dried blood; he will (with Robespierre’s permission and approval) make us feel that we breathe ice, silk and wine.

“By the way,” Deputy Philippeaux said, “did you know that de Sade has been arrested?”

“Deputy Philippeaux, Deputy Philipeaux,” Robespierre said. “Returning from mission, he attacks the conduct of the war. The commanders in the Vendée,” he flicked open Philippeaux’s little publication, “are the commanders who Hébert has in his pocket, and legitimate objects of suspicion. If we except Westermann, who is Danton’s friend. Unfortunately,” he reached for his pen, “Deputy Philippeaux doesn’t stop there.” He bent his head, began to underline certain phrases. “He levels accusations at the Committee, as the Committee has ultimate responsibility for the war. He seems to say that it would have been over a lot sooner, if it hadn’t been kept going to line people’s pockets.”

“Philippeaux has been a great deal with Danton and Camille,” the committeeman said. “I only mention it.”

“It’s the kind of thesis that would appeal to Camille,” Robespierre said. “Do you believe it? Oh, I don’t know.”

“You question the good faith of your colleagues on the Committee?”

“Yes, actually,” Robespierre said. “Yet I’m quite persuaded of the need to keep the Committee functioning. Stories are coming back from Lyon about the doings of our friend Collot. They say that he has taken his orders to punish rebels as meaning he should massacre the populace.”

“Oh, they say.”

Robespierre put his fingertips together. “Collot is an actor, isn’t he, a theatrical producer? Once he would have had to satisfy himself by putting on plays about earthquakes and multiple murders. Now he can enact what he dreams. Four years of Revolution, Citizen … and everywhere the same greed, pettiness and egoism, the same brutal indifference to the suffering of others and the same diabolic thirst for blood. I simply can’t fathom the depth of people.” He rested his forehead on his hand. His colleague stared at him, stunned. “Meanwhile,” he said, “what is Danton doing? Can he be encouraging Deputy Philippeaux?”

“He would do it—if he saw some temporary advantage. The Committee must silence Philippeaux.”

“No need.” He stabbed his pen at the printed page. “You see he attacks Hébert? Hébert will do it for us. Let him make himself useful, for once.”

“But you allow Camille to attack Hébert, here in his second issue. Oh,” the committeeman said. “Both ends against the middle? You are clever, aren’t you?”

Decree of the National Convention:

The Executive Council, the ministers, generals and all constituted bodies, are placed under the supervision of the Committee of Public Safety.

CAMILLE: I don’t see why I should expect any plaudits for the third issue. Anyone could have done it. It’s a kind of translation. I was reading Tacitus, on the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. I said to de Sade that it was the same, and I checked it, and it was. Our lives now are what the annalist describes: whole families wiped out by the executioner, men committing suicide to save themselves from being dragged through the streets like common criminals; men denouncing their friends to save their own skins; the corruption of all human feeling, the degradation of pity to a crime. I remember when I first read it, years and years ago; and Robespierre will remember when he first read it too.

There didn’t seem much to add—it was enough to bring the text to the public’s attention. Take out the names of these Romans, and substitute instead—in your own mind—the names of Frenchmen and women, the names of people you know, people who live on your street, people whose fate you have seen and whose fate you may soon share.

Of course I have had to rearrange the text a bit—bugger about with it, as Hébert would say. I didn’t show it to Robespierre. Yes, I imagine it will be a shock to him. But a salutary one, don’t you think? I mean, if he recognizes this state of affairs, he will have to think of his own part in creating it. It seems ridiculous to say that Robespierre is a Tiberius, and of course that isn’t what I’m saying; but with a certain sort of man about him—yes indeed, I do mean Saint-Just—I don’t know what he might become.

There is a description in Tacitus of the Emperor “without pity, without anger, resolutely closing himself against the inroad of emotion.”

This seemed familiar.

The “Old Cordelier,” No. 3:

As soon as words had become crimes against the state, it was only a small step to transform into offenses mere glances, sorrow, compassion, sighs, even silence … .

It was a crime against the state that Libonius Drusus asked the fortune tellers if he would ever be rich … . It was a crime against the state that one of Cassius’ descendants had a portrait of his ancestor in his house. Mamercus Scaurus committed a crime by writing a tragedy in which certain verses were capable of a double meaning. It was a crime against the state that the mother of the consul Furius Geminus mourned for the death of her son … . It was necessary to rejoice at the death of a friend or relative, if one wished to escape death oneself.

Was a citizen popular? He might start a faction. Suspect.

Did he try instead to retreat from public life? Suspect.

Are you rich? Suspect.

Are you—to all appearances—poor? You must be hiding something. Suspect.

Are you melancholy? The state of the nation must upset you. Suspect.

Are you cheerful? You must be rejoicing at national calamities. Suspect.

Are you a philosopher, an orator or a poet? Suspect.

“You didn’t show me this,” Robespierre said. His voice was toneless. The breeze whipped the last of the year’s dead leaves past his face. He caught one, and held it up between finger and thumb so that its veins were sharply exposed against the afternoon light. It had been a fine day; sunset was liquid and crimson; the last rays touched the river in a manner more sinister than picturesque.

“Like blood,” Camille said. “Well, that is what it would suggest. I didn’t keep anything from you. You probably have Tacitus on your bookshelves.”

“You are being disingenuous.”

“You must admit it is very apt. If it were not apt it would not have caught the public imagination. Yes, it is a portrait of the way we live now.”

“And you hold it up to Europe? Could you not restrain yourself? Do you want to make yourself the Emperor’s favorite reading? Do you expect a message of congratulation from Mr. Pitt? Fireworks in Moscow, and your health drunk in the émigré camps across the Rhine?” He spoke with a flat calm, as if the questions were reasonable ones. “Well, tell me.” He put his hands, palms down, on the stonework of the bridge and turned to look into Camille’s face; he waited.

“What are we doing out here?” Camille said. “It’s getting cold.”

“I’d rather talk outside. Inside, you can’t keep secrets.”

“You see—you admit it. You’re eaten away with the thought of conspiracy. Will you guillotine brick walls and doorposts?”

“I’m not eaten away with anything—except perhaps the desire to do what’s best for the country.”

“Then stop the Terror.” Camille shivered a little. “You have the moral leadership. You’re the one who can do it.”

“And have the government fall apart around us? Bring the Committee down?” His voice now was a rapid, urgent whisper. “I can’t do it. I can’t take that risk.”

“Let’s walk on a little way.” They walked. “Change the Committee,” Camille said. “That’s all I ask. Collot and Billaud-Varennes are not fit for you to associate yourself with.”

“You know why they’re there. They’re our sop to the Left.”

“I keep forgetting that we’re not the Left.”

“Do you want us to have insurrection on our hands?”

Camille halted again, looked across the river. “Yes, if necessary. Yes.” He was trying to stop the panic bubbling up inside him, stop the racing of his heart; Robespierre was not used to opposition now, and he was not used to opposing him. “Let’s fight it out once and for all.”

“Is that Danton’s wish? More violence?”

“Max, what do you think is being done every day in the Place de la Révolution?”

I’d rather sacrifice aristocrats than sacrifice each other. I have a loyalty to the Revolution and the men who made it. But you are defaming it in the face of all Europe.”

“Do you think that loyalty is covering up, pretending that reason and justice prevail?” The light had faded into the river, and now a night wind was getting up; it pulled at their clothes with cold insistent hands. “What did we have the Revolution for? I thought it was so that we could speak out against oppression. I thought it was to free us from tyranny. But this is tyranny. Show me a worse one in the history of the world. People have killed for power and greed and delight in blood, but show me another dictatorship that kills with efficiency and delight in virtue and flourishes its abstractions over open graves. We say that everything we do is to preserve the Revolution, but the Revolution is no more than an animated corpse.”

Robespierre would not look at him; but without doing so, he reached out for his arm. “Everything you say is true,” he whispered, “but I don’t know how to proceed.” A pause. “Come, let’s go home.”

“You said we couldn’t talk inside.”

“There’s no need to talk, is there? You’ve said it all.”

Hébert, Le Père Duchesne:

Here, my brave sansculottes, here is a brave man you’ve forgotten. It is really ungrateful of you, for he declares that without him there would never have been a Revolution. Formerly he was known as My Lord Prosecutor to the Lanteme. You think I am speaking of that famous cutthroat who put the aristocrats to flight—but no, the man we’re speaking of claims to be the most pacific of persons. To believe him, he has no more gall than a pigeon; he is so sensitive, that he never hears the word “guillotine” without shivering to his very bones. It is a great pity that he is no orator, or he would prove to the Committee of Public Safety that it has no idea how to manage things; but if he cannot speak, M. Camille can make up for it by writing, to the great satisfaction of the moderates, aristocrats and royalists.

Proceedings of the Jacobin Club:

CITIZEN NICOLAS [intervening]: Camille, you are very close to the guillotine!

CITIZEN DESMOULINS: Nicolas, you are very close to making a fortune!

A year ago you dined on a baked apple, and now you’re the government printer.

[Laughter.]

Hérault de Séchelles came back from Alsace in the middle of December. The job was done. The Austrians were in retreat and the frontier was secure; Saint-Just would be following in a week or two, trailing glory.

He called on Danton, and Danton was not at home. He left him a message, arranging a meeting, and Danton did not come. He went to Robespierre’s house, and was turned away by the Duplays.

He stood at a window of the Tuileries, to watch the death carts on their route, and sometimes he followed them to the end of the journey and mingled with the crowds. He heard of wives who denounced their husbands to the Tribunal, and husbands wives; mothers who offered their sons to National Justice and children who betrayed their parents. He saw women hustled from their lying-in, suckling their babies till the tumbrel arrived. He saw men and women slip and fall facedown in the spilt blood of their friends, and the executioners haul them up by their pinioned arms. He saw dripping heads held up for the crowds to bay at. “Why do you force yourself to watch these things?” someone asked him.

“I am learning how to die.”

29 Frimaire, Toulon fell to the Republican armies. The hero of the hour was a young artillery officer called Buonaparte. “If things go on as they are with the officers,” Fabre said, “I give Buonaparte three months before he gets his head cut off.”

Three days later, 2 Nivôse, government forces smashed the remains of the rebel army of the Vendee. Peasants taken under arms were outlaws to be shot out of hand; nothing remained except the bloody manhunt through fields and woods and marshes.

In the green room with the silver mirrors, the disparate and factious members of the Committee of Public Safety were settling their differences. They were winning the war, and keeping the precarious peace on the Paris streets. “Under this Committee,” said the people, “the Revolution is on the march.”

It had grown dark. Eléonore thought that the room was empty. When Robespierre turned his head, the movement startled her. His face was white in the shadows. “Are you not going to the Committee?” she said softly. He turned his head away, so that he was looking at the wall again. “Shall I light the lamp?” she said. “Please speak to me. Nothing can be so bad.”

She stood behind his chair and slipped a hand onto his shoulder. She felt him stiffen. “Don’t touch me.”

She removed her hand. “What have I done wrong?” She waited for an answer. “You’re being childish. You can’t sit here in the cold and dark.”

No reply. She walked rapidly from the room, leaving the door ajar. She was back in a moment with a taper, which she touched to the wood and kindling laid ready in the grate. She knelt down by the hearth, tending the infant flames, her dark hair sliding over her shoulder.

“I will not have lights,” he said.

She leaned forward, placing another splinter of wood, fanning the blaze. “I know you’ll let it go right out if I don’t watch it,” she said. “You always do. I have only just got in from my class. Citizen David commended my work today. Would you like to see? I can run downstairs and get my folio.” She looked up at him, still kneeling, her hands spread out on her thighs.

“Get up from there,” he said. “You are not a servant.”

“No?” Her voice was cool. “What am I? It would be against your principles to speak to a servant as you speak to me.”

“Five days ago,” he said, “I proposed to the Convention that we should set up a Committee of Justice to examine the verdicts of the Tribunal and to look into the cases of those imprisoned on suspicion. I thought this was what was needed; apparently not, though. I have just seen the fourth issue of the ‘Old Cordelier.’ Here.” He pushed the pamphlet across the desk. “Read it.”

“I can’t, in this light.” She lit the candles, lifting one high to look into his face. “Your eyes are red. You have been crying. I didn’t think you cried when you were criticized in the press. I thought you were beyond that.”

“It’s not criticism,” he said. “It’s not criticism that’s the problem, it’s quite other, it’s the claims, it’s the claims made on me. I am addressed by name. Look.” He pointed to the place on the page. “Eléonore, who has been more merciful than I have? Seventy-five of Brissot’s supporters are in prison. I have fought the committees and the Convention for these men’s lives. But this is not enough for Camille—it’s not nearly enough. He wants to force me into some—some kind of bullring. Read it.”

She took the pamphlet, brought a chair up to his desk to get the light. “Robespierre, you are my old school comrade, and you remember the lesson history and philosophy taught us: that love is stronger and more enduring than fear.” Love is stronger and more enduring than fear; she glanced up at him, then down at the printed page. “You have come very close to this idea in the measure passed at your instance during the session of 30 Frimaire. What has been proposed is a Committee of Justice. Yet why should mercy be looked upon as a crime under the Republic?”

Eléonore looked up. “The prose,” Robespierre said. “It’s so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style.”

“Release from prison the 200,000 citizens you call ‘Suspects.’ In the Declaration of the Rights of Man there is no provision for imprisonment on suspicion.

“You seem determined to wipe out opposition by using the guillotine—but it is a senseless undertaking. When you destroy one opponent on the scaffold, you make ten more enemies among his family and friends. Look at the sort of people you have put behind bars—women, old men, bile-ridden egotists, the flotsam of the Revolution. Do you really believe they constitute a danger? The only enemies left in your midst are those who are too sick and too cowardly to fight; all the brave and able ones have fled abroad, or died at Lyon or in the Vendee. Those who are left do not merit your attention. Believe me—freedom would be more firmly established, and Europe brought to her knees, if you established a Committee of Mercy.”

“Have you read enough?” he asked her.

“Yes. They’re trying to force your hand.” She looked up. “Danton’s behind it, I suppose?”

Robespierre didn’t speak, not at first. When he did it was in a whisper, and not to the point. “When we were children, you know, I said to him, Camille, you’re all right now, I am going to look after you. You should have seen us, Eléonore—you would have been quite sorry for us, I think. I don’t know what would have become of Camille, if it weren’t for me.” He buried his face in his hands. “Or of me, if it weren’t for him.”

“But you’re not children now,” she said softly. “And this affection you speak of no longer exists. He’s gone over to Danton.”

He looked up. His face is transparent, she thought; he would like the world transparent too. “Danton’s not my enemy,” he said. “He’s a patriot, and I’ve staked my reputation on it. But what’s he done, these last four weeks? A few speeches. Grand-sounding rhetoric that keeps him in the public eye and means nothing at all. He fancies himself as the elder statesman. He’s risked nothing. He has thrown my poor Camille into the furnace while he and his friends stand by warming their hands.”

“Don’t be upset, it doesn’t help.” She averted her face. She was studying the pamphlet again. “He implies that the Committee has abused its powers. It seems clear that Danton and his friends see themselves as an alternative government.”

“Yes.” He looked up, half-smiled. “Danton offered me a job once before. No doubt he’d do it again. They expect me to go along with them, you see.”

“Go along with them? With that gang of swindlers? You’d go along with them as you’d go along with brigands who were holding you to ransom. All they want is to use your name, use your credit as an honest man.”

“Do you know what I wish?” he said. “I wish Marat were alive. What a pass I’ve come to, when I wish that! But Camille would have listened to him.”

“This is heresy,” Eléonore said. She bent her head over the page. She read, it seemed to him, with a tortured slowness; she seemed to weigh every word. “The Jacobins will expel him.”

“I will prevent it.”

“What?”

“I said, I will prevent it.”

She shook the paper at him. “They’ll blame you for this. Do you think you can protect him?”

“Protect him? Oh Christ—I think at any time, at any time before now, I’d have died for him. But I feel, now—perhaps I have a duty to remain alive?”

“A duty to whom?”

“To the people. In case worse befalls them.”

“I agree. You do have a duty to remain alive. Alive and in power.”

He averted his head. “How easily the phrases fall from your lips. As if you had grown up with them, Eléonore. Collot is back from Lyon, did you know? He had finished his work, as he describes it. His path of righteousness is very clear and straight and broad. It’s so easy to be a good Jacobin. Collot hasn’t a doubt or scruple in his head—indeed, I doubt if he has much in it at all. Stop the Terror? He thinks we haven’t even begun.”

“Saint-Just will be here next week. He won’t want to know about your school days, Max. He won’t accept excuses.”

Robespierre lifted his chin, blindly and vicariously proud. “He’ll not be offered excuses. I know Camille. He’s stronger than you think, oh, not visibly, not evidently—but I do know him, you see. It’s a kind of iron-clad vanity he has—and why not, really? It all comes from July 12, from those days before the Bastille. He knows exactly what he did, exactly what risk he took. Would I have taken it? Of course not. It would have been meaningless—no one would even have looked at me. Would Danton have taken it? Of course not. He was a respectable fellow, a lawyer, a family man. You see, here we are, Eléonore, four years on—still in awe of what was done in a split second.”

“Stupid,” she said.

“Not really. Everything that’s important is decided in a split second, isn’t it? He stood up before those thousands of people, and his life turned on a hair. Everything after that, of course, has been an anticlimax.”

Eléonore got up, moved away from him. “Will you go to see him?”

“Now? No. Danton will be there. They will probably be having a party.”

“Well, why not?” Eléonore said. “I know the reign of superstition is over, but it is Christmas day.”

“It is incredible,” Danton said. He tipped his head back and tossed another glass down his throat. He did not look like an elder statesman. “There are demonstrators outside the Convention calling for a Committee of Mercy. They are standing six deep outside Desenne’s bookshop demanding another edition. The cover price was two sous and now they’re changing hands for twenty francs. Camille, you’re a one-man inflationary disaster.”

“But I wish now I had warned Robespierre. About the content, I mean.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Danton was vast and brash and hearty, the popular leader of a new political force. “Somebody go and get Robespierre. Somebody go and drag him out. It’s time we got him drunk.” He reached across and dropped his hand on Camille’s shoulder. “It’s time this Revolution relaxed a little. The people are sick of the killings, and the reaction to your writings proves it.”

“But we should have got the Committee changed this month. You should be on it now.”

Around them, the buzz of conversation resumed. It was understood to have been one of Danton’s heartening pronouncements. “Let’s not push things,” Danton said. “Next month will do. We’re creating the mood for change. We don’t want to force the issue, we want people to come to our way of thinking of their own accord.” Camille glanced at Fabre. “Now why are you not happy?” Danton demanded. “You have just achieved the greatest success of your career. I order you in the name of the Republic to be happy.”

Annette and Claude arrived soon afterwards. Annette looked wary and withdrawn, but Claude looked as if he were working up to a big speech. “Ah yes,” he said, addressing the air a foot above his son-in-law’s head. “I have not been lavishly complimentary, have I, in the past? But now I will congratulate you, from the heart. It is an act of great courage.”

“Why do you say that? Do you think they will want to cut off my head?”

A silence, sudden and complete and prolonged. No one spoke and no one moved. For the first time in years Claude found it possible to focus his gaze. “Oh, Camille,” he said, “who could want to hurt you?”

“Plenty of people,” Camille said remotely. “Billaud, because I’ve always laughed at him. Saint-Just, because he has a rage for leadership and I won’t follow. All the members of the Jacobins who’ve been after my blood since I defended Dillon. Ten days ago they brought up the business of Brissot’s trial. What right had I to pass out without informing the club? And Barnave—they wanted to know how I dared to go to the Conciergerie to speak to a traitor.”

“But Robespierre defended you,” Claude said.

“Yes, he was very kind. He told them I was given to emotional outbursts. He said that he had known me since I was ten years old and I had always been the same. He nodded and smiled at me as he came down from the tribune. His eyes were very sharp. He had engraved a valuation on me like a goldsmith’s mark.”

“Oh, there was more than that,” Lucile said. “He praised you very warmly.”

“Of course. The club was touched, flattered. He had allowed them a little insight into his private life—you know, touching evidence of his human nature.”

“What can you mean?” Claude said.

“Well, I revert to my former conviction. Quite clearly he is Jesus Christ. He has even condescended to be adopted by a carpenter. I wonder what he will do at the next meeting, when they demand my expulsion?”

“But nothing can happen to you while Robespierre is in power,” Claude said. “It’s not possible. Come now. It’s not possible.”

“You mean I have protection. But it is irksome, to be protected.”

“I won’t have this,” Danton said. He put down his glass, leaned foward. He was quite sober, though a few minutes earlier he had seemed not to be. “You know my policies, you know what I am trying to do. Now that the pamphlets have served their purpose, your job is to keep Robespierre in a good humor, and other than that keep your mouth shut. There is no need to take risks. Within two months, all moderate opposition will have crystalized around me. All I have to do is exist.”

“But that is problematical, in my case,” Camille muttered.

“You think I can’t protect my followers?”

“I am sick of being protected,” Camille yelled at him. “I am tired of pleasing you and placating Robespierre and running between the two of you smoothing things over and ministering to your all-devouring egos and your monstrous, arrogant self-conceits. I have had enough of it.”

“In that case,” Danton said, “your use for the future is very limited, very limited indeed.”

The Committee of Justice which Robespierre had proposed fell victim next day to Billaud-Varennes’s revolutionary thoroughness. He told the Jacobins quite bluntly, in Robespierre’s presence, that it had been a stupid idea from the start.

That night Robespierre didn’t sleep. It was not a defeat he brooded upon; it was a humiliation. He could not remember a time when his express wishes had been flouted; or rather, he could remember it, but like some dim intimation from a past incarnation. The Candle of Arras had illuminated another world.

He sat alone at his window, up at the top of the house; watched the black angles of the rooftops, and the stars between. He would have liked to pray; but no words he could formulate seemed likely to move or even reach the blindly purposive deity that had taken his life in hand. Three times he got up to see if the door was barred, the bolt firmly drawn and the key turned in the lock. The darkness shifted, waned; the street below seemed peopled with shades. In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius … The ghosts of souls departed begged their admittance, with faces of clay; they trailed the covert, feral odors, the long, slinking shadows of circus beasts.

Next day Camille went to the Duplay house. He asked after Eléonore’s health, and about her work. “Lucile was saying she would come and see you, but she doesn’t know when it would suit you, because of your classes. Why don’t you ever come and see us?”

“I will,” she said, without conviction. “How’s the baby?”

“Oh, he’s fine. Marvelous.”

“He’s like you, Camille. He has a look of you.”

“Oh, how sweet of you, Cornélia, you’re the first person in eighteen months to say so. May I go up?”

“He’s not at home.”

“Oh, Cornélia. You know that he is at home.”

“He’s busy.”

“Has he been telling you to keep people out, or just to keep me out?”

“Look, he needs time to sort things out in his mind. He didn’t sleep last night. I’m worried about him.”

“Is he very angry with me?”

“No, he’s not angry, I think he’s—shocked. That you should hold him responsible for violence, that you should blame him in public.”

“I told him I reserved the right to tell him when the country became a tyranny. Our consciences are public property, so how else should I tell him?”

“He is alarmed, that you should put yourself in such a bad position.”

“Go and tell him I’m here.”

“He won’t see you.”

“Go and tell him, Eléonore.”

She quailed. “All right.”

She left him standing, with a dragging ache in his throat. She paused when she was halfway up the stairs, to think; then she went on. She knocked. “Camille’s here.”

She heard the scraping of the chair, a creak: no answer.

“Are you there? Camille’s downstairs. He insists.”

He pulled the door open. She knew he’d been standing right behind it. Absurd, she thought. He was sweating.

“You mustn’t let him come up. I told you that. I told you. Why do you take no notice of me?” He was trying to speak very calmly.

She shrugged. “Right.”

Robespierre had rested one hand on the doorknob, sliding it over the smooth surface; he swung the door back and to, in an arc of six inches.

“I’ll tell him,” she said. She turned her head and looked down the stairs, as if she thought Camille might run up and shoulder her aside. “It’s another matter whether he accepts it.”

“Dear God,” he said. “What does he think? What does he expect?”

“Personally I don’t see the sense in keeping him out. You both know he’s put you in a very difficult position. You know you’re going to defend him, and I think he knows it too. It’s not a matter of whether you’ll smooth over your disagreements. Of course you will. You’ll risk your own reputation to vindicate him. Every principle you’ve ever had goes out of the window when you’re faced with Camille.”

“That is not true, Eléonore,” he said softly. “That is not true and you are saying it out of twisted jealousy. It is not true and he must be made to realize it. He must be made to think. Listen,” the agitation crept back into his voice, “how does he look?”

Tears had sprung into her eyes. “He looks as usual.”

“Does he seem upset? He’s not ill?”

“No, he looks as usual.”

“Dear God,” he said. Wearily, softly, he took his perspiring hand from the doorknob, and wiped it, stiff-fingered, down the sleeve of his other arm. “I need to wash my hands,” he said.

The door closed softly. Eléonore went downstairs, scrubbing at her face with her fist. “There,” she said. “I told you. He doesn’t want to see you.”

“I suppose he thinks it’s for my own good?” Camille laughed nervously.

“I think you can understand his feelings. You have tried to use his affection for you to trap him into supporting you when you put forward policies he disagrees with.”

“He disagrees with them? Since when?”

“Perhaps since his defeat yesterday. Well, that is for you to work out. He doesn’t confide in me, and I know nothing of politics.”

A blank misery had dropped into his eyes. “Very well,” he said. “I can exist without his approbation.” He walked ahead of her to the door. “Good-bye, Cornélia, I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of you from now on.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

In the open doorway he turned suddenly: pulled her towards him, slipped a hand under her breast and kissed her on the lips. Two of the workmen stood and watched them. “Poor you,” Camille said. He pushed her gently back against the wall. Watching him go, she put the back of her hand against her lips. For the next few hours she could feel the phantom pressure of his cupped hand beneath her breast, and she kept it in her guilty thoughts that she had never really had a lover.

A letter to Camille Desmoulins, 11 Nivôse, Year II:

I am not a fanatic, or an enthusiast, or a man to pay compliments; but if I should survive you I mean to have your statue, and to carve on it: “Wicked men would have had us accept liberty kneaded together of mud and blood. Camille made us love it, carved in marble and covered in flowers.”

“It isn’t true, of course,” he said to Lucile, “but I shall put it away carefully among my papers.”

“I see you make a very splendid effort to come and speak to me,” Hérault said. “You could have turned and gone the other way. I shall begin to think I am a case for your charity, like Barnave. By the way, did you know Saint-Just is back?”

“Oh.”

“Perhaps there is a case for not going so far to antagonize Hébert?”

“My fifth pamphlet is in preparation,” Camille said. “I shall rid the public of that posturing, mindless obscenity, if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It may well be that.” Hérault smiled, but not pleasantly. “I know you enjoy a privileged position, but Robespierre doesn’t like defeat.”

“He favors clemency. Very well, there’s been a reverse. We’ll find another way.”

“How? I think it will seem more than a reverse to him. He has no power base, you know—except in patriotic opinion. He has very few friends. He has placed some old retainers of his on the Tribunal, but he has no ministers in his pocket, no generals—he’s neglected all that. His power is entirely in our minds—and I’m sure he knows it. If he can be defeated once, why not twice, why not continuously?”

“Why are you trying to frighten me?”

“For my amusement,” Hérault said coolly. “I’ve never been able to understand you, quite. You play on his feelings for you—yet he always says we should leave our personal feelings aside.”

“Oh, we all say that. It is the only thing to be said. But we never do it.”

“Camille, why did you do what you did?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I have really no idea. I suppose you wanted to be running out in front of public opinion again.”

“Do you? Do you think that? People say it is a work of art, that I have never written anything better. Do you think I am proud of my sales?”

“I would be, if they were mine.”

“Yes, the pamphlets are a great success. But what does success matter to me now? I am sick of the sight of all this accumulated injustice and ingratitude and wrong.”

A nice epitaph, Hérault thought, should you need one. “Tell Danton—for what it’s worth—and I realize that it may be a liability—the campaign for clemency has my sympathy and support.”

“Oh, Danton and I are not on good terms.”

Hérault frowned. “How not on good terms? Camille, what are you trying to do to yourself?”

“Oh …” Camille said. He pushed his hair back.

“Have you been rude about his wife again?”

“No, not at all. Good heavens—we always leave our personal feelings aside.”

“So what’s your quarrel? Something trivial?”

“Everything I do is trivial,” Camille said, with a sudden savage hostility. “Don’t you see that I am a weak and trivial person? Now Hérault—is there any other message?”

“Only that I think he’s carrying the time biding to excess.”

“You are afraid the policy of clemency will come in too late for you?”

“Every day it is too late for someone.”

“He probably has good reasons. All these obscure coalitions … Fabre thinks I know everything about Georges, but I don’t. I don’t think I could take knowing everything, do you? Actually, I don’t think anyone could.”

“Sometimes you sound exactly like Robespierre.”

“It is long association. It is what I am counting on.”

“I had a letter this morning,” Hérault said, “from my colleagues on the Committee. I am accused of leaking our secret proceedings to the Austrians.” His mouth twisted. “The documentary evidence will need a little addition, before it comes to court, but that will be no trouble to Saint-Just. He tried to ruin me in Alsace. I am not a stupid man, but I found it hard to keep a step ahead. Not that there was any point.”

“It is the accident of your birth.”

“Just so. I am on my way to tender my resignation from the Committee. You might tell Georges. Oh, and wish him a happy new year.”

SAINT-JUST: Who is paying Camille to write this?

ROBESPIERRE: No, no, you don’t understand. He’s been so shaken by the direction of things—

SAINT-JUST: He’s a very good actor, I will say that for him. He seems to have taken most of you in.

ROBESPIERRE : Why must you take everything he does in bad faith?

SAINT-JUST: Will you face it, Robespierre? Either he’s in bad faith and he’s a counter-revolutionary, or he’s gone politically soft and he’s a counter-revolutionary.

ROBESPIERRE: Oh that’s very neat. You weren’t here in ’89.

SAINT-JUST: We have a new calendar now. ’89 doesn’t exist.

ROBESPIERRE: You can’t judge Camille, because you know nothing about him.

SAINT-JUST: His actions speak. Anyway, I’ve known Camille for years. He drifted along in life until he found a niche as a literary prostitute. He’s for sale to the highest bidder, and that’s why he and Danton have so much in common.

ROBESPIERRE: I don’t see how you can call it literary prostitution and so on to ask for clemency.

SAINT-JUST: No? Then can you explain why he’s the toast of every aristocrat’s dinner table for the last month? Can you explain why people like the Beauhamais woman are sending him letters of thanks and adulation? Can you explain why civil disorder has resulted?

ROBESPIERRE: It was not civil disorder. Lawful petitioners to the Convention.

SAINT-JUST: With his name in their mouths. He’s the hero of the hour.

ROBESPIERRE: Well, that is the second time for him.

SAINT-JUST: People can use such egotism for very sinister ends.

ROBESPIERRE: Like?

SAINT-JUST: Like conspiracy against the Republic.

ROBESPIERRE: Who conspires? Camille conspires with no one.

SAINT-JUST: Danton conspires. With Orléans. With Mirabeau. With Brissot. With Dumouriez, with the court, with England and with all our foreign enemies.

ROBESPIERRE: How dare you?

SAINT-JUST: Do you dare break with him? Bring him before the Tribunal and let him answer these charges.

ROBESPIERRE: Take an example. He associated with Mirabeau. I suppose this is what you mean. Mirabeau fell from grace, but when Danton first knew him he was believed to be a patriot. It was not a crime to have dealings with him, and you can’t make it so, retrospectively.

SAINT-JUST: You did not share the general blindness about Riquetti, I understand.

ROBESPIERRE: No.

SAINT-JUST: Surely therefore you warned Danton?

ROBESPIERRE: He took no notice. That’s not a crime, either.

SAINT-JUST: No? I do suspect a man who—let us say—fails to hate the Revolution’s enemies. If it was not a crime, it was something a good deal worse than carelessness. There was money involved. With Danton there always is. Learn that. Accept that hard cash is the height and depth of Danton’s patriotism. Where are the Crown Jewels?

ROBESPIERRE: Roland was responsible for them.

SAINT-JUST: Roland is dead. You’re refusing to accept what stares you in the face. There is a conspiracy. This clemency business, it is just a device to sow dissension among the patriots and pick up some cheap good will. Pierre Philippeaux is part of the plot, with his attacks on the Committee, and Danton is at its head. Wait and see. The next issue of the “Old Cordelier” will launch the real attack on Hébert, because they have to put him out of the way before they can seize power. It will also attack the Committee. My own belief is that they are planning a military coup. They have Westermann, and Dillon too.

ROBESPIERRE: Dillon’s been arrested again. Some business about plotting to rescue the Dauphin. Sounds unlikely to me.

SAINT-JUST: Camille won’t be able to get him off this time. Not that the prisons are secure.

ROBESPIERRE: Oh, the prisons! The people are saying that if the supply of meat doesn’t improve they are going to break into the prisons and roast the prisoners and eat them.

SAINT-JUST: The people are degraded, in their present state of education.

ROBESPIERRE: What do you expect? I had forgotten to worry about the meat supply.

SAINT-JUST: I think you are getting off the point.

ROBESPIERRE: Danton is a patriot. Bring me the evidence against him.

SAINT-JUST: Robespierre, you are a very obstinate man. What kind of evidence do you want?

ROBESPIERRE: Anyway, how do you know what letters Camille has?

SAINT-JUST: Oh, when I was giving you the list of those with whom Danton conspired, I forgot to include Lafayette.

ROBESPIERRE: Well, that’s just about everybody then, isn’t it?

SAINT-JUST: Yes, I think that’s just about everybody.

In the first week of the new year certain papers were brought to Robespierre, which proved beyond doubt Fabre’s involvement in the East India Company fraud—an affair that Fabre himself, with the cooperation of the Police Committee, had been investigating for more than two months. For half an hour Robespierre sat over the papers, shaking with humiliation and rage, fighting for control. When he heard Saint-Just’s voice, he would have liked to get out of the room; but there was only one exit.

SAINT-JUST: What do you say now? Camille must have known something about it.

ROBESPIERRE: He was protecting a friend. Oh, he shouldn’t have done that. He should have told me.

SAINT-JUST: Fabre really took you in.

ROBESPIERRE: The conspiracies he spoke of were real.

SAINT-JUST: Oh yes. All the men he names have behaved as he predicted. What do we think of someone so close to the heart of perfidy?

ROBESPIERRE: We know what to think now.

SAINT-JUST: Fabre has been at Danton’s side throughout.

ROBESPIERRE: And so?

SAINT-JUST: Don’t show yourself more naive than you have been.

ROBESPIERRE: I will have Fabre out of the Jacobins at the next meeting. I trusted him, and he’s made me look a fool.

SAINT-JUST: They have all made you look a fool.

ROBESPIERRE: I must begin to think again. I am too well disposed towards people.

SAINT-JUST: I have a certain amount of evidence that I can put before you.

ROBESPIERRE: I know what people call evidence these days. Hearsay and denunciation and empty rhetoric.

SAINT-JUST: Are you determined to persist in your error?

ROBESPIERRE: You sound like a priest, Antoine. It’s what they say when you’re at confession—do you recall? I’ve been mistaken, I agree, in my course of action. I have been looking at what people do, listening to what they say, but I should have been looking into their hearts. I am going to find out all the conspirators now.

SAINT-JUST: Whoever they are. However great their credit in the Revolution, it must now be examined. The Revolution has got frozen up. They have frozen it up with their talk of moderation. To stand still in Revolution is to slip backwards.

ROBESPIERRE: You are mixing your metaphors.

SAINT-JUST: I am not a writer. I have more than phrases to offer.

ROBESPIERRE: Back to Camille again.

SAINT-JUST: Yes.

ROBESPIERRE: He has been misled.

SAINT-JUST: That is not my view, or the general view of the Committee. We believe him responsible for his actions, and we feel strongly that he should not escape what he deserves because of any personal feelings you might entertain for him.

ROBESPIERRE: What are you accusing me of?

SAINT-JUST: Weakness.

ROBESPIERRE: I did not get where I am through weakness.

SAINT-JUST: Remind us of it.

ROBESPIERRE: His conduct will be investigated, just as if he were anyone else. He is only an individual … . Oh my God, how I hoped to avoid this.

The fifth issue of the “Old Cordelier” appeared on January 5, 16 Nivôse. It attacked Hébert and his faction, compared his writings (unfavorably) to an open sewer, accused him of corruption and of complicity with the enemy. It attacked Barère and Collot, members of the Committee of Public Safety.

Proceedings of the Jacobin Club (1):

CITIZEN COLLOT [at the tribune]: Philippeaux and Camille Desmoulins—

CITIZEN HÉBERT: Justice! I demand a hearing!

PRESIDENT: Order! I put it to the meeting that the fifth issue should be read out.

JACOBIN: We have all read it.

JACOBIN: I should be ashamed to admit that I had read an aristo pamphlet.

JACOBIN: Hébert does not want it read, he does not want the truth given wider currency.

CITIZEN HÉBERT: No, no, by no means should it be read out! Camille is trying to complicate everything. He is trying to divert attention from himself. He is accusing me of stealing public funds, and it is completely false.

CITIZEN DESMOULINS: I have the proofs of it here in my hand.

CITIZEN -EBERT: Oh God! He wants to assassinate me!

Proceedings of the Jacobin Club (2):

PRESIDENT: We are calling on Camille Desmoulins to justify his conduct.

JACOBIN: He’s not here.

JACOBIN: To Robespierre’s relief.

PRESIDENT: I am going to call his name three times, so that he has the opportunity to come forward and justify himself before the Society.

JACOBIN: It is a pity he has not got a cockerel that he could persuade to crow thrice. It would be illuminating to see what Danton would do.

PRESIDENT: Camille Desmoulins—

JACOBIN: He isn’t here. He knows better.

JACOBIN: It’s no use calling his name and calling his name, if he’s not here.

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: We will discuss instead—

CITIZEN DESMOULINS: I am here, actually.

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE [loudly]: I said we will move instead to a discussion of the crimes of the British government.

JACOBIN: Always a safe topic.

CITIZEN DESMOULINS [at the tribune]: I suppose … I suppose you are going to say that I have been mistaken. I admit I may have been—about Philippeaux’s motives, perhaps. I have made a lot of mistakes in my career. I must ask the Society for guidance because I really … I really don’t know where I am in these matters anymore.

JACOBIN: I knew he would go to pieces.

JACOBIN: Always a safe tactic.

JACOBIN: Look at Robespierre, on his feet already.

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: I demand to speak.

CITIZEN DESMOULINS: But Robespierre, let me—

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: Be quiet, Camille, I want to speak.

JACOBIN: Sit down, Camille, you will only talk yourself into more trouble.

JACOBIN: That’s right—give way, and let Robespierre extricate you. Wonderful, isn’t it?

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE [at the tribune]: Citizens, Camille has promised us he will renounce his errors and put aside all the political heresies with which the pages of these pamphlets are filled. He has sold vast numbers of copies and the aristocrats in their falseness and treachery have been heaping praise upon him, and it has all gone to his head.

JACOBIN: He has dropped this manner of his, you know, the long pauses.

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: These writings are dangerous, because they disturb public order and fill our enemies with hope. But we have to distinguish between the author and his work. Camille—oh, Camille is just a spoiled child. His inclinations are good but he has fallen in with bad people and he has been seriously misled. We must repudiate these writing, which even Brissot would not have dared acknowledge, but we must keep Camille amongst us. I demand that—as a gesture—the offending issues of the “old Cordelier” be burned before this Society.

CITIZEN DESMOULINS: Burning is not answering.

JACOBIN: How true! Rousseau said it!

JACOBIN: That we should live to see the day!

JACOBIN: Robespierre confounded by his god Jean-Jacques! He looks green.

JACOBIN: I should not like to have to live with the consequences of being that clever.

JACOBIN: He may not have to.

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: Oh, Camille—how can you defend these writings, which are such a delight to the aristocrats? Camille, if you were anyone else, do you think we should treat you with such indulgence?

CITIZEN DESMOULINS: I don’t understand you, Robespierre. Some of the writings which you condemn you read yourself in proof. How can you imply that only aristocrats read my work? The Convention and all this Society have read it. Are they all aristocrats?

CITIZEN DANTON: Citizens, may I suggest you pursue your deliberations calmly? And remember—if you strike at Camille, you strike at the freedom of the press.

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE,: All right. Then we won’t burn the pamphlets. Perhaps a man who clings to his mistakes with such tenacity is worse than misled. Perhaps soon we shall see behind his arrogant façade the men at whose dictation he has been writing. [Fabre d’Églantine rises to leave.]

CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: D’Eglantine! Stay there.

JACOBIN: Robespierre has something to say to you.

CITIZEN FABRE D’ÉGLANTINE: I can justify myself—

MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY: Guillotine him! Guillotine him!

Lucile Desmoulins to Stanislas Fréron:

23 Nivôse, Year II

… Come back, come back quickly. There is no time to lose. Bring with you all the old Cordeliers you can find, we need them badly. [Robespierre] has seen that when he doesn’t think and act in accordance with the views of certain people, he is not all-powerful. [Danton] is becoming weak, he is losing his nerve. D’Églantine is arrested and in the Luxembourg; they are bringing very serious charges … .

I don’t laugh anymore: I don’t play at being a cat; I never touch my piano; I have no dreams; I am nothing but a machine now.