A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 12

Ambivalence

This is our situation now. Danton has asked the Convention to give Fabre a hearing, and they have refused. So? Danton says. He is unwilling to admit that for the moment he is not the Convention’s master, and that Hé bert disposes of the power in the Sections. “So? I’m not like Robespierre, wringing my hands over a single defeat. I’ve come through this whole thing winning, losing, winning again. There was a time,” he tells Lucile, “when he had nothing but defeats.”

“No doubt that is why he is prejudiced against them.”

“Never mind his prejudices,” he says. “That damned Committee is looking over their shoulder at me now. One mistake and they’re out and I’m in.”

Fighting talk. And yet, this is not the man she knows. Some people say Danton has not fully recovered his health, but he seems fit enough to her. Others say the evident happiness of the second marriage has softened him; but she knows the value of such romantic hogwash. To her mind, it’s the first marriage that is affecting him. Since Gabrielle’s death he lacks something: some final ruthlessness. It’s hard to put into words, and she hopes, of course, that she’s wrong. She believes ruthlessness will be needed.

This, too, is our situation: Robespierre has had Camille reinstated at the Jacobins. At a price: the price of breaking down at the tribune, almost weeping in the face of the bemused Society. Hébert rants in his newspaper about the “one misguided man” who is protecting Camille—for his own personal and unfathomable reasons. Privately, he goes around sniggering.

The Cordeliers Club is seeking an injunction to stop Camille using their name for his pamphlets. Not that it matters, since Desenne refuses to print any further issues, and no other publishers, much as they would like the sale, dare touch it.

“Come and see Robespierre with me,” Danton says to Lucile. “Come on. Pick your baby up and let’s go round there now and have a big emotional scene. A reconciliation. We’ll drag Camille along and make him apologize nicely, and you will strike your Republican Family pose, and Maximilien will be duly edified. I shall be conciliatory in all sorts of practical ways and remember not to slap him on the back in the hearty man-to-man fashion he finds so terrifying.”

She shakes her head. “Camille won’t come. He’s too busy writing.”

“Writing what?”

“The true history of the Revolution, he says. The secret ‘Secret History.’”

“What does he mean to do with it?”

“Burn it, probably. What else would it be fit for?”

“Unfortunately, everything I say seems to make things worse.”

“I don’t know why you should say that, Danton.” Robespierre had been reading—his Rousseau, unfortunately—and now he removed his spectacles. “I don’t see how your saying anything at this point …” The phrase trailed off, in his usual style. For a moment his face seemed naked and desperately harassed; then he replaced his spectacles, and his expression became once more intractable and opaque. “I have really only one thing to say to you. Cut off your contacts with Fabre, repudiate him. If not, I can have nothing more to do with you. But if you will—then we can begin to talk. Accept in all matters the guidance of the Committee, and I will personally guarantee your safety.”

“Christ,” Danton said. “My safety? Are you threatening me?”

Robespierre looked at him speculatively. “Vadier,” he suggested. “Collot. Hébert. Saint-Just.”

“I’d prefer to guarantee my own safety, Robespierre, by my own methods.”

“Your methods are likely to ruin you.” Robespierre closed his book. “Just make sure they don’t ruin Camille.”

Danton was suddenly angry. “Be careful,” he said, “that Camille doesn’t ruin you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hébert is going round talking about Camille, giggling, and saying this is no ordinary friendship, I’m sure.”

“Of course it is no ordinary friendship.”

Is he not understanding, or is he refusing to understand? This is one of his weapons, this professional, cultivated obtuseness. “Hébert is instituting further inquiries into Camille’s private life.”

Robespierre flung out a hand, palm towards Danton; so theatrical, the gesture, that Fabre might have coached him.

“They ought to make a statue of you,” Danton said, “in that position. Come on, you know what I’m talking about. I know you weren’t around in the Annette days, but I can tell you, he furnished us with some entertainment, your friend—afternoons languishing semi-respectably in Annette’s drawing room, and evenings over at the Île de la Cite, committing unnatural acts among the affidavits. You never met Maître Perrin, did you? There were others, of course.” Danton laughed. “Take that look off your face—nobody thinks Camille’s taste would run to you. He likes men who are very large, very ugly and devoted to women. He just wants what he can’t have. Well, that’s the way I see it, anyway.”

Robespierre reached out a hand for his pen. Then he seemed to change his mind. He let it lie. “Have you been drinking, Danton?” he said.

“No. Well, not more than my usual intake for this time of day. Why?”

“I thought you might have been. I was looking for an excuse for you.” Behind the concealing blue-tinted lenses, his eyes flickered to Danton’s face and away again. The sudden absence of emotion seemed to have pared away his face to the bone; his features were so thin that they seemed etched on air. “I think you’ve strayed from the point,” he said. “Fabre, I think, was the issue.” Again his hand crept towards the pen; he did not seem able to help himself.

(Robespierre, private notebooks: “Danton spoke contemptuously of Camille Desmoulins, attributing to him a secret and shameful vice.”)

“Well, have you made a decision?” His voice was empty of inflection, like God speaking within a rock.

“What am I to say? What do you expect me to do? I can’t repudiate him, what a stupid word.”

“It is true that he’s been your close associate. It is not easy to disentangle yourself.”

“He’s been my friend.”

“Oh, your friend.” Robespierre smiled faintly. “I know how you value your friends—but then I dare say he has not Camille’s defects. The safety of the country is at issue, Danton. A patriot should be eager to put the safety of the country above his wife or child or friend. There is no place for individual sentiment now.”

Danton gasped, and tears sprang into his eyes. He rubbed at his face and held up his wet fingers. He tried to speak, but found it difficult.

(Maximilien Robespierre, private notebooks: “Danton made himself ridiculous, producing theatrical tears … at Robespierre’s house.”)

“This is unnecessary,” Robespierre said. “And useless.”

“You are a cripple,” Danton said at last. His voice was weary, flat. “It’s not Couthon who’s a cripple, it’s you. Don’t you know, Robespierre, don’t you know there’s something wrong with you? Do you ever ask yourself what God left out, when he made you? I used to make jokes at your expense, I used to say you were impotent, but it’s more than balls you’re missing. I wonder if you’re real, I see you walk and talk, but where’s the life in you?”

“I do live.” Robespierre looked down. He touched his fingertips together, like a nervous witness. “I do live. In my fashion.”

“What happened, Danton?”

“Nothing happened. We don’t see eye-to-eye about Fabre. The interview had,” he put one fist reflectively into the other palm, “no result.”

Five-thirty a.m., the rue Condé; there was a hammering at the doors below, and Annette pulled the covers over her head and didn’t want to know. The next moment she sat up, shocked into wakefulness. She flung herself out of bed: what’s happened, what’s happened now?

Someone was shouting in the street. She reached for her wrap. She heard Claude’s voice, and the voice of her maid, Elise, raised in alarm. Elise was a lard-faced Breton girl, superstitious, familiar and clumsy, with an imperfect grasp of French; she stuck her head round the door now and said, “It’s people from the Section. They want to know if you’ve got your lover there, they say, come on, don’t tell them lies, they weren’t born yesterday.”

“My lover? You mean they’re looking for Camille?”

“Well, you said it, Madame,” Elise smirked.

The girl was in her shift. In one hand she had a smoking stump of tallow candle. Annette struck out at her as she pushed past, so that the light spun out of her hand and expired on the floor. The girl’s complaint pursued her: “That was my candle end, not yours.”

In black darkness, Annette collided with someone. A hand shot out and took her by the wrist. She could smell last night’s wine on the man’s breath. “What have we here?” the man said. She tried to pull away and he tightened his grip. “Here we have milady, with hardly any clothes on.”

“Enough, Jeannot,” another voice said. “Hurry up, we need some lights.”

Someone opened the shutters. Torchlight from the street clawed across the walls. Elise had produced more candles. Jeannot stood back and leered. He wore the coarse, baggy clothes of the practicing sansculotte; a red cap with a knitted tricolor cockade was pulled down to his eyebrows. He looked such an oaf that—in other circumstances—she would have laughed. Now a half-dozen men jostled into the room, staring around them, rubbing their cold hands, cursing. The People, she thought. Max’s beloved People.

The man who had called off Jeannot stepped forward. He was a mousefaced boy in a shabby black coat. He had a wad of papers in his hands.

“Health and Fraternity, Citizeness. We are the representatives of the Section Mutius Scaevola.” He flicked the top sheet of paper at her; “Section Luxembourg” was crossed out, and the new name inked in beside it. “I have here,” he pawed through the documents, “a warrant for the arrest of Claude Duplessis, retired civil servant, resident at this address.”

“This is imbecilic,” Annette said. “There is a mistake. Arrest on what charges?”

“Conspiracy, Citizeness. We have orders to search the premises, and impound any suspicious papers.”

“How dare you come here, at this hour—”

“When Père Duchesne has one of his great cholers,” one of the men said, “you don’t wait for the sun to come up.”

“Père Duchesne? I see. You mean that Hébert dare not strike at Camille, so he sends you and your rabble to terrorize his family. Give me those papers, let me see your warrant.”

She snatched at them. The clerk stepped back defensively. One of the sansculottes caught her outstretched hand, and with his other hand pulled her wrap aside, half-exposing her breasts. With all her strength she dragged herself away from him. She gathered up her wrap to her throat. She was shaking, but—and she hoped they knew this—much more with fury than with fear. “Are you Duplessis?” the clerk said, looking over her shoulder.

Claude had managed to get dressed. He seemed dazed, but a faint smell of burning crept out from the room behind him. “You are inquiring for me?” His voice shook a little.

The clerk waved the warrant. “Hurry up. We can’t keep standing about. These citizens want to get the search over and home for their breakfasts.”

“They deserve their breakfast, expeditiously,” Claude said. “Why, they have had the trouble of waking up a peaceful household, and terrifying my wife and my servants. Where were you thinking of taking me?”

“Pack a bag,” the clerk said. “Quick about it.”

Claude gave him a measured nod. He turned.

“Claude!” Annette called after him. “Claude, remember I love you.”

He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a grim nod. A chorus of ribaldry followed him to his room; but the diversion had been effective, because while they were jeering he slammed his door, and she heard the key turn in the lock, and the grunts of effort as they put their shoulders to the door.

She turned to the clerk. “What’s your name?”

“It is of no importance.”

“I’m sure it’s not, but I’ll find out. You’ll suffer. Begin your search. You’ll find nothing to interest you.”

“What sort of people are they?” she heard one of the men ask Elise.

“Godless, Monsieur, and very stuck-up.”

“Is she really, you know, with Camille?”

“Everybody knows it,” Elise said. “They spend hours locked away. Reading the newspapers, she says.”

“What does the old man do about it?”

“Fuck-all,” Elise said.

The men laughed. “We might have to get you down to the Section,” one of them said. “Ask you a few questions. I bet you’ve got some very pretty answers.” He put out his hand, fingered the cloth of her shift, pinched one of her nipples. She gave a little shriek: mock-horror, mock-pain.

As if, Annette thought, there were not enough of the real thing. She took the clerk by the arm. “Get these people under control. Do they also have a warrant to molest my domestic staff?”

“She talks like the Capet woman’s sister,” Jeannot remarked.

“This is an outrage, and you may be sure that within hours it will be discussed in the Convention.”

Jeannot spat at the fireplace, with a pitiful lack of accuracy. “Pack of lawyers,” he said. “Revolution? This? Not till the buggers are all dead.”

“At the present rate,” the clerk said, “it won’t be long.”

Claude was back, with two of the sansculottes on his heels. He had put on his greatcoat and was drawing on his new gloves, very carefully, very smoothly. “Imagine,” he said, “they accused me of burning papers. Stranger still, they insisted on interposing themselves between my person and the window. There is a citizen beneath it with a pike. As if a person of my years would leap through a first-floor casement, and deprive myself of the pleasure of their company.” One of the men took his arm. Claude shook him off. “I’ll walk by myself,” he said. “Now, please allow me to say good-bye to my wife.”

He took her hand in his gloved hand and raised her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Don’t cry, my Annette. Get a message to Camille.”

Across the street a shiny new carriage was drawn up. A pair of eyes peered out; the blind was cautiously lowered.

“How thoroughly displeasing,” said Père Duchesne the furnace maker. “We picked the wrong night, or did we pick the wrong rumor? There are many other rumors, as good or better. It would have been worth rising early to drag Camille from his comfortable, incestuous bed and see if he could be provoked to violence. I was hoping that we could arrest him for a breach of the peace. Still, this will give him a fright. I wonder who he’ll run to hide behind this time?”

Annette was at the rue Marat an hour later, distraught. “And they have torn the place apart,” she finished. “And Elise. Elise may be thoroughly unsatisfactory, but I will not stand by and see my menials pawed by ruffians off the streets. Lucile, give me a glass of brandy, will you? I need it.” As her daughter left the room, she whispered, “Oh Camille, Camille. Claude ran around burning papers. All your letters to me have gone up in smoke. I think. Either that, or the Section committee has got them.”

“I see,” Camille said. “Well, I expect they’re quite chaste.”

“But I want them.” Tears in her eyes. “I can’t bear not having them.”

He ran a fingertip down her cheek. “I’ll write you some more.”

“I want those, those! How can I ask Claude if he burned them? If he burned them, he must have known where I kept them and what they were. Do you think he’d read them?”

“No. Claude’s honorable. He’s not like you and me.” He smiled. “I’ll ask him, Annette. As soon as we get him home.”

“You look quite cheerful, husband.” Lucile was back with the brandy.

Annette glanced up at him. So he does, she thought: surely he’s indestructible? She drank her brandy in one gulp.

Camille’s speech to the Convention was short, audible and alarming. There were murmurs that the relatives of politicians might be suspect as much as anyone else; but most of his audience looked as if it knew precisely what he was talking about when he described the invasion of the Duplessis household. They were lucky if it hadn’t happened to them, he said; soon, perhaps, it would.

Looking around the half-empty benches, the deputies knew he was right. There was applause when he referred to the uncontrolled depredations of a former theater box-office attendant: a mutter of agreement when he deplored a system that could let such a loathsome object flourish. As he left, Danton was on his feet, calling for an end to the arrests.

At the Tuileries, “Present my compliments to Citizen Vadier and tell him the Lanterne Attorney is here,” Camille said. Vadier was brought out of a session of the Policy Committee by his clerks. “Close down my paper and you get me in person,” Camille said, smiling kindly and giving Vadier a shove against the wall.

“Lanterne Attorney!” Vadier said. “I thought you’d repented of all that?”

“Call it nostalgia,” Camille said. “Call it habit. Call it what you like, but do realize that you won’t get rid of me until I have some answers from you.”

Vadier looked morose, and pulled his long Inquisitor’s nose. He swore by the limbs of the Supreme Being that he knew nothing of the affair. Yes, he admitted, it could be that the Section officials were out of control; it was possible, yes, that Hébert was acting out of personal malice; no, he had no knowledge of any evidence against Claude Duplessis, retired civil servant. He looked at Camille with frank detestation and considerable alarm. “Hebert is a fool,” he muttered as he hurried away, “to give Danton’s mob a chance to try their strength.”

Robespierre appeared blinking and preoccupied from the Committee of Public Safety, summoned by an urgent message. He hurried forward and took Camille’s hands, dictated a rapid stream of orders to a secretary and signified his intention of seeing Père Duchesne in hell. The onlookers noted his tone, the haste, the handclasp above all. Hastily, they memorized the signs on his face, to puzzle over and interpret later; immediately, with the lift of an eyebrow, a glance held a second too long, the questioning twitch of a nostril sniffing the political wind—immediately, imperceptibly, allegiances began to drift. By midday, the expression on Hébert’s face had become less complacent; he was, in fact, on the run, and remained so in his own mind until well after Claude Duplessis’s release: until some weeks later, when he himself heard a patrol in the early morning, and found he had no friends.

The new calender wasn’t working. Nivôse wasn’t snowy, and spring would be here before Germinal. It would arrive immoderately early, so that flower girls congregated on street corners and the seamstresses were busy with simple patriotic dresses for the summer of ’94.

In the Luxembourg Gardens trees hung out unseasonable flags of green among the cannon foundries. Fabre d’Églantine watched the season change, from his prison room in the National Building that was once the Luxembourg Palace. The raw, bright, blustery days made the pain in his chest worse. Each morning he examined himself in the fine mirror he had sent home for, and noted that his face was thinner and his eyes suspiciously bright, with a brightness that had nothing to do with his prospects.

He heard that Danton’s initiatives didn’t prosper, that Danton didn’t see Robespierre. Danton, see Robespierre, he demanded of his prison wall: bully, beg, deceive, demand. Sometimes he lay awake listening for the sound of the Dantonist mob roistering through the city; silence answered back. Camille is friends with Robespierre again, his gaoler told him; adding that he and his wife didn’t believe that Camille was an aristocrat, and that Citizen Robespierre was a true friend of the working man, his continued good health the only guarantee of sugar in the shops and firewood at reasonable prices.

Fabre ran over in his mind all the things he had ever done for Camille; they were not many. He sent out for his complete set of the Encyclopédie, and for his small ivory telescope; with them for company he settled down to await either his natural or unnatural death.

17 Pluviôse—it wasn’t raining—Robespierre spoke to the Convention, outlining the basis of his future policy, his plans for the Republic of Virtue. As he left the hall a rustle of consternation followed him. He seemed more tired than one could reasonably be, even after his hours at the tribune; his lips were bloodless, his eyes dark and hollow with exhaustion. Some of the survivors from those days mentioned Mirabeau’s sudden collapse. But he appeared punctually for the next session of the Committee; his eyes traveled from face to face, to see who was disappointed.

22 Pluviôse, he woke in the night fighting for breath. In the intervals of panic he forced himself to his writing table. But he had forgotten what he wanted to write; a wave of nausea brought him to his hands and knees on the floor. You do not die, he said, as he fought to expel the air trapped in his lungs, you do not, he said with each aspiration, die. You have survived this before.

When the attack passed he ordered himself up from the floor. I will not do it, his body said: you have finished me, killed me, I refuse to serve such a master.

His head dropped. If I stay here, he thought, I shall stretch out and go to sleep on the floor, just where I am, I will then take a chill, everything will be finished.

So, said the body, you should not have treated me as your slave, abusing me with fasting and chastity and broken sleep. What will you do now? Tell your intellect to get you off the floor, tell your mind to keep you on your feet tomorrow.

He took hold of the leg of a chair, then its back. He watched his hand creep along the wood; he was falling asleep. His hand became infinitely distant. He dreamed of his grandfather’s household. There are no barrels for this week’s brewing, someone said; all the wood has been used for scaffolding. Scaffolding or scaffolds? Anxiously he felt in his pocket for a letter from Benjamin Franklin. The letter told him, “You are an electrical machine.”

Eléonore found him at first light. She and her father stood guard over the door. Souberbielle arrived at eight o’clock. He spoke very slowly, very distinctly, as if to a deaf person: cannot answer for the consequences, he said, cannot answer for the consequences. He nodded to show that he understood. Souberbielle bent to catch his whisper. “Shall I make my will?”

“Well, I don’t think so,” the doctor said cheerfully. “Have you much to bequeath, by the way?”

He shook his head; let his eyes close, and smiled slightly.

“There is never anything the matter with them,” Souberbielle said. “I mean, in the sense that it is this disease, or that disease. In September we thought we’d lost Danton. So many years of hard work and panics can reduce even a strong man like that to a wreck—and Citizen Robespierre is not strong. No, of course he is not dying. Nobody actually dies of the things that are wrong with him, they just have their lives made harder. How long? He needs to rest, that’s the thing, to be well out of everything. I’d say a month. If he leaves that room sooner, I’ll not be responsible.”

Members of the Committee came. It took him a moment to work out their individual faces, but he knew at once it was the Committee. “Where is Saint-Just?” he whispered. By now he had got into the habit of whispering. Don’t struggle for breath, the doctor had said. The committeemen exchanged glances.

“He has forgotten,” they said. “You have forgotten,” they told him. “He went to the frontier. He will be back in ten days.”

“Couthon? Could he not be carried up the stairs?”

“He’s ill,” they said. “Couthon is also ill.”

“Is he dying?”

“No. But his paralysis has become worse.”

“Will he be back tomorrow?”

“No, not tomorrow.”

Then who will rule the country? he asked himself. Saint-Just. “Danton—” he said. Don’t struggle for breath. If you don’t struggle for it, it will come, the doctor said. He put his hand to his chest in panic. He could not take that advice. It was not his experience of life.

“Will you let Danton have my place?”

They exchanged glances again. Robert Lindet leaned over him. “Do you wish it?”

He shook his head vehemently. He hears Danton’s drawling voice: “unnatural acts among the affidavits … Do you ever ask yourself what God left out?” His eyes searched for the eyes of this solid Norman lawyer, a man without theories, without pretensions, a man unknown to the mob. “Not to have it,” he said at last. “Not to rule. No vertu.”

Lindet’s face was expressionless.

“For a little while I shall not be with you,” Robespierre said. “Then, again, I will be with you.”

“Those are familiar words,” Collot said. “He can’t remember where he has heard them before. Don’t worry, we didn’t think it was time for your apotheosis yet.”

Lindet said gently, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Robespierre looked up at Collot. He is taking advantage of my weakness, he thought. “Please give me some paper,” he whispered. He wanted to make a note: that as soon as he was well, Collot must be reduced.

The members of the Committee spoke very politely to Eléonore. They did not necessarily believe Dr. Souberbielle, who said he would be better in a month; she understood that if by any chance he should die, she would be treated as the Widow Robespierre, as Simone Evrard was the Widow Marat.

The days passed. Souberbielle gave him permission to have more visitors, to read, to write—but only his personal letters. He might receive the news of the day, if it were not agitating; but all the news was agitating.

Saint-Just came back. We go on very well, in the Committee, he said. We are going to crush the factions. Does Danton still talk of negotiating a peace? he asked. Yes, Saint-Just said. But no one else does. Good republicans talk of victory.

Saint-Just was now twenty-six years old. He was very handsome, very forceful. He spoke in short sentences. Speak of the future, Robespierre said. He talked then of his Spartan republic. In order to breed a new race of men, he said, children would be taken from their parents when they reached five years old, to be trained as farmers, soldiers or lawmakers. Little girls too? Robespierre asked. Oh no, they do not matter, they will stay at home with their mothers.

Nervously, Robespierre’s hands moved across the bedcovers. He thought of his godson, one day old, his fluttering skull steadied by his father’s long fingers; his godson, a few weeks old, gripping his coat collar and making a speech. But he was too weak to argue. People said now that Saint-Just was attached to Henriette Lebas, the sister of Babette’s husband Philippe. But he didn’t believe this; he didn’t believe he was attached to anyone, anyone at all.

He waited till Eléonore was out of the room. He was stronger now, could make his voice heard. He beckoned to Maurice Duplay. “I want to see Camille.”

“Do you think that’s a good thing?”

Duplay sent the message. Oddly enough, Eléonore seemed neither pleased nor displeased.

When Camille came they did not talk about politics, or about recent years at all. Once, Camille mentioned Danton; he turned his head away, with his old gesture of rigid obstinacy. They talked of the past, their common past, with the forced cheerfulness that people assume when there is a dead body in the house.

Left alone, he lay dreaming of the Republic of Virtue. Five days before he became ill, he had defined his terms. He meant a republic of justice, of community, of self-sacrifice. He saw a free people, gentle, bucolic and learned. The darkness of superstition had drained away from the people’s lives: brackish water, vanishing into soil. In its place flourished the rational, jocund, worship of the Supreme Being. These people were happy; their hearts were not wracked or their flesh tormented by questions without answers or desires without resolution. Men came with gravity and wit to matters of government; they instructed their children, and harvested plain and plentiful food from their own land. Dogs and cats, the animals in the field: all were respected, for their own natures. Garlanded girls, in soft robes of pale linen, moved sedately among colonnades of white marble. He saw the deep dark glint of olive groves, and the blue enamel sky.

“Look at this,” Robert Lindet said. He unrolled the newspaper and shook out of it a piece of bread. “Feel,” he said, “go on, taste it.”

It crumbled easily in his fingers. It had a sour musty smell. “I thought you might not know,” Lindet said, “if you were living on your usual diet of oranges. There’s plenty of the stuff at the moment, but you can see for yourself the quality. People can’t live on this. There is no milk either, and the poorer people use a lot of milk. As for meat, people are lucky to get a scrag-end for soup. The women start queueing outside the butchers’ at three in the morning. This week the National Guard has had to break up fights.”

“If this goes on—I don’t know.” He passed a hand over his face. “People starved every year under the old regime. Lindet, where is it, where is all the food? The land still produces.”

“Danton says we have frozen trade up with our regulations. He says—it’s true enough—that the peasants are afraid to bring their produce into the cities in case they get on the wrong side of some regulation and end up being lynched for profiteering. We requisition where we can, but they hide the stuff, they prefer to let it rot. Danton’s people say that if we took the controls off, supply would begin to move again.”

“And what do you say?”

“The agitators in the Sections support controls. They tell the people it is the only way to do things. It is an impossible situation.”

“So …”

“I await your guidance.”

“What does Hébert say?”

“Excuse me. Give me the newspaper.” He shook it out, and crumbs showered onto the floor. “There.”

“‘The butchers who treat the sansculottes like dogs and give them nothing to gnaw upon but bones should be guillotined like all the enemies of the ordinary people.’”

Robespierre’s lip curled. “Very constructive,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the mass of the people has not gained much in wisdom since ’89. This sort of suggestion seems a solution, to them.”

“Is there much unrest?”

“Of a sort. They are not demanding liberty. They don’t seem to be interested in their rights now. Camille and the release of suspects were very popular, around Christmas. But now they only think about the food supply.”

“Hébert will exploit this,” Robespierre said.

“There’s a good deal of agitation, trouble, in the arms factories. We can’t afford strikes. The army is under-supplied as it is.”

Robespierre lifted his head. “The agitators must be rounded up, in the streets, factories, wherever. I understand that the people have grievances, but we can’t let everything go now. People must sacrifice themselves for the nation. It will work out, in the long term.”

“Saint-Just and Vadier on the Police Committee keep a tight hand on things. Unfortunately,” Lindet hesitated, “without a political decision at the highest level, we can’t move against the real troublemakers.”

“Hébert.”

“He will get up an insurrection if he can. The government will fall. Read the newspaper. There is a movement at the Cordeliers—”

“Don’t tell me,” Robespierre said. “I know it all too well. The bombast to get your courage up, and the meetings in back rooms. It is only Hébert that balances out the influence of Danton. Here I am, helpless, and everything is falling apart. Won’t the people be loyal to the Committee, after we have saved them from invasion, and fed them as best we can?”

“I’d hoped to spare you this,” Lindet said. He reached into a pocket and took out a piece of card, which he unfolded. It was an official notice, giving the hours and wage rates for government workshops. There was a ragged tear at each corner, where it had been ripped from the wall.

Robespierre stretched out his hand for it. The notice bore the reproduced signatures of six members of the Committee of Public Safety. Underneath them, crudely scrawled in red, were the words:

CANNIBALS. THIEVES. MURDERERS.

Robespierre let it fall onto the bed. “Were the Capets abused like this?” He dropped his head against the pillows. “It is my duty to hunt out the men who have misled and betrayed these poor people and put these wicked thoughts into their heads. I swear to you, from now on I shall not let the Revolution out of my own hands.”

After Lindet had gone he sat for a long time, propped up by pillows, watching the afternoon light change and flit across the ceiling. Dusk fell. Eléonore crept in with lights. She put a log on the fire, shuffled together the loose papers that lay about the room. She stacked up books and replaced them on the shelves, refilled his jug of water and drew the curtains. She stood over him and gently touched his face. He smiled at her.

“You are feeling better?”

“Much better.”

Suddenly she sat down at the foot of the bed, as if all the strength had left her; her shoulders slumped, she cradled her head in her hands. “Oh,” she said, “we thought at first you’d die. You looked like a corpse, when we found you on the floor. What would happen if you died? None of us could go on.”

“I didn’t die,” he said. His tone was pleasant, decisive. “Also I’m more clear now about what has to be done. I shall be going to the Convention tomorrow.”

The date was 21 Ventôse—March 11, old-style. It was thirty days since his withdrawal from public life. He felt as if all the years past he had been enclosed by a shell, penetrable to just a little light and sound; as if his illness had split it open, and the hand of God had plucked him out, pure and clean.

March 12: “The mandate of the Committee was renewed by the Convention for a further month,” Robert Lindet said. “There was no opposition.” He said it very formally, as if he were a speaking gazette.

“Mm,” Danton said.

“There wouldn’t be, would there?” Camille leapt up to pace about the room. “There wouldn’t be any opposition. The members of the Convention stand up and sit down to the applause of the galleries. Which the Committee had packed, I imagine.”

Lindet sighed. “You’re right. Nothing is left to chance.” His eyes followed Camille. “Will you be glad of Hébert’s death? I suppose you will.”

“Is it a foregone conclusion?” Danton asked.

“The Cordeliers Club calls for insurrection, for a day. So does Hébert in his newspaper. No government in five years has stood up to insurrection.”

“But then,” Camille said, “Robespierre was never the government.”

“Exactly. Either he’ll snuff it out before it begins, or smash it by force of arms.”

“Man of action,” Danton said. He laughed.

“You were, once,” Lindet said.

Danton swept an arm out. “I am the Opposition.”

“Robespierre threatened Collot. If Collot had shown the slightest leaning towards Hébert’s tactics, he would be in prison now.”

“What has that to do with me?”

“Saint-Just has been at Robespierre, every day for a week. You have to understand that Robespierre has respect for him—Saint-Just never puts a foot wrong. We think that in the long run they may have some divergence of opinion, but we’re not concerned with theory now. Saint-Just’s attitude is, if Hébert goes, Danton must go. He talks of—balancing out the factions.”

“They wouldn’t dare. I’m not a faction, Lindet, I’m at the Revolution’s core.”

“Look, Danton, Saint-Just believes you are a traitor. He is actively seeking proofs of your involvement with the enemy. How many times must I tell you? However ludicrous it seems, this is what he believes. This is what he is saying to the Committee. Collot and Billaud-Varennes back him up.”

“But Robespierre,” Camille said quickly. “He’s the important one.”

“I suppose you must have quarreled, Danton, last time you met. I’m afraid he has the air of a man who is trying to make his mind up. I don’t know what it would take—some small thing. He doesn’t speak against you, but he doesn’t defend you as he used to. He was very quiet, in today’s session. The others think it is because he’s not over his illness yet, but it’s more than that. He made a note of everything that was said. He watched all the time. If Hébert falls, you must go.”

“Go?”

“You must get out.”

“Is that the best advice you have for me, friend Lindet?”

“I want you to survive. Robespierre’s a prophet, he’s a dreamer—and I ask you, what record have prophets, as heads of government? When he’s gone, who will maintain the republic, if you do not?”

“Dreamer? Prophet? You’re very persuasive,” Danton said. “But if I thought that whey-faced eunuch had any designs on me I’d break his neck.”

Lindet dropped back in his chair. “Well, I don’t know. Camille, can you make him understand.”

“Oh … my position is somewhat … ambivalent.”

“That’s a damn good word for you,” Danton observed.

“Saint-Just spoke against you in the Committee today, Camille. So did Collot, so did Barère. Robespierre let them get through with it, then he said that you were led astray by stronger personalities. Barère said that they were sick of hearing that, and here was some evidence from the Police Committee, from Vadier. Robespierre took the papers and put them under his own on the table, and sat with his elbows on them. Then he changed the subject.”

“Does he often do things like that?”

“Surprisingly often.”

“I shall appeal to the people,” Danton said. “They must have some idea what sort of government they want.”

“Hébert is appealing to the people,” Lindet said. “The Committee calls it projected insurrection.”

“He has not my status in the Revolution. Nothing like it.”

“I don’t think the people care anymore,” Lindet said. “I don’t think they care who sinks or swims, you, Hébert, Robespierre. They’re exhausted. They come to the trials as a diversion. It is better than the theater. The blood is real.”

“One might think you despaired,” Camille said.

“Oh, I don’t have any truck with despair. I just keep an eye on the food supplies, as the Committee has told me to do.”

“You have your loyalties to the Committee.”

“Yes. So I won’t come again.”

“Lindet, if I come out on top of this, I’ll remember your good offices.”

Robert Lindet nodded—made, in fact, a sort of humorous, half-embarrassed bow. He was of another generation; the Revolution had not made him. Dogged and clear-headed, he made it his business to survive from day to day; Monday to Tuesday was all he asked.

Some violent rhetoric in the Sections: a minor demonstration at City Hall. 23 Ventôse, Saint-Just read a report to the Convention, alleging a foreign-inspired plot among certain well-known factionalists to destroy representative government and starve Paris. 24 Ventôse, in the early hours, Hébert and his associates were taken away from their houses by the police.

ROBESPIERRE: I am at a loss to see what purpose our friends thought this meeting would serve.

DANTON: How is the trial going?

ROBESPIERRE: No problems really. We hope it will be over tomorrow. Oh, perhaps, you don’t mean Hébert’s trial? Fabre and Hérault will be in court in a few days’ time. The exact date escapes me, but Fouquier will know.

DANTON: You wouldn’t be trying to frighten me, by any chance? All this relentless laboring of the point.

ROBESPIERRE: You seem to think I have something against you. All I have asked you to do is to disassociate yourself from Fabre. Unfortunately there are people who say that if Fabre is on trial you should be too.

DANTON: And what do you say?

ROBESPIERRE: Your activities in Belgium were not perhaps above reproach, However, I chiefly blame Lacroix.

DANTON: Camille—

ROBESPIERRE: Never speak to me again of Camille.

DANTON: Why not?

ROBESPIERRE: The last time we met you spoke abusively of him. With contempt.

DANTON: Suit yourself. The point is, in December you were ready to admit that the Terror should be mitigated, that innocent people—

ROBESPIERRE: I dislike these emotive phrases. By “innocent” you mean “persons of whom for one reason or another I approve.” That is not the standard. The standard is what the court finds. In that sense, no innocent person has suffered.

DANTON: My God! I don’t believe what I’m hearing. He says no innocent person has suffered.

ROBESPIERRE: I hope you’re not going to produce anymore of your tears. It is the kind of talent Fabre and the actors have, and not becoming to you.

DANTON: I appeal to you for the last time. You and I are the only people capable of running this country. All right—let’s admit it Dnally—we don’t like each other. But you don’t really suspect me, any more than I suspect you. There are people around us who would like to see us destroy each other. Let’s make life hard for them. Let’s make common cause.

ROBESPIERRE: There’s nothing I’d like better. I deplore factions. I also deplore violence. However, I would rather destroy the factions by violence than see the Revolution fall into the wrong hands and be perverted.

DANTON: You mean mine?

ROBESPIERRE: You see, you talk so much about innocence. Where are they, all these innocent people? I never seem to meet them.

DANTON: You look at innocence, but you see guilt.

ROBESPIERRE: I suppose if I had your morals and your principles, the world would look a different place. I would never see the need to punish anyone. There would be no criminals. There would be no crimes.

DANTON: Oh God, I cannot stand you and your city for a moment longer. I am taking my wife and my children to Sèvres, and if you want me you know where to find me.

Sèvres, March 22: 2 Germinal. “So here you are,” Angélique said. “And you can enjoy the fine weather.” She kissed her grandsons, ran her eyes down Louise and found occasion to put an arm round her waist and squeeze her. Louise kissed her cheek dutifully. “Why didn’t you all come?” Angélique asked. “I mean, Camille and family? The old people could have come, too, there’s plenty of room.”

Louise made a mental note to pass on the description of Annette Duplessis as an old person. “We wanted some time to ourselves,” she said.

“Oh, did you?” Angélique shrugged; it was a desire that she couldn’t comprehend.

“Has my friend Duplessis recovered from his ordeal?” M. Charpentier asked.

“He’s all right,” Danton said. “He seems old, lately. Still, wouldn’t you, if you had Camille for a son-in-law?”

“You’ve not spared me gray hairs yourself, Georges.”

“How the years have flown by!” Angélique said. “I remember Claude as a handsome man. Stupid, but handsome.” She sighed. “I wish I could have the last ten years over again—don’t you, daughter?”

“No,” Louise said.

“She’d be six,” Danton said. “But Christ, I wish I could have them! There’d be things to do different.”

“You wouldn’t neccessarily have hindsight,” his wife said.

“I remember an afternoon,” Charpentier said. “It would be ’86, ’87? Duplessis came into the café and I asked him to supper. He said, we’re up to our eyes at the Treasury—but we will sort out a date, as soon as the present crisis is over.”

“Well?” Louise said.

Charpentier shook his head, smiled. “They haven’t been yet.”

Two days later the weather broke. It turned gray, damp and chilly. There were draughts, the fires smoked. Visitors from Paris arrived in a steady stream. Hasty introductions were made: Deputy So-and-so, Citizen Such-a-one of the Commune. They shut themselves up with Danton; the conversations were brief, but the household heard voices raised in exasperation. The visitors always said that they had to get back to Paris, that they could by no means stay the night. They had about them the air of grim irresolution, of shifty bravado, that Angélique recognized as the prelude to crisis.

She went to ask the necessary questions. Her son-in-law sat in silence for some time, his broad shoulders slumped and his scarred face morose.

“What they want me to do,” he said finally, “is to go back and throw my weight about. By that, I mean … they have plans to rally the Convention to me, and also, Westermann has sent me a letter. You remember my friend, General Westermann?”

“A military coup.” Her dark aging face sagged. “Georges, who suffers? Who suffers this time?”

“That’s it. That’s the whole point. If I can’t remedy this situation without bloodshed, I’ll have to leave it to someone else. That’s—just how I feel these days. I don’t want any more killings at my door, I don’t want them on my conscience. I no longer feel sure enough of anything to risk a single life for it. Is that so hard to understand?” Angélique shook her head. “My friends in Paris can’t understand it. They think it’s some fanciful scruple, some whim of mine or some kind of laziness, a paralysis of the will. But the truth is, I’ve traveled that road, and I’ve reached the end of it.”

“God will forgive you, Georges,” she whispered. “I know you have no faith, but I pray every day for you and Camille.”

“What do you pray for?” He looked up at her. “Our political success?”

“No, I—I ask God to judge you mercifully.”

“I see. Well, I’m not ready for judgement yet. You might include Robespierre, when you’re petitioning the Almighty. Although I’m sure they speak privately, more often than we know.”

Mid-afternoon, another carriage rumbling and squeaking into the muddy courtyard, the rain streaming down. In an upstairs room the children are screaming at the tops of their voices. Angélique is harassed; her son-in-law sits talking to the damp dog at his feet.

Louise rubs a windowpane to look out. “Oh, no,” she breathes. She leaves the room with the contemptuous twitch of her skirts which she has perfected.

Runnels of water pour and slither from Legendre the butcher’s traveling clothes: oceans, fountains and canals. “Will you look at this weather?” he demands. “Six paces and I’m drowned.” Don’t raise my hopes like that, says the sodden shape behind him. Legendre turns, hoarse, pink, spluttering, to compliment his traveling companion: “You look like a rat,” he says.

Angélique reaches up to take Camille’s face in her hands, and puts her cheek against his drenched black curls. She whispers something meaningless or Italian, breathing in the scent of wet wool. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him,” he whispers back, in a kind of horror. She slides her arms around his shoulders and sees suddenly, with complete vividness, the sunlight slipping obliquely across the little marble tables, hears the chatter and the chink of cups, smells the aroma of fresh coffee, and the river, and the faint perfume of powdered hair. Clinging to each other, swaying slightly, they stand with their eyes fixed on each other’s faces, stabbed and transfixed with dread, while the leaden clouds scud and the foggy dismal torrent wraps them like a shroud.

Legendre sat himself down heavily. “I want you to believe,” he said, “that Camille and myself don’t go jaunting about the countryside together without good reason. Therefore what I’ve come to say, I’m going to say. I am not an educated man—”

“He never tires of telling us,” Camille said. “He imagines it is a point not already impressed.”

“This is a business you have to face head-on-not wrap it up and pretend it happened to Roman emperors.”

“Get on then,” Danton said. “You may imagine what their journey has been like.”

“Robespierre is out for your blood.”

Danton stood in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back. He grinned.

Camille took out a list of names and passed it to him. “The batch of 4 Germinal,” he said. “Thirteen executions in all. The Cordeliers leadership, Hérault’s friend Proli, a couple of bankers and of course Père Duchesne. He should have been preceded by his furnaces; they could have turned it into a sort of carnival procession. He was not in one of his great cholers when he died. He was screaming.”

“I dare say you would scream,” Legendre said.

“I am quite sure I should,” Camille said coldly. “But my head is not going to be cut off.”

“They had supper together,” Legendre said meaningfully.

“You had supper with Robespierre?” Camille nodded. “Well done,” Danton said. “Myself, I don’t think I could eat in the man’s presence. I think I’d throw up.”

“Oh, by the way,” Camille said, “did you know that Chabot tried to poison himself? At least, we think so.”

“He had a bottle in his cell from Charras and Duchatelle, the chemists,” Legendre said. “It said ‘For External Application Only.’ So he drank it.”

“But Chabot will drink anything,” Camille said.

“He’s survived, then? Botched the job?”

“Look,” Legendre said, “you can’t afford to stand there laughing and sneering. You can’t afford the time. Saint-Just is nagging at Robespierre night and day.”

“What does he propose to charge me with?”

“Nothing and everything. Everything from supporting Orléans to trying to save Brissot and the Queen.”

“The usual,” Danton said. “And you advise?”

“Last week I’d have said, stand and fight. But now I say, save your own skin. Get out while there’s time.”

“Camille?”

Camille looked up unhappily. “We met on good terms. He was very amiable. In fact, he had a bit too much to drink. He only does that when he’s—when he’s trying to shut out his inner voices, if that doesn’t sound too fanciful. I asked him, why won’t you talk about Danton? He touched his forehead and said, because he is sub judice.” He turned his head away. “You might think of going abroad.”

“Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in ’91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me.” He shook his head. “This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can’t carry his country on the soles of his shoes.”

The wind howled and rattled in the chimneys; dogs barked across the countryside from farm to farm. “After all you said about posterity,” Camille muttered. “You seem to be speaking to it now.” The rain slackened to a gray penetrating drizzle, soaking the houses and fields.

In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don’t need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days’ time it will be the very thing he needs.

Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task.

His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page.