A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CAST OF CHARACTERS

PART ONE

In Guise:

Jean-Nicolas Desmoulins, a lawyer

Madeleine, his wife

Camille, his eldest son (b. 1760)

Elisabeth, his daughter

Henriette, his daughter (died aged nine)

Armand, his son

Anne-Clothilde, his daughter

Clement, his youngest son

The Prince de Condé, premier nobleman of the

district and a client of Jean-Nicolas Desmoulins

In Arcis-sur-Aube:

Marie-Madeleine Danton, a widow, who marries

Jean Recordain, an inventor

Georges-Jacques, her son (b.1759)

Anne-Madeleine, her daughter

Pierrette, her daughter

Marie-Cécile, her daughter who becomes a nun

In Arras:

François de Robespierre, a lawyer

Maximilien, his son (b. 1758)

Charlotte, his daughter

Henriette, his daughter (died aged nineteen)

Augustin, his younger son

Jacqueline, his wife, née Carraut, who dies

after giving birth to a fifth child

Grandfather Carraut, a brewer

In Paris, at Louis-le-Grand:

Father Poignard, the principal—a liberal-minded man

Father Proyart, the deputy principal—not at all a liberal-minded man

Father Herivaux, a teacher of classical languages

Louis Suleau, a student

Stanislas Fréron, a very well-connected student, known as “Rabbit”

In Troyes:

Fabre d’Églantine, an unemployed genius

PART TWO

In Paris:

Maitre Vinot, a lawyer in whose chambers

Georges-Jacques Danton is a pupil

Maître Perrin, a lawyer in whose chambers

Camille Desmoulins is a pupil

Jean-Marie Hérault de Séchelles, a young

nobleman and legal dignitary

François-Jérôme Charpentier, a café owner and Inspector of Taxes

Angélique (Angelica), his Italian wife

Gabrielle, his daughter

Françoise-Julie Duhauttoir, George-Jacques Danton’s mistress

At the rue Condé:

Claude Duplessis, a senior civil servant

Annette, his wife

Abbé Laudréville, Annette’s confessor, a go-between

In Guise:

Rose-Fleur Godard, Camille Desmoulins’s fiancée

In Arras:

Joseph Fouché, a teacher, Charlotte de Robespierre’s beau

Lazare Carnot, a military engineer, a friend of

Maximilien de Robespierre

Anaïs Deshorties, a nice girl whose relatives want

her to marry Maximilien de Robespierre

Louise de Kéralio, a novelist, who goes to Paris, marries

François Robert and edits a newspaper

Hermann, a lawyer, a friend of Maximilien de Robespierre

The Orléanists:

Philippe, Duke of Orléans, cousin of King Louis XVI

Félicité de Genlis, an author—his ex-mistress,

now Governor of his children

Charles-Alexis Brulard de Sillery, Comte de Genlis-Félicité’s

husband, a former naval officer, a gambler

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a novelist, the Duke’s secretary

Agnès de Buffon, the Duke’s mistress

Grace Elliot, the Duke’s mistress, a spy for

the British Foreign Office

Axel von Fersen, the Queen’s lover

At Danton’s chambers:

Jules Pare, his clerk

François Deforgues, his clerk

Billaud-Varennes, his part-time clerk, a man of sour temperament

At the Cour du Commerce:

Mme. Gély, who lives upstairs from Georges-Jacques and

Gabrielle Danton

Antoine, her husband

Louise, her daughter

Legendre, a master butcher, a neighbor of the Dantons

François Robert, a lecturer in law: marries Louise de Kéralio,

opens a delicatessen and later becomes a radical journalist

René Hébert, a theater box-office clerk

Anne Théroigne, a singer

In the National Assembly:

Antoine Bamave, a deputy: at first a radical, later a royalist

Jérôme Pétion, a radical deputy, later called a “Brissotin”

Dr. Guillotin, an expert on public health

Jean-Sylvain Bailly, an astronomer, later Mayor of Paris

Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, a renegade

aristocrat sitting for the Commons, or Third Estate

Teutch, Mirabeau’s valet

Jean-Pierre Brissot, a journalist

Momoro, a printer

Réveillon, owner of a wallpaper factory

Hanriot, owner of a saltpeter works

De Launay, Governor of the Bastille

PART THREE

M. Soulès, temporary Governor of the Bastille

The Marquis de Lafayette, Commander of the National Guard

Jean-Paul Marat, a journalist, editor of the People’s Friend

Arthur Dillon, Governor of Tobago and a general in

the French army: a friend of Camille Desmoulins

Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a well-known author

Collot d’Herbois, a playwright

Father Pancemont, a truculent priest

Father Bérardier, a gullible priest

Caroline Rémy, an actress

Père Duchesne, a furnace maker: fictitious alter ego

of René Hébert, box-office clerk turned journalist

Antoine Saint-Just, a disaffected poet, acquainted with or

related to Camille Desmoulins

Jean-Marie Roland, an elderly ex-civil servant

Manon Roland, his young wife, a writer

François-Léonard Buzot, a deputy, member of the

Jacobin Club and a friend of the Rolands

Jean-Baptiste Louvet, a novelist, Jacobin, friend of the Rolands

PART FOUR

Charles Dumouriez, a general, sometime Foreign Minister

Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, a lawyer; Camille Desmoulins’s cousin

Jeanette, the Desmoulins’s housekeeper

At the rue Saint-Honoré:

Maurice Duplay, a master carpenter

Françoise, his wife

Eléonore, an art student, his eldest daughter

Victoire, his daughter

Elisabeth (Babette), his youngest daughter

PART FIVE

Politicans described as “Brissotins” or “Girondins”:

Jean-Pierre Brissot, a journalist

Jean-Marie and Manon Roland

Pierre Vergniaud, member of the National Convention,

famous as an orator

Jérôme Pétion

François-Léonard Buzot

Jean-Baptiste Louvet

Charles Barbaroux, a lawyer from Marseille

and many others

Albertine Marat, Marat’s sister

Simone Evrard, Marat’s common-law wife

Defermon, a deputy, sometime President of the National Convention

Jean-François Lacroix, a moderate deputy: goes “on mission”

to Belgium with Danton in 1792 and 1793

David, painter

Charlotte Corday, an assassin

Claude Dupin, a young bureaucrat who proposes marriage

to Louise Gély, Danton’s neighbor

Souberbielle, Robespierre’s doctor

Renaudin, a violin maker, prone to violence

Father Kéravenen, an outlaw priest

Chaveau-Lagarde, a lawyer: defense council for Marie-Antoinette

Philippe Lebas, a left-wing deputy: later a member of the Committee

of General Security, or Police Committee: marries Babette Duplay

Vadier, known as “the Inquisitor,” a member of the Police Committee

Implicated in the East India Company fraud:

Chabot, a deputy, ex-Capuchin friar

Julien, a deputy, former Protestant pastor

Proli, secretary to Hérault de Séchelles,

and said to be an Austrian spy

Emmanuel Dobruska and Siegmund Gotleb, known as

Emmanuel and Junius Frei: speculators

Guzman, a minor politician, Spanish-born

Diedrichsen, a Danish “businessman”

Abbé d’Espanac, a crooked army contractor

Citizen de Sade, a writer, formerly a marquis

Pierre Philippeaux, a deputy: writes a pamphlet against the

government during the Terror

Some members of the Committee of Public Safety:

Saint-André

Barère

Couthon, a paraplegic, friend of Robespierre

Robert Lindet, a lawyer from Normany, a friend of Danton

Etienne Panis, a left-wing deputy, a friend of Danton

At the trial of the Dantonists:

Hermann (once of Arras), President of the Revolutionary

Tribunal

Dumas, his deputy

Fouquier-Tinville, now Public Prosecutor

Fabricius Paris, Clerk of the Court

Laflotte, a prison informer

Henri Sanson, public executioner