A Place of Greater Safety

  “Don’t like ballet,” the Duke said. “Bores me.”

  Félicité smoothed her skirt, glanced down at her hands. A woman’s hands show her age, she thought; they give everything away. Once there’d been hope. Once there’d been the promise of a fairer, cleaner world; and no one had hoped harder, no one had worked for it more assiduously than she had. “A gaol,” she said. “They’ll trick you, amuse you, occupy you—while they carve up the country between them. That is their object.”

  He looked up at her, this middle-aged child of hers. “You think they’re cleverer than me, do you?”

  “Oh, much, my darling: much, much, much.”

  He avoided her eye now. “I’ve always known my limitations.”

  “Which makes you wiser than most men. And wiser than these manipulators give you credit for.”

  That pleased him. It came to him vaguely that he might outsmart them. She had spoken so softly, as if the thought were his own. “What’s the best thing to do? Tell me, Félicité, please.”

  “Disassociate yourself. Keep your name clear. Refuse to be their dupe.”

  “So you want me”—he struggled—“to go to the Assembly, and say, no, I don’t want the throne, you may have thought I did but that was not what I meant at all?”

  “Take this paper. Look. Sit here. Write as I dictate.”

  She leaned against the back of his chair. The words were prepared, in her head. Precarious, she thought. This was a near thing. If I could shut him away from all counter-persuasion, all other influence—but that’s impossible. I was lucky to get him for an hour alone.

  Quickly now—before he changed his mind. “Put your signature. There, it’s done.”

  Philippe threw his pen down. Ink spattered the roses, the ribbons, the violins. He clapped a hand to his head. “Laclos will kill me,” he wailed.

  Félicité made soothing noises, as if to a child with colic, and took the paper from Philippe to amend his punctuation.

  When the Duke told Laclos of his decision, Laclos bowed imperceptibly from the shoulder. “As you wish, Milord,” he said, and withdrew. Why he had spoken in English he never afterwards understood. In his apartment he turned his face to the wall and drank a bottle of brandy with a thoughtful but murderous expression.

  At Danton’s apartment he worked around to a comfortable chair, handing himself from one piece of furniture to the next in a manner faintly nautical. “Have patience,” he said. “Any moment now I shall deliver myself of a profound observation.”

  “I shall go,” Camille said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Laclos had to say. He preferred not to know the finer details of Danton’s entanglements; and, though he knew they were supposed to regard Philippe only as a means to an end, it was very difficult when somebody had been so nice to you. Every time some Cordeliers oaf came tramping through his apartment, yelling from room to room, he thought of the Duke’s twelve-bedroomed wedding present. He could have wept.

  “Sit down, Camille,” Danton said.

  “You may stay,” Laclos said, “but keep confidences, or I shall kill you.”

  “Yes, of course you will,” Danton said. “Now—go on.”

  “My observations fall into three parts. One, Philippe is a pea-brained yellow-livered imbecile. Two, Félicité is a nasty, poxy, vomit-inducing whore.”

  “All right,” Danton said. “And the third part of your observations?”

  “A coup d’état,” Laclos said. He looked at Danton without lifting his head.

  “Come now. Let’s not get over-excited.”

  “Force Philippe’s hand. Make him see his duty. Put him in a position where—” Laclos’s right hand made languid chopping motions.

  Danton stood over him. “What exactly is it you have in mind?”

  “The Assembly will debate, decide to restore Louis. Because they need him to make their pretty constitution work. Because they’re King’s men, Danton, because bloody Barnave has been bought. Alliteration.” He hiccuped. “Or if he hadn’t, he has been by now, after his knee-to-knee trip back from the border with the Austrian slut. I tell you, even now they are working on the most risible set of fictions. You’ve seen the proclamation that Lafayette put out—‘the enemies of the Revolution have seized the person of the King.’ They are speaking of abduction”—he smashed the heel of his hand into the arm of his chair—“they are saying that the fat fool was carried to the border against his will. They will say anything, anything, to save their faces. Now tell me, Danton, when such lies are sold to the people, isn’t it time to spill a little blood?”

  Laclos now looked at his feet. His manner became sober and discursive. “The Assembly should be influenced, must be influenced by the people’s will. The people will never forgive Louis for abandoning them. Therefore dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare that the Riding School should do what we tell them. Therefore we will make a petition. Some hack such as Brissot may draft it. It will ask for the deposition of Louis. The Cordeliers will sponsor it. The Jacobins might be persuaded to sign it, I say they might. The 17th of July, the whole city assembles on the Champs-de-Mars for the Bastille celebrations. We get our petition signed, thousands and thousands of names. We take it to the Assembly. If they refuse to act on it, the people invade the Assembly—in pursuance of their Sacred Will, all that. The doctrine behind the action we’ll work out when we have leisure.”

  “You suggest that we employ armed force against the Assembly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Against our representatives?”

  “Representatives nothing.”

  “Bloodshed, possibly?”

  “Damn you,” Laclos said. Scarlet flowed into his fine-boned face. “Have we come all this way to throw up our hands now, to turn into some sort of puling humanitarians—now, when everything’s ours for the taking?” He splayed out his fingers, palms upwards. “Can you have a revolution without blood?”

  “I never said you could.”

  “Well, then. Not even Robespierre thinks you could.”

  “I just wanted to have your meaning clear.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “And then, if we succeed in deposing Louis?”

  “Then, Danton, divide the spoils.”

  “And do we divide them with Philippe?”

  “Right, he’s refused the throne once. But he will see his duty, if I have to strangle Félicité with my own hands—and that would be a thrill, I can tell you. Look, Danton, we’ll run the country between us. We’ll make Robespierre our Minister of Finance, he’s honest they say. We’ll repatriate Marat and let him give fleas to the Swiss. We’ll—”

  “Laclos, this is not serious.”

  “Oh, I know.” Laclos got unsteadily to his feet. “I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased—it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe’s heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M. Danton.”

  “How your imagination runs away with you.”

  “They do say that if you keep drinking you start to see snakes,” Laclos said. “Great serpent things, dragons and similar. Would you do it, Danton? Would you risk it with me?”

  Danton didn’t answer.

  “You would, you would.” Laclos stood up, swaying a little, and held out his arms. “Triumph and glory.” He dropped his arms to his side. “And then perhaps you’ll kill me. I’ll risk it. For a footnote in the history books. I dread obscurity, do you see? The meager and unrewarded old age, the piddling end of mediocrity, sans everything, as the English poet says. ‘There goes poor old Laclos, he wrote a book once, the title escapes me.’ I’m going away now,” he said with dignity. “All I ask is that you think it over.” He lurched towards the door, and met Gabrielle coming in. “Nice little woman,” he said under his breath. They heard him stumble on the stairs.

  “I thought you’d want
to know,” she said. “They’re back.”

  “The Capet family?” Camille asked.

  “The royal family. Yes.” She withdrew from the room, closing the door softly behind her. They listened. Heat and silence lay over the city.

  “I like a crisis,” Camille said. A short pause. Danton looked not at him, but through him. “I’ll keep you to the spirit of your recent republican mouthings. I was thinking about it, when Laclos was ranting—and I’m sorry for it, but I think Philippe will have to go. You can use him and dispense with him later.”

  “Oh, you are as cold-blooded—” Danton stopped. He couldn’t think what was as cold-blooded as Camille, pushing his hair back with a flick of his wrist and saying use him and dispense with him later. “Were you born with that gesture,” he asked, “or did you pick it up from some prostitute?”

  “First get rid of Louis, then we can battle it out.”

  “We might lose everything,” Danton said. But he had made his calculations: always, when he seemed to flare up for a moment into some unreasoning, sneering aggression, his mind was moving quite coldly, quite calmly, in a certain direction. Now his mind was made up. He was going to do it.

  The royal party had been intercepted at Varennes; they had traveled 165 miles from inept beginning to blundering end. Six thousand people surrounded the two carriages on the first stage of their journey home. A day later the company was joined by three deputies of the National Assembly. Barnave and Pétion sat with the family inside the berlin. The Dauphin took a liking to Barnave. He chattered to him and played with the buttons on his coat, reading out the legend engraved there: “Live free, or die.” “We must show character,” the Queen repeated, over and over again.

  By the end of the journey, the future for Deputy Barnave was plain. Mirabeau dead, he would replace him as secret adviser to the court. Pétion believed that the King’s plump little sister, Mme. Elisabeth, had fallen in love with him; it was true that, on the long road back, she had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder. Pétion burbled incessantly about it, for a month or two.

  On a day of blazing heat, the King re-entered Paris. Vast silent crowds lined the routes. The berlin was filled with choking dust from the road, and there appeared at the window the lined, harried face of a gray-haired woman: Antoinette. They arrived at the Tuileries. When they were installed, Lafayette placed his guards and hurried to the King. “Your Majesty’s orders for the day?”

  “It appears,” Louis said, “that I am more at your orders than you at mine.”

  As they passed through the city, the ranks of soldiers lining the route had presented arms with the butts reversed, as if it were a funeral: which, in a manner of speaking, it was.

  Camille Desmoulins, Révolutions de France, No. 83:

  When Louis XVI re-entered his apartment at the Tuileries, he threw himself into an armchair, saying “It’s devilish hot,” then, “That was a ———journey. However, I have had it in my head to do it for a long time.” Afterwards, looking towards the National Guardsmen who were present, he said, “I have done a foolish thing, I admit. But must I not have my follies, like other people? Come along, bring me a chicken.” One of his valets came in. “Ah, there you are,” he said, “and here I am.” They brought the chicken, and Louis XVI ate and drank with an appetite that would have done honor to the King of Cockayne.

  And Hébert has changed his royalist opinions:

  We will stuff you into Charenton and your whore into the Hôpital. When you are finally walled up, both of you, and when you no longer have a civil list, put an axe in me if you get away.

  Pére Duchesne, No. 61

  From here, sprawled in this chair, Danton could see Louise Robert, arguing, wanting to cry and just managing not to. Her husband had been arrested, was in prison. “Demand his release,” she was saying. “Force it.”

  He spoke to her across the room. “Not much of the big tough republican now, are you?”

  She gave him a glance that surprised him by its intensity of dislike. “Let me think,” he said. “Just let me think.”

  His eyes half-closed, he watched the room. Lucile sat fiddling with her wedding ring, signs of strain on her child’s face. He found her, these days, always on his mind; hers was the first face he saw when he came into a room. He spent time chiding himself; called it remarkable disloyalty to the mother of his children.

  (FRÉRON: I’ve loved her for years.

  DANTON: Rubbish.

  FRÉRON: You may say so. What do you know?

  DANTON: I know you.

  FRÉRON: But you seem to entertain certain expectations yourself. At least, everybody remarks on it.

  DANTON: Ah, well, I don’t tell her I love her. It might be something far more crude than that. I might be more honest than you.

  FRÉRON: Would you, if you could—?

  DANTON: Naturally.

  FRÉRON: But Camille—

  DANTON: I could keep Camille quiet. Look, you have to seize the opportunities to get what you want in life.

  FRÉRON: I know.)

  Fréron was now watching him, trying to read his face and anticipate him. It had gone wrong. Their plans were known at City Hall; Félicite, who always found out what was going on, had probably dropped a word in the ear of Lafayette. Lafayette was moving troops up to the Tuileries; the blond holy fool still had the men, the guns, the whip hand. He had thrown a cordon round the Riding School, to protect the deputies from any incursion; he had rung the tocsin, he had set a curfew. The Jacobins—parading their moderation, their timidity—had refused their support. Fréron would have liked to forget the whole thing, and that was why he was saying, “Danton, I don’t think we can pull back now.”

  “Is it so hard to convince yourself, Rabbit? Do you have to keep making the point?” The whole room turned at the sound of his voice. They stiffened, shifted their positions. “Camille, go back to the Jacobins.”

  “They won’t listen,” Camille said. “They say the law doesn’t allow them to support such a petition, they say the deposition of the King is a matter for the Assembly. So what’s the point? Robespierre is in the chair, but the place is packed with Lafayette’s supporters, so what can he do? Even if he wanted to support us, which is …” His voice tailed off. “Robespierre wants to work within the law.”

  “And I have no particular relish for breaking it,” Danton said. Two days of close argument have come to nothing. The petition had been carried about between the Assembly and the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, it had been printed, amended (sometimes covertly) and printed again. They were waiting: the three women, and Fréron, Fabre, Legendre, Camille. He remembered Mirabeau at City Hall; you don’t work with people, Danton, you work over them. But how could he have known, he asked himself, that people would be so ready to take orders? Earlier in life, he had never suspected it.

  “This time we’ll give you some support,” he said to Camille. “Fréron, get together a hundred men. They should be armed.”

  “The citizens of this district are never far from their pikes.”

  Danton glared at the interruption. Camille was embarrassed by the things Fréron said, his false bonhomie, his suspect eagerness.

  “Pikes,” Fabre murmured. “I hope he intends it as a figure of speech. I am very far from my pike. I do not have a pike.”

  “Do you think, Rabbit,” Camille asked him, “that we are going to skewer the Jacobins to their benches?”

  “Call it a show of determination,” Danton said. “Don’t call it a show of force. We don’t want to upset Robespierre. But Rabbit—” Danton’s voice called him back from the door. “Give Camille fifteen minutes to try to persuade them. A decorous interval, you know.”

  Around him the room eddied into activity. The women stood up, smoothing their skirts, their eyes forlorn and their lips pinched. Gabrielle tried to meet his eyes for a moment. Apprehension gives a yellow cast to her skin, he has observed. One day he noticed—as one notices rain clouds, or the time on the face of a clock?
??that he doesn’t love her now.

  Evening, the National Guard cleared people off the streets. The volunteer battalions were out, but a lot of Lafayette’s regular companies were in evidence too. “You wonder,” Danton said. “There are patriots among the soldiers, but that old habit of blind obedience dies hard.” And we may need to count on the old habit, he thought, if the rest of Europe moves against us. He tried not to think of that; for now it was someone else’s problem. He had to narrow his thinking, to the next twenty-four hours.

  Gabrielle went to bed after midnight. It was difficult to sleep. She heard the tread of horses in the streets. She heard the gate bell, in the Cour du Commerce, and the murmur of voices as people were let in and out. It might have been two o’clock, half-past two, when she gave up the unequal battle; sat up, lit a candle, looked across at Georges’s bed. It was empty and had not been disturbed. It was very hot still; her nightdress clung to her. She slid out of bed, stripped her nightdress off, washed in water that should have been cold but was lukewarm. She found a clean nightdress. She went to her dressing table, sat down, dabbed her temples and her throat with cologne. Her breasts ached. She pulled her long dark hair from its plait, combed out the rippling wave, re-plaited it. Her face seemed hollow, somber in the candlelight. She went to the window. Nothing: the rue des Cordeliers was empty. She pulled on her soft slippers, and left the bedroom for the dark dining room She opened the shutter. The light shone in from the Cour du Commerce below. Shadows seemed to move, behind her; the room was an octagon, paper-strewn, and the papers lifted a little in a merciful night breeze. She leaned out, to feel it on her face. There was no one to be seen, but she could hear a dull thump and clatter. It is Guillaume Brune’s printing press, she thought, or it is Marat’s. What are they doing at this hour? They live by words, she thought; they don’t need sleep.