A Place of Greater Safety

  An estimate by M. Guérdon, formerly master carpenter to the Parlement of Paris:

  To the steps 1,700 livres

  To three blades (two in reserve) 600 livres

  To pulley and copper grooves 300 livres

  To the iron drop-weight (for the blade) 300 livres

  To rope and rigging 60 livres

  To constructing the whole, testing it and time spent discussing it 1,200 livres

  To a small scale model for demonstrations, to prevent accidents 1,200 livres

  TOTAL 5,360 livres

  Warmly recommending the new invention to the Assembly, the public health expert Dr. Guillotin said: “With this machine I can have your head off in a flash and you won’t suffer at all.” (Laughter.)

  Danton: Robespierre called at Camille’s apartment late at night, looking for him. I was there with Lucile. It was harmless enough. The servant Jeanette was about the place, sitting up rather pointedly. Though what they all think I would be doing, with the girl six months pregnant … And where was Camille? Everybody must be in when Robespierre calls. Young Maximilien was faintly annoyed. Lucile caught my eye. She didn’t know where he was.

  “I can suggest some places,” I said. “But I wouldn’t advise you to try them, Max, not personally.”

  He blushed. What it is to be evil-minded, I thought. In fact I had an idea that Camille was across the river, addressing one of these freakish women’s groups with which he and Marat are involved—Society of Young Ladies for Maiming Marquises, Fishwives for Democracy, you know the sort of thing. And I really thought that, as the Incorruptible has such a large female following, if he walked in while they were already adoring Camille the ladies might lose all restraint and begin attacking people on the streets.

  He asked if he might wait. It was important.

  “What won’t keep till morning?”

  “I don’t keep conventional hours,” he explained to me. “Neither, as you know, does Camille. When I need him he is usually available.”

  “Not this time,” I said. Lucile looked at me beseechingly.

  So we sat for an hour or more, and how hard it is to make small talk with Maximilien. It was then that Lolotte asked him to be godfather to the child. He was pleased. She reminded him that it was his privilege to choose the name. He felt somehow it would be a boy, he said; we should give him a name that was inspiring, the name of a great man, someone distinguished for his possession of the republican virtues; for we already talked of the republic, not as a political phenomenon but as a state of mind. He mulled over in his mind the Greeks and Romans, and decided that he should be named for the poet Horace. I said, “What if it’s a girl?”

  Lucile said gently that it was a most suitable name, and I could see her calculating already, we won’t use it, that’s not what he’ll actually be called. Perhaps, she said, for a second name we could call him Camille? Robespierre smiled, saying, “And there is much honor in that too.”

  Then we sat and looked at each other; by this time I had made him uncomfortably suspicious that the honorable original was out whoring.

  He slipped in about two o’clock, inquired which of us had arrived first; being told, looked knowing but not put out. Lucile did not ask where he had been. Ah, I thought, for such a wife. I said good night, Robespierre began to talk of some business of the Commune’s, as if it were two in the afternoon and harsh words had never been invented.

  Robespierre: There were such people as Lucile. Rousseau said so. Robespierre laid the book aside, but marked the passage.

  One proof of the amiable woman’s character is that all who loved her loved each other, jealousy and rivalry submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them; and I never saw those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. Let the reader pause a moment, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves this praise, let him attach himself to her if he would obtain happiness.

  It must be applicable. Life was strangely calm in the Desmoulins household. Of course, they might be keeping things from him. People did tend to keep things from him.

  They had asked him to be godfather to the child—or whatever was the equivalent, because he did not suppose it would be baptized within the Roman rite. It was Lucile who had asked him one evening when he called (late, almost midnight) and found her alone with Danton. He hoped those rumors were not true. He hoped to be able to believe that they were not.

  The servant removed herself as soon as he appeared: at which Danton, unaccountably, laughed.

  There were things he needed to talk over with Danton, and he could have spoken freely in front of her; she understood situations, and her opinions were worth having. But Danton seemed to be in some singular mood—half—aggressive, half-joking. He had not been able to find the key to this mood, and they had fallen back on desultory conversation. Then at one point he felt an almost physical force pushing against him. That was Danton’s will. He wanted him to go. Ridiculous as it seemed, in retrospect, he had to put out a hand to grip the arm of his chair and steady himself. It was just then that Lucile raised the topic of the baby.

  He was pleased. Of course, it was right, because he was Camille’s oldest friend. And he thought it unlikely now that he would have children of his own.

  They had spent some time discussing a name. Perhaps it was sentimental of him, but he remembered all the poetry that Camille used to write. Did he write any now? Oh no, Lucile said. She laughed edgily. In fact, whenever he found some of the old stuff, he’d exclaim, “worse than Saint-Just, worse than Saint-Just,” and burn it. For a moment Robespierre felt deeply affronted, wounded: as if his judgement had been called into question.

  Lucile excused herself, to go and speak with Jeanette.

  “Horace-Camille,” Danton said speculatively. “Do you think it will bring him luck in life?”

  Robespierre smiled his thin smile. He was conscious of the thinness of it. If he were remembered into the next generation, people would speak of his thin, cold smile, as they would speak of Danton’s girth, vitality, scarred face. He wanted, always, to be different—and especially with Danton. Perhaps the smile looked sarcastic, or patronizing or disapproving. But it was the only one available to his face.

  “I think Horace …” he said. “A great poet, and a good republican. If one discounts the later verse, where I think he was probably forced to flatter Augustus.”

  “Yes …” Danton said. “Camille’s writings flatter you—though probably I shouldn’t say flatter, I am choosing the wrong word.”

  He had to grit his teeth; that is, he thought of gritting them, and the thought usually suffices.

  “As I said, it is an honorable name.”

  Danton sat back in his chair. He stretched out his long legs. He drawled. (It is a commonplace, but there is no other word for it, he drawled.) “I wonder what the honorable original is doing now.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Why, what do you imagine he is doing?”

  “Probably something unthinkable in a whorehouse.”

  “I don’t know what right you have to think that. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “My dear Robespierre, I don’t expect you to know what I mean. I should be very shocked if you did know. Disillusioned.”

  “Then why must you pursue the subject?”

  “I really believe you haven’t any idea of half the things that Camille gets up to. Have you?” He sounded interested.

  “It is a private concern.”

  “You surprise me. Isn’t he a public concern? A public man?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Therefore he should be good. Virtuous. According to you. But he’s not.”

  “I don’t want to know—”

  “But I ought to insist on telling you. For the public welfare, you know. Camille—”

  Lucile came back into the room. Danton laughed. “I promise you the details at another time, Maximilien
. For your intimate consideration.”

  [The Jacobin Club in session, M. Robespierre speaking.]

  FROM THE FLOOR: Despot!

  M. DANTON: [president]: Silence. Order. M. Robespierre has never exercised any despotism here but the despotism of pure reason.

  FROM THE FLOOR: The demagogue’s awake!

  M. DANTON: I am not a demagogue, and for a long time now I have kept silent with great difficulty. I shall unmask those who boast of having served the people. The time has come when there is a grave need to speak out against those who, for the past three months, have been impugning the courage of a man to whose bravery the whole Revolution bears witness …

  Robespierre to the Jacobins, May 10, 1792: “The more you isolate me, the more you cut off all my human contacts, the more justification I find in my own conscience, and in the justice of my cause.”

  Passages from the life of the Brissotin ministry:

  General Dumouriez appeared at the Jacobin Club, of which he was a member. He had a proper soldierly bearing, and the workings of a questioning and restless mind showed in his otherwise unremarkable face. On hair lately powdered, he wore a red woolen bonnet, the Cap of Liberty. He had come to pay his respects at the shrine of patriotism (or some such flimsy metaphor) and he besought fraternal advice and guidance.

  Ministers had never behaved like this before.

  With anxiety, the patriots watched Robespierre’s face. It expressed contempt.

  M. Roland, the Minister of the Interior, turned up at the Tuileries to be presented to the King. The courtiers fell back from him in horrified silence. He did not know what was the matter; his stockings had recently been mended. The Master of Ceremonies took Dumouriez aside and spoke in a chilling whisper: “How can he be presented? He has no buckles on his shoes.”

  “No buckles?” said the general humorously. “Alas, Monsieur, then all is lost.”

  “My dear Mme. Danton,” Hérault de Séchelles said, “such an excellent dinner. And now would it be unpardonable if we talked politics?”

  “My wife is a realist,” Danton said. “She knows that politics pays for the dinners.”

  “I am used to it,” Gabrielle said.

  “Do you take an interest in public affairs, my dear? Or do you find they weary you?”

  She could not think what to say, but she smiled to remove any provocation from the only answer she could give: “I make the best of it.”

  “Which is what we all must do.” Hérault turned to Danton. “If Robespierre insists on making the worst of it, that’s his affair. These people—Brissotins, Rolandins, Girondins, call them what you will—are running things for the present. They have—what?—hardly cohesion. Hardly a policy, except for the war—which has begun rather disastrously, they must agree.”

  “They have zeal,” Danton said. “They are talented debaters. Have a certain lack of dogmatism. And that awful woman.”

  “Ah, how has the little creature taken to celebrity?”

  Danton snorted with disgust. “We dined. Must I be reminded?”

  On the previous evening, he and Fabre had spent two painful hours over a wretched meal with the Minister of the Interior. Dumouriez had been there. From time to time he had muttered, “I should like a private word with you, Danton, you understand?” But he had not found opportunity. It was the minister’s wife who had orchestrated the occasion. The minister was propped in a chair at the head of the table; he ventured few remarks, and Danton had the impression that the real minister was scribbling at a desk elsewhere in the building, while a wax model sat before them, sewn into an ancient black coat. He was possessed by a temptation to lean over and stick a fork in him to see if he would scream, but he resisted it, and dragged his eyes back glumly to his plate. There was a nameless soup, at once both watery and floury; there was a meager portion of a tough fowl, and some turnips which, though small, were past their first youth.

  Manon Roland walked now down grand marble staircases, caught the reflection of her plump and pretty person mirrored in walls of Venetian glass. But the dress she wore that Monday evening was three years old, and an ample fichu covered her shoulders. No surrender.

  She had let it be known that she would retain the habits of a private person. The trappings of aristocracy were foreign to her. She would not dispense patronage, and her visitors (strictly by invitation) would observe her rules. The grand salons could stay shrouded, unlit, for she did not aspire to hold court there; she had set up for herself a neat, humble little study, quite near the minister’s office. There she would spend her days, at her desk, making herself useful to the minister; and if anyone wished to see the minister privately, without the nuisance of a crowd of civil servants and petitioners, nothing could be easier than for her to send a message, and for the minister to step through to her tiny sanctum, and confer there with his visitor while she sat unobtrusively, listening hard, her hands folded in her lap.

  She had made her rules, the rules by which the ministry would be conducted. Dinner would be given twice weekly. The food would be simple and no alcohol would be served. Guests would leave by 9 p.m.—we’ll volunteer to start the exodus, Fabre whispered. No women would be received; with their chatter, their petty rivalries over their clothes, they detracted from the high tone and purpose of Mme. Roland’s gatherings.

  This particular Monday had been a difficult one. Robespierre had declined her invitation. Pierre Vergniaud had accepted it. She did not like the man, personally; and these days her personal likes counted for a good deal. She could find no political point on which she differed from him, but he was lazy, reserving his oratory for grand themes and grand occasions. That night his eyes were glazed with boredom. Dumouriez was lively enough—but he was not lively in the right direction. He had told at least one scandalous anecdote, and then begged her pardon. She accorded it with the merest movement of her head; and the general knew that his work tomorrow would be mysteriously obstructed. Soon and easily, she had slipped into the habits of power.

  Fabre d’Eglantine had tried to draw the conversation round to the theater, but she had firmly returned it to its proper subject—the maneuvers, both military and political, of the ci-devant Marquis de Lafayette. She had seen Fabre catch Danton’s eye, and cast his own momentarily to the naked goddesses prancing across the ceiling. She had been glad of Jean-Baptiste Louvet, sitting beside her. It was true that she had once been suspicious of him, because of the novel he had written. But she understood what the position of patriots had been, under the old regime, and a great deal could be excused to such a promising journalist. His thinning blond hair flopped forward as he leaned over to listen to her. A partisan. A friend of Mme. Roland.

  She talked to Louvet, but her eyes had been drawn, against her will, to Danton. It was Dumouriez who insisted she invite him: “He is a man we ought to cultivate. He has a following on the streets.”

  “Among the mob,” she had said scornfully.

  “Do you think we shall have no dealings with the mob?”

  So here the man sat. He made her shudder. That air of joviality, that affectation of frankness and bonhomie: it covered—just barely—the man’s evident, monstrous ambition. Oh, he was just a good fellow, he was just a simple fellow, his heart was in the farmland of his province—oh was it? She glanced down at the confident hands resting on the cloth, the thick fingers outstretched. He could kill with those hands; he could snap a woman’s neck, or squeeze the breath from a man’s throat.

  And that scar, faded to a dead white, slashed across his mouth; how did he get that scar? It twisted his lips, so that his smile was not really a smile, more a kind of sneer. What would it feel like to touch that scar? What would be the texture, under the fingertips? This man had a wife. He had, they said, a bevy of mistresses. Some woman’s fingers had touched that scar, traced its course, its edges.

  He caught her eyes resting on him. She looked away quickly, but then she couldn’t bear not to look up again, and spend the rest of the night wondering what he
had thought. Cautiously, her glance crept back. Yes, take a good look, his face said; you have never in your safe little life seen a man like me.

  And on Tuesday morning, all Danton could say, with tired exasperation: “Well, which one of us is going to sleep with the bitch, because clearly that’s what she wants?”

  “Why ask?” Fabre said. “She didn’t take her eyes off you for two hours.”

  “Women are peculiar,” Danton said.

  “And talking of peculiar women, I understand Théroigne is back. The Austrians have let her go. I can’t imagine why, unless they thought she was the sort to bring the Revolution into disrepute.”

  “No such subtlety,” Danton said. “I expect they were afraid she’d cut off their balls.”

  “But to return to the subject, Georges-Jacques—if Madame has her eye on you, you might as well, you really might as well. No point oiling around, ‘My dear Mme. Roland, how we all esteem your talents’—why don’t you offer her some solid evidence? Then she might bring all her gentlemen friends into line with our line. Do it, Georges-Jacques—she’ll be easy. I don’t suppose she gets much from that old husband of hers. He looks as if he’s going to die at any minute.”

  “I think he probably died years ago,” Camille said. “I think she’s had him embalmed and stuffed, because at heart she’s sentimental. Also I think the whole Brissotin ministry is in the pay of the Court.”

  “Robespierre,” Fabre said, nodding significantly.

  “Robespierre does not think it,” Camille said.

  “Don’t lose your temper.”

  “He thinks they are fools and dupes and unintentional traitors. I think it is worse than that. I think we should have nothing to do with them.”