A Place of Greater Safety

  “Lucile’s?”

  He nodded. She took the locket in the palm of her left hand; the fingers of her right hand brushed the skin at the base of his throat. It’s done—in a moment it’s done, finished with. She would like, at one level of her being, to cut her hand off. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll grow out of me.”

  “You are incredibly vain.”

  “Yes. There seems no reason why I should learn to be less so. But you, Citizeness, will have to learn to keep your hands to yourself.”

  His tone was so scathing that she almost burst into tears. “Why are you being so nasty to me?”

  “Because you opened the conversation by asking me if I were drunk, which is not considered polite even by today’s standards, and also because if someone trots out their forces at dawn you assume they have stomach for a fight. Get this very clear in your mind, Louise: if you think that you are in love with me, you had better re-think, and you had better fall out of love at lightning speed. I want no area of doubt here. What Danton is allowed to do to my wife, and what I am allowed to do to his, are two very different things.”

  A silence. “Don’t bother to arrange your face,” Camille said. “You’ve arranged everything else.”

  She began to shake. “What did he say? What did he tell you?”

  “He’s infatuated with you.”

  “He told you that? What did he say?”

  “Why should I indulge you?”

  “When did he say it? Last night?”

  “This morning.”

  “What words did he use?”

  “Oh, I don’t know what words.”

  “Words are your profession, aren’t they?” she shouted at him. “Of course you know what words.”

  “He said, ‘I am infatuated with Louise.’”

  All right; she doesn’t believe that; but let’s get on.

  “He was serious? How did he say it?”

  “How?”

  “How.”

  “In the usual four-in-the-morning manner.”

  “And what is that?”

  “When you’re married, you will have the opportunity to find out.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I think you’re evil. It’s a strong word, I know, but I do think it.”

  Camille lowered his eyelashes bashfully. “One tries, of course. But Louise, you shouldn’t be too brutal with me, because you’re going to have to live with me, in a manner of speaking. Unless you’re going to try and turn him down, but you wouldn’t try that, would you?”

  “I’ll see. But I don’t necessarily believe you. About anything.”

  “He wants to sleep with you, that’s the thing, you see. He can’t think of any way of doing it, except by marrying you. An honorable man, Georges-Jacques. An honorable, peaceable, domestic sort, he is. If I had formed the ambition, of course, it would be rather different.”

  Camille suddenly slumped forward, elbows on the desk, hands over his mouth. For a moment she didn’t know whether he was laughing or crying, but it soon became apparent which it was. “You can laugh if you want,” she said bleakly, “I’m getting used to it.”

  “Oh good, good. When I tell Fabre,” he said between sobs and gasps, “about this conversation—he won’t believe me.” He wiped his eyes. “There’s a lot you must get used to, I’m afraid.”

  She looked down at him. “Aren’t you cold like that?”

  “Yes.” He stood up. “I suppose I had better get myself together. Georges-Jacques and I are being elected to a committee today.”

  “Which committee?”

  “You don’t really want the details, do you?”

  “How can you know, anyway, until the election is held?”

  “Oh, you have a great deal to learn.”

  “I want him out of politics.”

  “Over my dead body,” Camille said.

  Dawn looked peevish, a sullen red sun. She felt sullied by the encounter. Danton slept on.

  Danton spoke to the Convention, later to the Jacobin Club. “More than once I was tempted to have Dumouriez arrested. But, I said to myself, if I take this drastic step, and the enemy learns of it—think what it will do for their morale. If they had profited by my decision, I might even be suspected of treachery. Citizens, I put it to you—what would you have done in my place?”

  “Well, what would you have done?” he asked Robespierre. April has almost come in; there is a stiff fresh night breeze on the rue Honoré. “We’ll walk home with you. I’ll pay my respects to your wife, Duplay.”

  “You’re very welcome, Citizen Danton.”

  Saint-Just spoke. “It does seem to be one of those situations when it would have been better to do something.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to wait and see, Citizen Saint-Just. Does that ever occur to you?”

  “I would have arrested him.”

  “But you weren’t there, you don’t know. You don’t know the state of the armies, there is so much to understand.”

  “No, of course I don’t know. But why did you seek our opinions if you were going to shout them down?”

  “He didn’t seek yours,” Camille said. “It is not though he values it.”

  “I shall have to go to the front myself,” Saint-Just said, “and begin to penetrate these mysteries.”

  “Oh, good,” Camille said.

  “Will you stop being so childish?” Robespierre asked him. “Well, Danton, as long as you’re satisfied in your own mind, as long as you acted in good faith, what more can one ask?”

  “I can think of more,” Saint-Just said under his breath.

  In the Duplay yard, Brount ran out grumbling to the end of his chain. Approached, he placed his paws on his master’s shoulders. Robespierre had a word with him; along the lines, one supposed, of containing himself in patience, until perfect liberty was practicable. They went into the house. The Robespierre women (as one tended to think of them now) were all on display. Madame looked actively, rather intimidatingly benevolent; it was her aim in life to find a Jacobin who was hungry, then to go into the kitchen and make extravagant efforts, and say, “I have fed a patriot!” Robespierre, in this respect, was no use to her. He seemed to spurn her best efforts.

  They sat in the parlor where Robespierre’s portraits were hung. Danton looked around him, Robespierre looked back: smiling, half-smiling or earnest, delicate in profile or tense and combative full-face, studious or amused, with a dog, with another dog, without a dog. The original seemed no more than an item in the display; he was quiet tonight, while they talked of Brissot, Roland, Vergniaud. The interminable topics: young Philippe Lebas moved into a corner and began to whisper with Babette. He was not to be blamed, Danton thought. Robespierre caught Danton’s eye, and smiled.

  Another love affair, then, in the intervals of bloodletting. One finds time, one finds time.

  When the Minister of War went to Belgium to investigate the situation there, Dumouriez arrested him, along with four of the Convention’s official representatives, and handed them over to the Austrians. Soon afterwards he put out a manifesto, announcing that he would march his armies on Paris to restore stability and the rule of law. His troops mutinied, and fired on him. With young General Égalité—Louis-Philippe, the Duke’s son—he crossed the Austrian lines. An hour later they were both prisoners of war.

  Robespierre to the Convention: “I demand that all members of the Orléans family, known as Égalité, be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal … . And that the Tribunal be made responsible for proceeding against all Dumouriez’s other accomplices … . Shall I name such distinguished patriots as Messieurs Vergniaud, Brissot? I rely on the wisdom of the Convention.”

  You wouldn’t have thought the Convention had much wisdom, considering the scenes that followed. The Gironde had an arsenal of charges against Danton: lying, skulking, misappropriating funds. As he strode to the rostrum the Right screamed their favorite insult: drinker of blood. As the president put his head in his hands and all but wept,
opponents met head to head, punches were thrown, and Citizen Danton must physically grapple with deputies who were trying to prevent him from speaking in his own defense.

  Robespierre looked down from the Mountain; his face was horrified. Danton gained the tribune, leaving a trail of casualties in his wake; he seemed stimulated by the disorder: “Daylight holds no fears for me!” he bawled across the benches of the Right. Philippe Égalité was aware that the colleagues on either side of him had slid further away, as if he were Marat. And here is Marat, limping towards the tribune as Danton stepped down.

  He brushed past Danton; there was a flicker of contact between their eyes. He put his hand to the pistol in his belt, as if he were easing it for use. Turning his body almost sideways, he stretched one arm along the ledge of the tribune and surveyed his audience from behind it. Perhaps, Philippe Égalité thought, I shall never again see him do that.

  Marat tilted his head back. He looked around the hall. Then, after a long-drawn, exquisite pause—he laughed.

  “This man makes my blood run cold,” Deputy Lebas whispered to Robespierre. “It’s like meeting something in a graveyard.”

  “Shh,” said Robespierre. “Listen.”

  Marat reached up, pulled once at the red kerchief wrapped around his neck; this was the signal that the joke was over. He stretched out his arm again, fearfully leisured. When he spoke he sounded calm, dispassionate. His proposal was simply this: that the Convention abolish the deputies’ immunity from prosecution, so that they could put each other on trial. The Right and the Left glared at each other, each deputy imagining for his personal enemies a procession to Dr. Guillotin’s beheading machine. Two deputies of the Mountain, sitting a few feet apart, turned and looked at each other; their eyes met, then darted away in shock. No one looked Philippe in the face. Marat’s motion was carried, supported from all sides.

  Citizens Danton and Desmoulins left the Convention together, applauded by a crowd that had gathered outside. They walked home. It was a clear, chilly April evening. “I could wish myself elsewhere,” Danton said.

  “What are we going to do about Philippe? We can’t just throw him to Marat.”

  “We might find some comfortable provincial fortress to put him in for the while. He’ll be safer in gaol than he will be at large in Paris.”

  They were in their own district by now, the republic of the Cordeliers. The streets were quiet; news of the scenes in the Convention would soon leak out, and news of the Convention’s fearful decree. Elsewhere, deputies were limping home to nurse their contusions and sprains. Did everyone go slightly mad this afternoon, perhaps? Citizen Danton did have the air of a man who had been in a fight; but then he often had that air.

  They stopped outside the Cour du Commerce. “Coming up for a glass of blood, Georges-Jacques? Or shall I open the burgundy?”

  They went up, decided on the burgundy, sat on till after midnight. Camille scribbled down the salient points of the pamphlet he was planning to write. Salient points were not enough though; each word must be a little knife, and it would take him a few weeks yet to sharpen them.

  Manon Roland was back in her old cramped apartment on the rue de la Harpe. “Good morning, good morning,” Fabre d’Églantine said.

  “We did not invite you here.”

  “Ah, no.” Fabre seated himself, crossing his legs. “Citizen Roland not at home?”

  “He is taking a short walk. For the state of his health.”

  “How is his health?” Fabre inquired.

  “Not good, I’m afraid. We hope the summer may not be too hot.”

  “Ah,” Fabre said. “Warm weather, cold weather, they all have their demerits for the invalid, don’t they? We feared as much. When one noticed that Citizen Roland’s letter of resignation from the Ministry was in your hand, one said to Danton, it must be that Citizen Roland is unwell. Danton said—but never mind.”

  “Perhaps you have a message to leave for my husband.”

  “No, for I didn’t come specifically, you see, to talk to Citizen Roland—but merely for a few minutes of your charming company. And to find Citizen Buzot here with you is an added pleasure. You are often together, aren’t you? You must be careful, or you will be suspected of”—he chuckled—“conspiracy. But then, I think a friendship between a young man and an older woman can be a very beautiful thing. So Citizen Desmoulins always says.”

  “Unless you state your business very soon,” Buzot said, “I may throw you out.”

  “Really?” Fabre said. “I was hardly aware that we had reached that pitch of hostility. Do sit down, Citizen Buzot, there’s no need to be so physical.”

  “As president of the Jacobin Club,” she said, “Marat has presented to the Convention a petition for the proscription of certain deputies. One is Citizen Buzot, whom you see here. Another is my husband. They want us in front of your Tribunal. Ninety six people have signed this. What pitch of hostility is that?”

  “No, I must protest,” Fabre said. “Marat’s friends have signed it, though I confess myself amazed to learn that Marat has ninety-six friends. Danton has not signed it. Robespierre has not.”

  “Camille Desmoulins has.”

  “Oh, we have no control over Camille.”

  “Robespierre and Danton will not sign it simply because it is Marat who has put it forward,” she said. “You are hopelessly divided. You think you can frighten us. But you will not throw us out of the Convention, you have not the numbers or force to do it.”

  Fabre looked at them through his lorgnette. “Do you like my coat?” he asked. “It’s a new English cut.”

  “You will never achieve anything and you don’t represent anybody. Danton and Robespierre are afraid that Hébert will steal their thunder, Hébert and Marat are afraid of Jacques Roux and the other agitators on the streets. You’re terrified of losing your popularity, of not being out in front of the Revolution anymore—that’s why you have given up any pretense at decent gentlemanly conduct. The Jacobins are ruled by their public gallery, and you play to them. But be warned—this cityful of ragged illiterates that you pander to is not France.”

  “Your vehemence amazes me,” Fabre said.

  “In the Convention there are decent men from all over the nation, and you Paris deputies won’t be able to browbeat them all. This Tribunal, this end to immunity, it doesn’t work for you alone. We have our plans for Marat.”

  “I see,” Fabre said. “Of course, you know, in a sense all this was unnecessary. If only you’d been halfway civil to Danton, not made those unfortunate remarks about how you wouldn’t like to have sexual intercourse with him. He’s a good fellow, you know, always ready to do a deal, and he’s not in the least out for blood. It’s just that recently, with his personal misfortunes, he’s not so easygoing as he was.”

  “We don’t want a deal,” she said, furious. “We don’t want to do a deal with the people who organized the massacre last September.”

  “That’s very sad,” Fabre said deliberately. “Because up till now, you know, it’s been a business of compromises, more acceptable or less acceptable, and accommodation, and perhaps making yourself—I don’t deny it—a little bit of money on the side. But it’s turning awfully serious now.

  “Not before time,” she said.

  “Well,” he stood up, “shall I convey your compliments to anyone?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Do you see much of Citizen Brissot?”

  “Citizen Brissot is running his own version of the Revolution,” she said, “and so is Vergniaud. They have their own supporters and their own friends, and it is monstrously stupid and unfair to lump us together with them.”

  “I’m afraid it’s unavoidable really. I mean if you see each other, exchange information, vote the same way, however coincidentally—well, to outsiders it does seem that you are a sort of faction. That’s how it would seem to a jury.”

  “On that basis, you would be judged with Marat,” Buzot said. “I think you??
?re a little premature, Citizen Fabre. You must have a case before you can have a trial.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Fabre muttered.

  On the stairs he met Roland himself. He was on his way to draft a petition—his eighth or ninth—for an examination of the accounts of Danton’s ministry. He had a dilapidated air, and he smelled of infusions. He looked away from Fabre’s eyes; his own were lusterless and aggrieved. “Your Tribunal was a mistake,” he said without preliminary. “We are entering a time of terror.”

  Brissot: reading, writing, scurrying from place to place, gathering his thoughts, scattering his good will; proposing a motion, addressing a committee, jotting down a note. Brissot with his cliques, his factions, his whippers-in and his putters-out; with his secretaries and messengers, his errand boys, his printers, his claque. Brissot with his generals, his ministers.

  Who the devil is Brissot anyway? A pastry cook’s son.

  Brissot: poet, businessman, adviser to George Washington.

  Who are the Brissotins? A good question. You see, if you accuse people of a crime (for example, and especially, conspiracy) and refuse to sever their trials, then it will at once be seen that they are a group, that they have cohesion. Then if we want to say, you’re a Brissotin, you’re a Girondist—prove that you’re not. Prove that you have a right to be treated separately.

  How many are there? Ten eminences: sixty or seventy non-entities. Take, for instance, Rabaut Saint-Étienne:

  When the National Convention shall be purged of that kind of man, so that people shall ask what a Brissotin was, I will move that to preserve a perfect specimen of one this man’s skin be stuffed, and that the original may be kept entire at the Museum of Natural History; and for this purpose, I will oppose his being guillotined.