Hérault smiled, an abstracted smile. He and his colleagues were putting the final touch to the republican constitution, the document that would give France freedom forever: and here—“One perfectly grasps the situation,” he remarked, scarcely audible. Walking before the long procession, he led the trapped men back into the chamber. A number of good sansculottes were now lounging on the benches, exchanging compliments with those deputies of the Mountain who knew exactly what was going on and who had not troubled to stir.
Deputy Couthon, the saint in the wheelchair, had the floor: “Citizens, all members of the Convention should now be assured of their liberty. You have marched out to the People. You have found them everywhere good, generous and incapable of threatening the security of their delegates—but indignant against conspirators who wish to enslave them. Now that you recognize that you are free in your deliberations, I move a decree of accusation against the denounced members.”
Robespierre put his head in his hands. Given the unlikely nonsense that the saint had just spouted, perhaps he was laughing? Or perhaps he was feeling ill again? No one dared to ask. Each bout of sickness left him perversely strengthened, it seemed.
Manon Roland spent a day in the president’s antechamber, waiting, a black shawl over her head. Vergniaud brought her the bad news hour by hour. She had written an address to the Convention which she wished to read out, but each time the door opened a terrifying riot of noise washed over her. Vergniaud said, “You can see for yourself what the situation is. No one can address the deputies while the present tumult continues. You might, as a woman, receive a little more respect, but frankly—”He shook his head.
She waited. The next time he came in, he said, “An hour and a half, maybe, but I can’t promise that. Nor can I promise what sort of reception you’ll get.”
An hour and a half? She had already been away from home too long. She did not know where her husband was. Still—she had waited all day, she would stay a little longer, go through with it. “I’m not afraid, Vergniaud. Perhaps I can say things that you can’t say. Warn our friends,” she said. “Tell them to be ready to support me.”
“Most of them are not here, Manon.”
She gaped at him. “Where then?”
He shrugged. “Our friends have spirit. But I’m afraid they have no stamina.”
She left, took a cab to Louvet’s house. He wasn’t there. Another cab—home. The streets were crowded, the carriage moved at a walking pace. She called out to the driver to stop. She climbed down, paid him. She began to walk rapidly, then breathlessly, the dark cloth pulled about her face, like a guilty woman in a novel running to meet her lover.
At the gate of her house, the concierge took her by the arm; Monsieur has locked up and gone, he went to the landlord’s apartment, there at the back. She beat on the door. Roland had already left, they said. Where? A house down the street. “Madame, rest just a little, he is safe, take a glass of wine.”
She sat down before the empty grate; it was June after all, and the night was fine, still, warm. They brought her a glass of wine. “Not so strong,” she said. “Cut it with water.” All the same, her head swam.
He was not at the next house; but she found him at the one after that. She found him pacing the floor. She was surprised; she had imagined his long bony frame folded into a chair, coughing, coughing. “Manon,” he said to her, “we must go. Look, I have friends, I have plans. We leave this damn city tonight.”
She sat down. They brought her a cup of chocolate with cream floating on top. She said, “This is a nice thing to have.” The richness soothed her throat, the throat in which words had died.
“You understand?” he said. “There is no question of false heroics, of sitting the situation out. I am compelled to take steps to save myself in case at some future date it is necessary for me to resume office. I must preserve myself if I am to be of any use to the nation. You understand?”
“I understand. I myself, I must go back to the Convention tonight.”
“But Manon—think of your safety, think of our child’s safety—”
She put her cup down. “How strange,” she said. “It’s not late, and yet it feels as if it is.” Their lives were being rolled away around them. They were like the tenants of an empty house; when the removers have finished, you are left with the bare floors, the forgotten bit of cracked china, the dust you have disturbed. They were like the last diners in a café, when the clocks are chiming with menace and the waiters are clearing their throats; you must conclude your conversation now, you must split the bill, and go out into the cold street. Rising neatly, she crossed the room to him. He stood still. Reaching up, she kissed his cheek, feeling with her lips the bones of the skull beneath.
“Did you betray me?” he said. “Oh, did you betray me?”
She put her finger softly for a second against his lips, and then her cheek against his, catching for a second the faint mephitic odor of his diseased lungs. “Never,” she said. “Take great care now. Avoid spirits and any meat that is not well cooked. Do not touch milk unless you can get it from somewhere clean. Eat a little poached white fish. Drink an infusion of valerian if you feel agitated. Keep your chest and throat warm, don’t go out in the rain. Take a warm drink to help you sleep. Write to me.”
She closed the door softly behind her. She would never see him again.
CHAPTER 8
Imperfect Contrition
“I think we were somewhat—er—infirm of purpose,” Danton said. “House arrest proved not to be very effective. We must remember that for the future. I know we have the little lady secure, but I would rather have had her husband, and Buzot, and some of the others who are now on their way to cozy provincial bolt holes.”
“Exile,” Robespierre said. “Outlawry. I wouldn’t call the condition of a fugitive comfortable. Anyway, they’re gone.”
“To stir up trouble.”
“The troublemakers in the provinces are mostly making royalist trouble.” Robespierre began to cough. “Damn.” He dabbed his lips with his handkerchief. “Most of our Girondist absconders are regicides. Still, I’m sure they’ll try their best.”
Danton was discomfitted. Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the idealist, and you’ll find that you’ve fallen into the company of a cheerful, breezy professional politician. Address yourself to means, and you’ll be told to think of ends: to ends, and you’ll be told to think of means. Make an assumption, and you will find it overturned; offer yesterday’s conviction, and today you’ll find it shredded. What did Mirabeau complain of? He believes everything he says. Presumably there was some layer of Robespierre, some deep stratum, where all the contradictions were resolved.
Brissot was on his way to Chartres, his hometown; from there to the south. Pétion and Barbaroux were headed for Caen, in Normandy.
“This attic you live in …” Danton said to the priest. He was dismayed. In his experience priests always attended to their comfort.
“It’s not too bad now the winter’s over. Better than prison, anyway.”
“Oh, you’ve been in prison?” The priest didn’t answer. “I wonder, Father, why you dress like a banker’s clerk, or a respectable shopkeeper? Should you not be sansculotte?”
“In the places where I go, I am less conspicuous dressed like this.”
“You minister to the middle classes?”
“Not exclusively.”
“And you find that they cling to the old order? That surprises me.”
“The working people are very much afraid of authority, M. Danton, whoever represents it. And are much occupied, as always, with getting together the necessities of life.”
“And in consequence are spiritually degraded, you mean?”
“Monsieur, you did not come to argue politics with a priest. You know my function. I render to Caesar, otherwise I do
not concern myself.”
“But you don’t think I’m Caesar, do you? You can’t claim to be above politics but pick and choose your Caesar.”
“Monsieur, you came so that I could hear your confession, before your marriage to a daughter of the church. Please don’t argue, because in this matter you can’t win or lose. The case is unfamiliar to you, I know.”
“May I know your name?”
“I am Father Keravenen. Once of Saint-Sulpice. Would you care for us to begin?”
“It must be half a lifetime since I did this. It taxes the memory, half a lifetime.”
“But you are a young man still.”
“Ah yes. But the years have been crowded with incident.”
“When you were a child you were taught to examine your conscience each night. Have you left off that practice?”
“A man must sleep.”
The priest smiled sadly. “Perhaps I can help you. You are a son of the church, you have had no dealings I suppose with one heresy or the other—you have been lax perhaps, but you recognize that the church is the one true church, that it is the route to salvation?”
“If there is salvation, I can’t see any other route to it.”
“You do believe in God, Monsieur?”
Danton thought. “Yes. But … I would add a list of qualifications to that.”
“Let the one word stand, would be my advice. It is not for us to add qualifications. Your own worship, your obligations as a Catholic—you have performed them, or neglected them?”
“Refused them.”
“But those in your care—you have provided for their spiritual welfare?”
“My children are baptized.”
“Good.” The priest seemed easily encouraged. He looked up. The keenness of his eyes took Danton by surprise.
“Shall we survey the field of your possible derelictions? Murder?”
“Not as such.”
“You can say this in full confidence?”
“This is a sacrament of the church, is it not? It is not a debate in the National Convention.”
“Point taken,” said the priest. “And the sins of the flesh?”
“Yes, most of those. The common ones, you know. Adultery.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t keep a diary, Father, like some lovesick girl.”
“You are sorry for it?”
“The sin? Yes.”
“Because you see how it offends God?”
“Because my wife is dead.”
“What you express is imperfect contrition—that which arises from our human apprehension of punishment and pain—rather than that perfect contrition which arises from the love of God. Nevertheless, it is all that the church requires.”
“I know the theory, Father.”
“And you have a firm purpose of amendment?”
“I intend to be faithful to my second wife.”
“I might now come to other matters—to envy, perhaps, to anger, pride …”
“Ah, the Deadly Sins. Put me down for the whole seven. No, leave out sloth. Put in rather that I have been too diligent. A bit more sloth, and I might not have been so sinful in other directions.”
“And then, calumny—”
“That’s the politician’s stock-in-trade, Father.”
“Again, Monsieur, when you were a child you were taught of the two sins against the Holy Ghost: presumption and despair.”
“My tendency these days is more towards despair.”
“You know I don’t speak of mundane matters—I speak of spiritual despair. Despair of salvation.”
“No, I don’t despair of it. Who knows? God’s mercy is very strange. That’s what I say to myself.”
“Monsieur, it is to your credit that you have come here today. You have set your foot upon the path.”
“And what’s at the end of it?”
“At the end of the path is the face of the crucified Christ.”
Danton shuddered. “So you will give me absolution?”
The priest inclined his head.
“I’m not much of a penitent.”
“God is willing to stretch a point.” The priest raised his hand. He inscribed a cross on the air; he murmured the formula. “It is a beginning, M. Danton,” he said. “I told you I had been in prison—I was so fortunate as to escape, last September.”
“Where have you been since?”
“Never mind that. Only know that I shall be there when you need me.”
“At the Jacobins last night—”
“Don’t tell me, Camille.”
“They said, where is Danton? Missing again!”
“I am occupied with the Committee.”
“Mm. Sometimes. Not often enough.”
“I thought you didn’t approve of the Committee.”
“I approve of you.”
“And?”
“And if you go on as you do now you’ll not be re-elected.”
“Doesn’t this remind you of anything? When you were first married, and you wanted a bit of time to yourself? And Robespierre used to come round and nag you and hector you and lecture you on your public duties? Look, I think you should be the first to know. I’m going to marry Gély’s daughter.”
“Imagine!” Camille said.
“We plan to sign the marriage contract in four days’ time. Will you glance over it for me? In my allegedly giddy and irresponsible frame of mind, I might have put the words in the wrong order. And, you know, a mistake could be expensive.”
“Why—is there something unusual about the settlement?”
“I’m turning over my property to her. The whole of it. I shall manage it during my lifetime.”
There was a long silence. Danton broke it. “You never know. I might meet with an accident. At the hands of the state. If I lose my head, there’s no reason why I should also lose my land. Now, why are you exhibiting symptoms of rage?”
“Get another lawyer,” Camille shouted at him. “I refuse to be party to your decline and fall.”
He slammed out of the room.
Louise came down from the apartment above. She looked up into his face, very solemn; put her child’s hands in his. “Where has Camille gone?”
“Oh, to see Robespierre, I expect. He always goes to Robespierre, when we have a row.”
Perhaps, Louise thought, one day he’ll not come back. She didn’t voice this; her husband-to-be was, she realized, in many ways a vulnerable man. “You know each other very well, you and Camille,” she said.
“Intolerably well. So my love, I have a thing to say to you—no, nothing to do with politics at all, just a specific word of warning. If I ever come into a room and find you alone with Camille, I’ll kill you.”
“If you ever find me alone with Camille, one of us will be dead.”
“I wish you every happiness, Danton,” Robespierre said. “Camille says you’ve gone mad but, good heavens, I suppose you know your own mind. There’s just one thing I would say—if you will pardon me—that your attitude to your public duties in the last two months has not been all that the Republic is entitled to expect.”
“What about your increasingly frequent illnesses, Robespierre?”
“I can’t help those.”
“I can’t help getting married. I must have women.”
“We see you must,” Robespierre murmured, “but need they occupy so much of your time? Can’t you satisfy yourself and then get back to work?”
“Satisfy myself! Christ, you have a low opinion of me! I meant I must have a home—I must have a wife, my children around me, my house running smoothly—I thought that you more than anyone would understand that.”
“Really? I should have thought that, as a bachelor, I was the last person who could be expected to understand.”
“That’s up to you. I thought you valued family life—that was my impression. Anyway, whatever you understand or don’t understand—I resent this implication that everything I do is public proper
ty.”
“There’s no need to get angry.”
“Sometimes I think I’ll just pack and go, go tomorrow, get out of this city, go back where I belong, farm my land—”
“Sentimental,” Robespierre said. “You can be, Danton, you know. Well, if you must you must, we’d prefer to have you with us but no one’s indispensable. Come and see me before you go, won’t you? We can have a few drinks or something.”
Robespierre resisted the temptation to look back, to where Danton stood gaping after him. He can be such fun to torment, he thought, with those big, blundering, uncouth emotions of his. No wonder Camille has spent ten years at it.
Camille lay on Robespierre’s bed looking up at the ceiling, his hands behind his head. Robespierre sat at his desk. “Seems a peculiar business,” he said.
“Yes. There were dozens of women he could have married. She’s not that pretty, and she won’t bring him any money. He’s besotted with her, he’s lost his sense of proportion. And her family are royalists and possessed by religious mania.”
“No, I’m sorry, I was harking back to what we said earlier, about the Dumouriez business. Still, go on.”
“Oh, it’s just—she’s putting all sorts of ideas into his head.”
“I shouldn’t have thought a little girl like that could put ideas into Danton’s head.”
“At the moment he’s susceptible.”
“You mean, royalist ideas?”
“Not quite that, but he’s softening up. He said to me that he didn’t want Antoinette brought to trial. Of course he rationalizes it, says that she’s our last bargaining counter, that her relatives in Europe are more likely to listen to peace terms if she’s still alive.”
“Her relatives don’t give a damn about her. If she doesn’t go on trial the existence of the Tribunal is a farce. She has given our military plans to the Austrians, she’s a traitor.”
“Then he says, what’s the point of hounding down Brissot’s people, now they’re out of the Convention—though you did say that yourself.”