A Place of Greater Safety

  “If you wanted to stop the executions, how much support would you have on the Committee?”

  “Robert Lindet for sure, probably Couthon and Saint-André: Barère perhaps—I never know what Barère is thinking.” He kept count on his fingers. “Collot and Billaud-Varennes would be against any policy of moderation.”

  “God,” Danton said reflectively, “Citizen Billaud, the big tough committeeman. He used to come round to my office, ’86, ’87, and I used to give him work drafting pleadings, so he could keep body and soul together.”

  “Yes. No doubt he’ll never forgive you.”

  “What about Hérault?” Danton said. “You’ve forgotten him.”

  “No, not forgotten.” Robespierre avoided his eyes. “I think you know he no longer enjoys our confidence. I trust you’ll sever your links with him?”

  Let it pass, Danton thought: let it pass. “Saint-just?”

  Robespierre hesitated. “He would see it as weakness.”

  “Can you not influence him?”

  “Perhaps. He has had remarkable successes in Strasbourg. He will tend to think he is working on the right lines. And when people have been with the armies, a few lives in Paris don’t seem so important to them. The others—I can probably pull them into line.”

  “Then get rid of Collot and Billaud-Varennes.”

  “Not possible. They have the backing of all Hébert’s people.”

  “Then get rid of Hébert.”

  “And we’re back to a policy of Terror.” Robespierre looked up. “Danton, you haven’t spoken of your own place in this. You must have an opinion.”

  Danton laughed. “You wouldn’t be so confident of that, if you knew me better. I shall bide my time. I suggest you do the same.”

  “You know you’ll be attacked as soon as you appear in public? Hébert has insinuated certain things about your Belgian venture. I’m afraid your illness was regarded as largely mythical. People were saying you had emigrated to Switzerland with your ill-gotten gains.”

  “We need a bit of solidarity, then.”

  “Yes. I’ll speak for you, of course, at every opportunity. Get Camille to write something, do you think? Take his mind off things? I told him to stay away from trials. He’s very emotional, isn’t he?”

  “You say that as if it were a surprise to you. As if you only met him last week.”

  “I suppose the degree of it always does come as a surprise to me. Camille’s feelings seem uncontainable. Like natural disasters.”

  “That can be useful, or it can be a nuisance.”

  “That sounds cynical, Danton.”

  “Does it? Well, perhaps it is.”

  “So perhaps you feel cynical about Camille’s affection for you?”

  “No, I rather feel grateful. I take what comes my way.”

  “It’s a trait we have observed in you,” Robespierre said, with interest.

  “Was that the royal plural?”

  “No, I meant, Camille and I.”

  “You discuss me?”

  “We discuss everybody. Everything. But you know that. No one is closer than we are.”

  “I accept your rebuke. Our friendships with Camille are both of a high order. Oh, that all his friendships had been the same!”

  “I don’t see how they could have been, really.”

  “No, you are pleased to be obtuse.”

  Robespierre put his chin on his hand. “I am. Because I’ve had to compromise a lot to keep Camille’s friendship. It’s like everything else in my life. I spend my days crying, ‘Don’t tell me,’ and ‘Sweep that under the carpet before I come into the room.’”

  “I didn’t know you knew that about yourself.”

  “Oh yes. I am not a hypocrite myself, but I breed hypocrisy in other people.”

  “You must, of course. Robespierre doesn’t lie or cheat or steal, doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t fornicate—overmuch. He’s not a hedonist or a mainchancer or a breaker of promises.” Danton grinned. “But what’s the use of all this goodness? People don’t try to emulate you. Instead they just pull the wool over your eyes.”

  “They?” Robespierre echoed gently. “Say ‘we,’ Danton.” He smiled.

  Maximilien Robespierre, private notebooks:

  What is our aim?

  The use of the constitution for the benefit of the people.

  Who are likely to oppose us?

  The rich and corrupt.

  What methods will they employ?

  Slander and hypocrisy.

  What factors will encourage the use of such means?

  The ignorance of ordinary people.

  When will the people be educated?

  When they have enough to eat, and when the rich and the government

  stop bribing treacherous tongues and pens to deceive them; when their

  interests are identified with those of the people.

  When will this be?

  Never.

  FABRE: So what will you do?

  DANTON: I won’t see you humiliated. It would reflect on me.

  FABRE: But your plans—you must have plans?

  DANTON: I do, but there is no call for you to go around the city saying Danton has plans. I want a reconciliation with the Right in the Convention. Robespierre says we must be united, not factious—he’s correct. Patriots should not torment each other.

  FABRE: You expect them to forgive you for cutting their colleagues’ heads off?

  DANTON: Camille will launch a press campaign in favor of clemency. In the end I want a negotiated peace, the controls off the economy and a return to constitutional government. It’s a big program and you can’t do it in a country that’s falling apart, so we have to strengthen the Committee. Keep Robespierre, get rid of Collot and Billaud-Varennes and Saint-Just.

  FABRE: You admit now you were mistaken? You should never have let yourself be voted off the Committee last summer.

  DANTON: Yes, I should have listened to you. Well, first you admit your mistakes, then you start to retrieve them. All of us made a mistake in treating Hébert as a hack writer with no talents. Before we had recovered from our mistake he had ministers and generals in his pocket—not to mention the rabble. It will take courage to break him, and luck.

  FABRE: And then stop the Terror?

  DANTON: Yes. Things have gone too far.

  FABRE: I agree with that. I want Vadier’s hot breath off my neck.

  DANTON: That’s all it means to you?

  FABRE: Come on, man. What does it mean to you? It’s not that you’re turning soft, are you? You’re not mellowing?

  DANTON: No? Perhaps I am. Anyway, I work hard to make my own interest coincide with the national interest.

  FABRE: Do you want to run the country again, Georges-Jacques?

  ANTON: I don’t know. I haven’t decided what I want.

  FABRE: Christ, you’d better decide soon. You’re going to take them all on. It’s dangerous. You’ve got to have your wits about you. You can’t go into it half-asleep, or you’ll ruin us all. I don’t know—you don’t seem to have much relish for it. You don’t seem to be your old self.

  DANTON: It’s Robespierre, he confuses me. I have the feeling that he’s hedging his bets all the time.

  FABRE: Well … keep Camille sweet.

  DANTON: Yes, I was thinking … if Camille gets into any trouble, I mean any more trouble, Robespierre will have to stand up and defend him, and that will mean he commits himself.

  FABRE: Yes, what a good idea.

  DANTON: It doesn’t matter what Camille does. Robespierre will always straighten it out for him.

  FABRE: We can rely on that.

  Fabre d’Églantine: When, of course, your whole name incorporates a lie, you continually seek reassurance of your reality, you are constantly seeking sources of self-esteem.

  When the East India Company business blew up, I kept well out of it till I raised my price. When the prices was right, I committed a crime. But such a small crime! Bear with me. May I
ask your indulgence, your good faith for a moment? You see, it wasn’t entirely the money.

  I wanted them to say: you are a powerful man, Fabre! I wanted to see how high a price they put on my protection. It wasn’t my financial acumen that they were buying. Camille has remarked that my head is entirely filled with greasepaint and old prompt copies, where the brain should be; for my part I am always struck by how closely life resembles a hackneyed theatrical plot. What they wanted was my influence, the status that a close friend of Danton commands. Indirectly, I’m sure, they thought they were buying Danton too. After all, my colleagues in the venture had dealt with him before. I shouldn’t like you to think that the East India business happened in isolation. Forgery was just a logical extension of sharp practice, just a further step from currency speculation and crooked army contracts. Except that little step was onto the wrong side of the law; and for people like me in times like this it’s a bad thing to be on the wrong side of any law, any law at all. Now the idiot poet is on one side, and on the other side is Danton and the Incorruptible’s inseparable companion in boyhood adventures; looking smug.

  I’m afraid I see no good coming of it. There was a point—it may have passed you by—when Danton and I abdicated from self-interest. When I say a point, I mean exactly that, a few seconds in which a decision was taken; I don’t say that afterwards we behaved differently, or better. When we planned how to win Valmy, we said we would never speak of it, not even to save our own lives.

  Now—from that moment when we admitted to each other that there was something we wouldn’t do—we started to lurch at our destruction like two drunks in the sick early morning. Because each conviction he holds costs the opportunist double-dear; each time he places his trust, he bleeds a little. Valmy turned the tide for the Republic; since then, the French have been able to hold up their heads in Europe.

  Now, Danton would never abandon his friends. If that sounds mawkish, I apologize. To put it another way—and this may make more sense to you—every trail I’ve padded in recent years leads to Danton at the heart of the wood. All the accusations Hébert levels at Lacroix about his Belgian mission are true of Danton. Hébert knows it. Vadier will find me out. He wants Danton too. Why? I suppose he offends his sense of propriety. Vadier is a moralist; so, I think, is Fouquier. It is a tendency I deplore. God knows what risks we take, God knows all that Danton has done. God and Camille. God will keep his mouth shut.

  When I began denouncing conspiracies, to take the heat off myself, how did I know that Robespierre would seize on everything I said? He was looking for a conspiracy in the heart of patriotism: God help me, I provided one. Assume its existence, and every word and action seems to prove it, so that sometimes one wonders, of course—what if Robespierre’s right, and I’m the fool, what if some con trick I thought was cooked up in a Palais-Royal café is really a gigantic conspiracy woven in Whitehall?

  No, no—I won’t think about it. A man could go mad.

  In a way I wish they’d move in and arrest me. It may sound absurd, but arrest is the only thing that will prevent me from doing things to complicate it even more. My head aches, thinking about it; I get so depressed. It’s this waiting that unnerves me, the halt in the chase; keep moving, that’s always been my motto, all my life. Perhaps it is a technique of Vadier’s, or perhaps they are waiting till they come up with something else, something worse; or waiting till Danton commits himself to my defense?

  I am afraid that if things go on as they are I shall never finish The Maltese Orange. It’s a good play, there are some very creditable verses in it. Perhaps it would be the big success that has always just eluded me.

  Danton, these last few days, looks more like a mangy stuffed bear than someone who’s planning to set the nation by the ears. He seems much affected by the executions. He spends hours just thinking; you ask him what he’s doing and he says, thinking.

  And Camille: they’ll never pin corruption charges on him, and I don’t think they’ll try. According to Rabbit, he and Duplessis spend many a cozy afternoon out at that farm of theirs, talking over the details of the fast ones he’s pulled: all strictly legal and below board. It’s their only point of contact.

  But here I am, indulging in abuse again. The truth is that when I see Camille looking so stricken, with his absurdly over-sensitive airs, I want to take hold of him and shake him and say, I am suffering too. Robespierre would tear his hair and vomit if he knew that de Sade had set him off on all this. Unless Danton does something suddenly and soon—but what do I dare expect?

  I wouldn’t ask him to act before the time’s ripe, if he aims at a coup. I wouldn’t expect saving my life to be more than an accidental benefit to him. So put that down, on Philippe Fabre’s side: I am, basically, a humble man.

  I don’t feel well, the last two or three weeks. They say we’re in for a mild winter. I hope so. I have a terrible cough. I thought of consulting Dr. Souberbielle, but I’m not sure I want to hear his verdict. His medical one, I mean; he’s a juror of the Tribunal, but with that verdict I wouldn’t have a choice.

  I’ve no appetite, and I get pains in my chest. Oh well, it may not matter soon.

  Danton to the convention, asking for state pensions for priests who have lost their livings:

  If a priest is without means of support, what do you expect him to do? He will die, or join the Vendee rebels, or become your irreconcilable enemy … . You have to temper political claims with those of reason and sanity … . There must be no intolerance, no persecution. [Applause]

  DANTON: Scuttled Chaumette. I’ll ram his Worship of Reason up—down his throat. We ought to have an end to these anti-religious masquerades. Every day in the Convention we have to listen to a dreary procession of clerics wringing out their souls like laundry, and abjuring their faith takes them as long as a High Mass. There is a limit, and I shall put it to them that the limit has been reached.

  CAMILLE: While you were away some sansculottes came in with a skull, they said it was the skull of Saint Denis. They said it was a grisly relic of a superstitious age, and they wanted it off their hands. I’d have had it. I wanted to show it to Saint-Just.

  DANTON: Imbeciles.

  LOUISE: I wouldn’t have taken Citizen Robespierre for a religious man.

  DANTON: He’s not, in your sense. But he doesn’t want to see persecution, and he doesn’t want atheism elevated into a policy. Oh, but there’s one thing he’d like much better than running the Revolution. He’d like to be Pope.

  CAMILLE: Vulgarity incarnate! He aims higher.

  DANTON: Saint Maximilien?

  CAMILLE: He never talks about God anymore, he talks about the Supreme Being. I think I know who that is.

  DANTON: Maximilien?

  CAMILLE: Right.

  DANTON: You’ll get into trouble for laughing at people. Saint-Just says that people who laugh at the heads of governments are suspect.

  CAMILLE: What fate is reserved for those who laugh at Saint-Just? The guillotine is too good for them.

  Vadier (on Danton): “We’ll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end.”

  Danton (on Vadier): “Vadier? I’ll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in.”

  Robespierre to the Jacobin Club: the low-key delivery, the fading pauses that do not relate to sense, have now become a practiced technique, hypnotic in effect:

  “Danton, they accuse you of having … emigrated, gone off to Switzerland, laden with the spoils of your … corruption. Some people even say that you were at the head of a conspiracy to enthrone Louis XVII, on the understanding that … you were to be Regent … . Now I … have observed Danton’s political opinions—because we have sometimes disagreed I have observed them closely and at times … with hostility. It is true that … he was slow to suspect … Dumouriez, that he failed to show himself implacable against … Brissot and his accomplices. But if we did not always … see eye-to-eye … must I conclude that he was betraying his country? To the best of my kn
owledge he had always served it zealously. If Danton is on trial here I am on trial … too. Let all those people who have anything to say against Danton come … forward now. Let them stand up, those who are more … patriotic … than we.”

  “If you could spare me a few minutes,” Fouquier-Tinville said. His demeanor certainly suggested he didn’t have much time to waste. “Family feeling, you know.”

  “Oh yes?” Lucile said.

  Fouquier thought, what a prize she is; far too good for anyone in our family. “May I sit?” he said. “A regrettable incident—”

  “What has happened?” she said. And actually, he noticed with amusement, put her lovely hand to her throat.

  “No, no—my description was a true one. Nothing has happened to him, in the sense that you fear.”

  How would you know, she thought, in what senses I fear? She sat down opposite the Public Prosecutor. “Well then, cousin?”

  “You recollect the name of Barnave, my dear? He was a deputy in the National Assembly. He had been in prison for some time. We guillotined him today. He had secret dealings with Antoinette.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I knew him. Poor Tiger.”

  “Were you aware of your husband’s affection for this traitor?”

  She looked up quickly. “Please leave your courtroom manner aside. I’m not in the dock.”

  Fouquier threw up his hands. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “That is not what you do.”

  “Then I’m sorry I offended you. But it is a proven fact that Barnave was a traitor.”

  “What can I say? Treason is a betrayal, so there must be some state of trust and acceptance that precedes it. Barnave never pretended to be a republican. Camille respected him—I think it was mutual.”