PART THREE

  M. Soulès, temporary Governor of the Bastille

  The Marquis de Lafayette, Commander of the National Guard

  Jean-Paul Marat, a journalist, editor of the People’s Friend

  Arthur Dillon, Governor of Tobago and a general in

  the French army: a friend of Camille Desmoulins

  Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a well-known author

  Collot d’Herbois, a playwright

  Father Pancemont, a truculent priest

  Father Bérardier, a gullible priest

  Caroline Rémy, an actress

  Père Duchesne, a furnace maker: fictitious alter ego

  of René Hébert, box-office clerk turned journalist

  Antoine Saint-Just, a disaffected poet, acquainted with or

  related to Camille Desmoulins

  Jean-Marie Roland, an elderly ex-civil servant

  Manon Roland, his young wife, a writer

  François-Léonard Buzot, a deputy, member of the

  Jacobin Club and a friend of the Rolands

  Jean-Baptiste Louvet, a novelist, Jacobin, friend of the Rolands

  PART FOUR

  Charles Dumouriez, a general, sometime Foreign Minister

  Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, a lawyer; Camille Desmoulins’s cousin

  Jeanette, the Desmoulins’s housekeeper

  At the rue Saint-Honoré:

  Maurice Duplay, a master carpenter

  Françoise, his wife

  Eléonore, an art student, his eldest daughter

  Victoire, his daughter

  Elisabeth (Babette), his youngest daughter

  PART FIVE

  Politicans described as “Brissotins” or “Girondins”:

  Jean-Pierre Brissot, a journalist

  Jean-Marie and Manon Roland

  Pierre Vergniaud, member of the National Convention,

  famous as an orator

  Jérôme Pétion

  François-Léonard Buzot

  Jean-Baptiste Louvet

  Charles Barbaroux, a lawyer from Marseille

  and many others

  Albertine Marat, Marat’s sister

  Simone Evrard, Marat’s common-law wife

  Defermon, a deputy, sometime President of the National Convention

  Jean-François Lacroix, a moderate deputy: goes “on mission”

  to Belgium with Danton in 1792 and 1793

  David, painter

  Charlotte Corday, an assassin

  Claude Dupin, a young bureaucrat who proposes marriage

  to Louise Gély, Danton’s neighbor

  Souberbielle, Robespierre’s doctor

  Renaudin, a violin maker, prone to violence

  Father Kéravenen, an outlaw priest

  Chaveau-Lagarde, a lawyer: defense council for Marie-Antoinette

  Philippe Lebas, a left-wing deputy: later a member of the Committee

  of General Security, or Police Committee: marries Babette Duplay

  Vadier, known as “the Inquisitor,” a member of the Police Committee

  Implicated in the East India Company fraud:

  Chabot, a deputy, ex-Capuchin friar

  Julien, a deputy, former Protestant pastor

  Proli, secretary to Hérault de Séchelles,

  and said to be an Austrian spy

  Emmanuel Dobruska and Siegmund Gotleb, known as

  Emmanuel and Junius Frei: speculators

  Guzman, a minor politician, Spanish-born

  Diedrichsen, a Danish “businessman”

  Abbé d’Espanac, a crooked army contractor

  Citizen de Sade, a writer, formerly a marquis

  Pierre Philippeaux, a deputy: writes a pamphlet against the

  government during the Terror

  Some members of the Committee of Public Safety:

  Saint-André

  Barère

  Couthon, a paraplegic, friend of Robespierre

  Robert Lindet, a lawyer from Normany, a friend of Danton

  Etienne Panis, a left-wing deputy, a friend of Danton

  At the trial of the Dantonists:

  Hermann (once of Arras), President of the Revolutionary

  Tribunal

  Dumas, his deputy

  Fouquier-Tinville, now Public Prosecutor

  Fabricius Paris, Clerk of the Court

  Laflotte, a prison informer

  Henri Sanson, public executioner

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS IS A NOVEL about the French Revolution. Almost all the characters in it are real people and it is closely tied to historical facts—as far as those facts are agreed, which isn’t really very far. It is not an overview or a complete account of the Revolution. The story centers on Paris; what happens in the provinces is outside its scope, and so for the most part are military events.

  My main characters were not famous until the Revolution made them so, and not much is known about their early lives. I have used what there is, and made educated guesses about the rest.

  This is not, either, an impartial account. I have tried to see the world as my people saw it, and they had their own prejudices and opinions. Where I can, I have used their real words—from recorded speeches or preserved writings—and woven them into my own dialogue. I have been guided by a belief that what goes onto the record is often tried out earlier, off the record.

  There is one character who may puzzle the reader, because he has a tangential, peculiar role in this book. Everyone knows this about Jean-Paul Marat: he was stabbed to death in his bath by a pretty girl. His death we can be sure of, but almost everything in his life is open to interpretation. Dr. Marat was twenty years older than my main characters, and had a long and interesting pre-revolutionary career. I did not feel that I could deal with it without unbalancing the book, so I have made him the guest star, his appearances few but piquant. I hope to write about Dr. Marat at some future date. Any such novel would subvert the view of history which I offer here. In the course of writing this book I have had many arguments with myself, about what history really is. But you must state a case, I think, before you can plead against it.

  The events of the book are complicated, so the need to dramatize and the need to explain must be set against each other. Anyone who writes a novel of this type is vulnerable to the complaints of pedants. Three small points will illustrate how, without falsifying, I have tried to make life easier.

  When I am describing pre-revolutionary Paris, I talk about “the police.” This is a simplification. There were several bodies charged with law enforcement. It would be tedious, though, to hold up the story every time there is a riot, to tell the reader which one is on the scene.

  Again, why do I call the Hotel de Ville “City Hall”? In Britain, the term “Town Hall” conjures up a picture of comfortable aldermen patting their paunches and talking about Christmas decorations or litter bins. I wanted to convey a more vital, American idea; power resides at City Hall.

  A smaller point still: my characters have their dinner and their supper at variable times. The fashionable Parisian dined between three and five in the afternoon, and took supper at ten or eleven o‘clock. But if the latter meal is attended with a degree of formality, I’ve called it “dinner.” On the whole, the people in this book keep late hours. If they’re doing something at three o’clock, it’s usually three in the morning.

  I am very conscious that a novel is a cooperative effort, a joint venture between writer and reader. I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint. Of course, my characters did not have the blessing of hindsight; they lived from day to day, as best they could. I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside. The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.

 
ALSO BY HILARY MANTEL

  Every Day Is Mother’s Day

  Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

  Fludd

  A Change of Climate

  An Experiment in Love

  The Giant, O’Brien

  Vacant Possession

  Giving Up the Ghost

  Beyond Black

  Hilary Mantel has written nine novels, including Beyond Black, and a highly acclaimed memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She lives with her husband in England.

  NOTE

  Lucile Desmoulins and General Dillon were tried for conspiracy and executed on 24 Germinal. Maximilien Robespierre was executed without trial on 10 Thermidor, July 28 old-style. So was his brother Augustin, so was Antoine Saint-Just, so was Couthon. Philippe Lebas shot himself.

  Louise Danton married Claude Dupin, and became a baroness under the Empire.

  Anne Théroigne died in 1817, in the prison-asylum of La Salpêtrière.

  Charlotte Robespierre, who never married, was given a small pension by Napoleon. Eléonore remained “the widow Robespierre.” Maximilien’s father—as it turned out—had died in Munich in 1777.

  Legendre died in 1795. Robert Lindet survived and prospered. Danton’s sons returned to his province and farmed their land.

  Stanislas Fréron deserted the cause. After Robespierre’s fall, he persecuted Jacobins, leading gangs of vandals and gallants through the streets. He died in Haiti, in 1802.

  Both Jean-Nicholas Desmoulins and Claude Duplessis died within a few months of Robespierre’s fall. Camille’s child was brought up by Annette and Adèle Duplessis. He attended the former Collège Louis-le-Grand, and was called to the Paris Bar. He died, also in Haiti, at the same age as his father. Adèle Duplessis died in Vervins, Picardy, in 1854.

  A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY. Copyright © 1992 by Hilary Mantel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.picadorusa.com

  Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Pan Books Limited.

  For information on Picador Reading Group Guides,

  as well as ordering, please contact Picador.

  Phone: 646-307-5629

  Fax:212-253-9627

  E-mail: [email protected]

  First published in the United States by Atheneum

  eISBN 9781429922807

  First eBook Edition : August 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mantel, Hilary.

  A place of greater safety / Hilary Mantel.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-42639-2

  ISBN-10: 0-312-42639-9

  1. France—History—Revolution, 1789-1799—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6063.A438P5 1998

  98-26688

  823’.914—dc21

  CIP

  First Picador Edition: December 2006

  Also by

  Hilary Mantel

  The Bestselling Author of Wolf Hall,

  Winner of the Man Booker Prize

  For updates, like Hilary Mantel on Facebook:

  http://www.facebook.com/HilaryMantelAuthor

  Wolf Hall

  www.picadorusa.com/wolfhall

  In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII’s court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king’s favor and ascend to the heights of political power.

  England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum.

  Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

  In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.

  Bring Up the Bodies

  www.henryholt.com/bringupthebodies

  The sequel to Hilary Mantel’s 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

  Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.

  At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?

 


 

  Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

 


 

 
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