City of Darkness, City of Light

by Marge Piercy

  “Of course. How are you?” Obviously from the looks of him, no more prosperous than Max himself. He should have recognized Camille, for he had not changed drastically in eleven years, the same animated boy with scraggly hair. They shared a frugal dinner at Max’s inn—the Sign of the Fox on Rue Sainte Elisabeth, where people from Artois without money to waste usually stayed.

  Camille was effervescent. He was writing illicit pamphlets for a printer who ran them off on a press behind a laundry. He was in love, he was sure he was going to get married any day, for the girl would not give up—she adored him. Camille reminisced about Max’s saving him from a group of older boys he had irritated with his sharp tongue. Max was smaller than any of the other boys, but he could shame them. Camille had never forgotten. Now that Max was reminded, he felt warmly toward Camille. They had shared a passion for Roman history.

  “What did you think of my speech today? Honestly? I ask, because I could see I wasn’t being listened to.”

  Camille ran his hand through his long brown hair. His sharp almost girlish features contorted. “What do you m-mean by ‘honestly’? How honest?”

  “Your real opinion.”

  Camille sighed. “What you said was to the p-point, but you might as well not have b-bothered. Max, you sound like a country priest—that nasal singsong. Nobody’s ever going to listen to a word as long as you sound like Father Mule Ears.”

  Max was silent so long Camille began to squirm. “I have to work on delivery. Do I need to get rid of my accent?”

  “Not if you speak more forcefully. You put an audience to sleep.”

  “I must strengthen my delivery. Thank you.” Max grasped his hand. “I won’t forget this, Camille. If I once helped you, now you’ve paid me back.”

  “By insulting you?” Camille giggled.

  “By taking the risk of telling me what no one else would. Let me pay for your dinner.” Max could scarcely afford this gesture, but he could always skip a meal tomorrow. Camille did not demur.

  That night Max practiced before the mirror in his room. He had to keep his voice down, but he watched his gestures and his mannerisms. Was there anyone he could model himself on? When Comte de Mirabeau spoke, everybody shut up. He was a nobleman, but he had been imprisoned and had chosen to run as a delegate for the Third Estate. He was a hideous man with a lascivious reputation, but he spoke well. His voice thundered out. He was forceful, direct. When Mirabeau was not speaking, he was everywhere, buttonholing other delegates, talking to journalists, haranguing, arguing, joking, telling stories. Max watched which delegates Mirabeau bothered to work on.

  Some of the more radical deputies had begun meeting. They were called the Breton Club, because some came from Brittany. Several Parisian delegates joined the Breton Club, as Max did. After he had been to a few meetings, he was no longer invisible. He was identified with the radicals. At least some people listened when he spoke. Every morning he got up at dawn and walked into the formal gardens to practice. The area was so vast, he could shout and no one would hear him. It was what he had done during the elections in Arras, but now it counted more. He did not have a commanding presence like Mirabeau, but he could master his voice so that it did not squeak or sound nasal. He got rid of the sing-song. He studied the delivery of their president Bailly, the astronomer. He spoke with somber dignity as if measuring every word.

  After five weeks the delegates decided to declare themselves a National Assembly. Max gave a speech to the clergy urging them to show compassion for the poor by coming to join those who represented them. He fiercely denounced the luxury in which the wealthy clergy lived. It was his first speech received with attention and applauded by the gallery. He was playing with pauses. Pauses could make things sound more ominous or important. A steady trickle of parish priests began to join the Third Estate. A slow inclination toward victory. They set up committees to deal with hunger in Paris, with taxation, with the national debt. But the nobles would not budge and protested to the King, asking him to dissolve the Estates General.

  The King responded by calling a royal session of the Estates to be held on June twenty-second. Max arrived early at the Hall on the morning of June twentieth. It had begun to rain hard during the night, so he had curtailed his morning practice in the garden. Delegates were already milling around the muddy street. They found the doors of the Hall of Small Pleasures barricaded. Inside, scaffolding was up and workmen were hammering and sawing and carrying out rubble from a knocked-down wall. Louis had made the hall uninhabitable. “It’s all over,” a tall wizened lawyer from Limoges mumbled. “He’s cut us off.”

  “We represent the people. We can’t let them down,” Max said loudly over the downpour. They were getting soaked.

  Dr. Guillotin spoke up. “I saw a big building a couple of days ago that looked as if we’d all fit inside. The tennis courts. It wasn’t locked. The King likes to play tennis at odd times and so does his brother.”

  Bailly put a notice on the door. Then they followed Dr. Guillotin to the tennis courts. This was an even bigger space than the Hall of Small Pleasures, but it was all one room, with bare, bleak walls. Anybody who wanted to meet here would have to meet together, which was exactly what the Third Estate wanted. They filed in dripping and bedraggled. A deputy from Lyon built a fire in the stove so they could dry their clothes. There were no chairs, so they stood. The onlookers, the public, must fend for themselves. Some scrambled up the wooden latticework on the sides and perched there. The room was chilly and dank.

  Max said to Camille, who was making notes, “Do you think the King will send his guards to disperse us?”

  “He’s not known for quick reactions. I’ll bet he doesn’t move against you until tomorrow.”

  Bailly began the session at once. They were here, so here was the National Assembly. “The place does not, gentlemen, make the Assembly. Rather the Assembly makes the place. We are the Assembly, even if we meet in the street.”

  Some King’s guards appeared. They seemed surprised by the orderly show of the meeting and stood around at the door, uncertain how to proceed. Bailly ignored them and moved business with his usual dignity. He recognized Jean Mounier, who proposed they all take an oath, so that none of them could be singled out for punishment, to affirm their commitment to the people who had elected them and to the job they had come to do. “The King has sent for troops. He has forty thousand surrounding Versailles right now. We must take an oath to hold our ground, not to waver or retreat.” Mounier took his pen and began to write. Others made suggestions. Within half an hour, they had an oath. Max was taut with excitement. If the guards did fire and killed some of them, it would actually strengthen their position. Sometimes martyrdom was power. He would prefer not to be a martyr so soon, but he would not back down. The hastily written oath was read out and then prepared for their signatures:

  “The National Assembly has been called upon to create a constitution, to revive public order, to maintain the true principles of the monarchy. Nothing can prevent its deliberations in whatever place it may be obliged to meet. Wherever its members are gathered, there is the National Assembly constituted. Be it resolved that all members take a solemn oath never to separate but to meet any place they must until a constitution is established on a firm foundation.”

  “This is like the Declaration of Independence,” Max said.

  They lined up patiently. The room smelled of mold and sweat and wet cloth. Everybody signed except one delegate from Castlenaudry. Mirabeau was reluctant, for he said they were creating a conspiracy, but he announced he would sign because none of them would trust him if he didn’t.

  The next day the Comte d’Artois, the King’s brother, had booked the tennis court all day. The National Assembly marched to the Church of Saint Louis, where a sympathetic vicar let them in. Max was beginning to enjoy this shuffling about. It showed their determination. He did not care if they ended up meeting in the King’s stables.

  On the twenty-third, a day later than promised, t
he King held his session in the Hall of Little Pleasures. He kept them standing in the rain for two hours first, while the two higher orders were seated. Max was not impressed with Louis’ ability to change tactics. The King seemed unable to observe that when he was rude to the Third Estate, their anger made them more stubborn. The roads were lined with guards and musketeers, armed and at attention in the rain. The King addressed the delegates sternly, as disobedient children. They were to cease and desist from insisting they were anything more than his little Estates General, they were to do what he told them and no more, and they were to stop meeting with anyone from other orders, was that clear? They could not discuss feudal privilege. They could not discuss the privileges or properties of the Church. The public could no longer attend. “We have reached our decisions, and you shall hear them,” he kept saying along with the threat to send them home by force if they were bad children. Max looked at the King, his antagonist. Max was standing so far back he could not make out details. This husky man in gold and jewels that would feed Paris for months speaking in a high whine, what was he? A relic with an army. “We order you to separate immediately and resume tomorrow in the rooms to which you have been assigned.”

  Louis left, followed by the nobility and the higher clergy. Max milled around with the other delegates. Mirabeau got on a chair and shouted at the guards standing at the doors, “We’re here by the will of the people and we will only be removed by the force of your bayonets!”

  Bailly went up to the head of the room, to the minister’s table, and banged for order. “The nation did not assemble to receive an order to disperse. Let us proceed.”

  The Abbé Sieyès spoke. “We are today exactly what we were yesterday. Let us deliberate. Monsieur le President, do we have committees ready to report?”

  They sat down and resumed where they had left off. Max was aware of the soldiers fully armed waiting for the King’s order. They might die here. They might end up in various royal prisons, like the Bastille, to rot in chains as long as the King so pleased. But they would not willingly obey an unjust and arbitrary King. They were making history today, just as the Americans had. This was their Declaration. They would not be moved.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Nicolas

  (June 1789)

  NICOLAS found love-making in the morning and then breakfast in bed marvelously stimulated his mind. He loved to start the day with Sophie in his arms, his lanky body twined with hers. Satisfaction did not make him drowsy but wakened him. Among the bric-a-brac of breakfast coffee cups, teaspoons and brioche crumbs, the taste of strawberry jam, they discussed the day.

  “What does the King really know?” Nicolas asked rhetorically. “Is it that he doesn’t want to know, or is he too stupid to govern? Even in religion he prefers propriety. He wants everything in its place, including God.”

  “Well, Nico, he’s rather well served by the way things are.”

  “His only real passion is hunting. He keeps lists of everything he kills. So many red deer, so many roe deer, so many boar, so many grouse, so many swallows.”

  “My father hunts. It’s something gentlemen do in hierarchial packs attended by dozens of beaters and fetchers and masters and men of hounds. Like an army taking the field against a bunch of birds. It’s what they do instead of warfare. They get to use weapons and see blood.”

  “I hunted when I was young,” he said apologetically.

  “I can’t imagine you on horseback chasing something.” She was sitting up in a heap of pillows, flushed and rosy. Her peignoir was pale blue and printed with irises, a filmy light silk. Her skin glistened.

  “It was the only thing I could find to do with my uncles, who rather despised me. I was a decent shot. But one day in the fall, we were hunting red deer. It came to me as the poor stag thrashed to death while the hounds tore at it that this was a disgusting pleasure.”

  “So what did you do?” She nodded. The maid removed the trays.

  “I announced my decision in my usual serious manner—and lost the last scrap of respect of my uncles.” He sighed ruefully. Thinking of his day’s work, he said, “I’m trying to write for ordinary people. But I don’t speak the same language as the woman who sells old clothes. We barely understand each other.”

  “It might be easier for you to learn to mimic her idiom and write simply, than for her to rise to your level of command.”

  “But to reason, she must have the tools for analysis. She must have a mastery of language in which she can do more than curse and buy and sell. She must have language adequate to discuss ideas and analyze politics.”

  “It might be easier to educate her children, Nico.”

  “We still have the problem of communicating with her here and now.…” He tangled a lock of her hair in his fingers. “Language is the great tool by which we manipulate each other socially and are manipulated. Poverty of life goes with poverty of mind. What we can’t speak about, we can’t think about.”

  “Doesn’t music communicate with us? Don’t paintings? If I’m walking and I meet a strange dog, I can tell whether it’s friendly or hostile. How does a mother cat teach her kittens? Through example. Through example, Nico, we can communicate to others even if they lack the language of philosophy. We can demonstrate the good.”

  Nicolas was happy. He had found a way to engage at last in the important work of his time, engage with a woman, engage at once with familial and national history. He had finally become a full adult.

  Nicolas was writing far more pamphlets than mathematical proofs these days. At the Committee of Thirty—long since swollen to more like sixty of the most intelligent and able liberals in Paris—Lafayette said to him, “Marquis, you are the only surviving Encyclopedist, the sole remaining philosopher of that generation that brought enlightenment to France, to Europe, to the world. We are the children of your intellect.”

  Nicolas did not want to be a relic. His wife was younger than Lafayette. “I’m not quite so ancient, Marquis. I have many more battles to fight.” Lafayette was no longer one of his favorite people, vain, arrogant, sure no one was as brave or as bright or as fit to be a leader. He sought his image in every mirror he passed, and there was a kind of smile he had upon viewing himself that made Nicolas sigh. He had no illusions about his own charismatic abilities. No one would follow him into more than an intellectual squabble or a parliamentary debate. When he wore a sword, it was because a gentleman had to, a part of his costume like powdered hair. Nicolas kept his sword blunt. He could never dash or shine. Nicolas was listened to when he spoke, nonetheless. His opinion was sought. Lafayette was invaluable, an experienced military commander they could count on; yet after fifteen years of close association, Nicolas no longer completely trusted him.

  A few of the Thirty were in the Estates General, including Abbé Sieyès, and Lafayette, who sat with the nobles. Lafayette was jealous of Comte de Mirabeau, who had been elected as a commoner and was making a name for himself. The Thirty were meeting three times a week, as the news from Versailles reached them. Never had Paris been so trained on another city. Even though Versailles was only twelve miles away and joined to Paris by the best road in the kingdom, all Paris experienced a famine of information. Messengers, travelers, journalists, pamphleteers, the curious rushed there and back with news and gossip and rumor. The coach schedule had been increased threefold. Private carriages clogged the roads. Men on horseback. People on foot. An occasional country clergyman on a mule.

  Sophie and Nicolas had gone to Versailles the week before. The three Estates were meeting separately, but the Third Estate had invited the clergy and the nobility to meet with it to enact the future of France. The astronomer Bailly, once Nicolas’ rival for admission to the Academy, was emerging as an important leader in the Third Estate. Louis was trying to be a good king, but he had no idea what was going on. The court nobility had too much influence. Those making fortunes out of the way things were had his ear. He would change with reluctance, but it was the work of Nicolas—and hi
s cohorts, including Lafayette and the Abbé Sieyès, and even his old enemy Bailly—to make sure that the pressure for change was unrelenting.

  “There’s a definite split in the First Estate,” Abbé Sieyès addressed the Committee. “The parish priests are getting fed up with the intransigence of the bishops. An increasing number of the poor clergy realize they have more in common with the Third Estate than with their superiors. I have reason to believe some may come over to sit with the Third Estate.”

  The situation was clear. The clergy had two hundred ninety-one deputies, the nobles, two hundred seventy; five hundred seventy-eight represented ninety-five per cent of the country. If the Estates voted separately, then nobles and clergy could block reforms. The King was immovable. As it has been, so should it ever be. That was how it was in the fifteenth century, and that was damned well how it was going to be today.

  “Sophie and I had some hopeful conversations last week. There’s a split between court and country nobility. There’s a gap between a great lord at court, and a gentleman with fifty acres, a drafty leaking house and hardly enough income to keep his children in clothes, let alone buy them into the military or the Church. We must play on these differences.”

  That enlightened nobility could work with the bourgeois was revealed by this Committee. They divided up tasks each time they met and then reported back. Nicolas was to write a pamphlet explaining representative government. Abbé Sieyès was to bring clergy over to the Third Estate. The bankers were to line up the financial community.

  “There are moments in history we must seize or lose our way.” Lafayette said sententiously. “We can see the constitutional monarchy we want on the horizon. Louis is obstructing with all his powers, but he underestimates us.”