City of Darkness, City of Light

by Marge Piercy

  The bedroom was scarcely less imposing. The bed was vast and canopied with ostrich feathers. The ceiling was painted with gods and goddesses disporting their unwrapped flesh in diverse arrangements. She would like to whitewash it, but it was the property of the nation, and she must learn to live with Louis and sleep under Venus and Mars. There were the same overdone frescoes in half the rooms and corridors. Room upon room sat there. However, they did not remain empty long. Mondays and Fridays, she provided supper for all the ministers. Mme Brissot was permitted to attend, as an exception. She was not talkative and she was bright, if homely.

  Manon continued, on the Sèvres plate decorated with nymphs and satyrs provided with the house, to serve up simple fare, just one course and sugar water, sometimes watered wine. The actual eating was quickly accomplished and they adjourned to the immense salon to politick. On Tuesdays she had a general salon for old friends, who were beginning to be called Brissotins or Girondins (since some came from Bordeaux, on the Gironde River). Robespierre never attended. He was annoyed at Jean for joining the government. He did not trust Dumouriez or Brissot. He did not want the war that was inevitable and would save the country and make its borders secure. She was disappointed in him. He was becoming more partisan every week. He was not the disinterested patriot she had supposed. He attacked Roland for compromising with the King.

  A war of liberation is not a war of conquest; she had written an essay for the Chronicle on that subject. She was writing regularly. Either the work went out signed by Jean or else it was published anonymously. Everyone knew who wrote Jean’s trenchant essays, letters, reports to the Assembly.

  She depended on Jean for news of the Council. Meetings with the King were frustrating. Louis would not allow a policy discussion to go forward, but was always bringing up trivia, trying to keep them from taking action. In other words, he was blocking them, as he continued to block the work of the Assembly by vetoing every substantive measure.

  Robespierre was ever more isolated. Brissot had gained the advantage by a huge majority. On April twentieth, he had the King sign a declaration of war against Austria which the Assembly approved almost unanimously. Robespierre alone denounced the new ministers as tools of the King, playing into the hands of the counter-revolution. She was dismayed by the violence of his attacks and wrote him a letter asking him to come and see her. She missed him at her gatherings. She appealed to him to be tolerant and stop treating patriots as if they were enemies of the state just because he differed with them.

  She waited for an answer. When she mentioned, as if casually to Brissot, that she had written a note to Robespierre, he treated it as a joke. “No one listens to him. An impotent little man.”

  Robespierre never answered her appeal. He ignored it as if she did not matter, but she did. It was he who no longer mattered. He was envy personified, a furious spirit of fanaticism in a lost cause who would do and say any violent thing to arouse the ignorant rabble of the city. If he continued to attack her husband, she would attack him in turn. She had offered him true friendship and understanding; he had responded with silence and scorn.

  Things were not going smoothly for the new ministers. The government was composed mostly of old hacks who did not want change. The King vetoed every important measure the Assembly passed. It was a stalemate. Louis really thought if he fooled around long enough, events would magically undo themselves and he would be back on top of the world. The army was not ready; the army was not equipped. On the northern front, the soldiers had no rifles and no food. They killed their own general in fury. When the men did march into battle, they were soundly defeated. This halfway reform, halfway reactionary coalition government was a nightmare. Those idiots in the Cordeliers, the few fanatical adherents Robespierre still controlled in the Jacobin Club and that savage anarchist Marat were attacking Jean, Servan and Dumouriez, as if they weren’t killing themselves to try to save the nation.

  Late in May, Brissot denounced Lafayette in the Assembly, for secret negotiations with the Austrians. Lafayette in turn wrote an insulting letter to Jean, saying that he did not recognize the validity of a government containing Brissotins. The Assembly voted to set up a military camp near Paris, to protect the city. Louis promptly vetoed the measure.

  Something had to be done. They were being stymied at every turn. On June tenth, Manon sat down at her desk and wrote a letter to Louis, to be signed by her husband. She wrote sternly, clearly, without the usual equivocation and flattery with which Louis had always been addressed. “Sir, the present crisis of France cannot long endure. The French have adopted a Constitution; some are dissatisfied and rebellious, but the overwhelming majority wish to uphold the Constitution, swear to defend it with their lives and gladly accept war as a means of defending that Constitution.

  “Your majesty grew up with great privileges which you were trained to believe were the rights of royalty. You cannot have witnessed the suppression of these privileges with pleasure. These sentiments, while natural in the human heart, have encouraged enemies of the Revolution. Your behavior has created mistrust in the nation. Your majesty is thus faced with two alternatives: you can yield to your childhood training and your natural preference for retaining all your privileges and powers, or you can make the sacrifices dictated by wisdom and demanded by necessity.”

  The result of her letter was that the King lost his temper and took the opportunity to dismiss ministers he disliked anyhow. Jean and she were ordered to vacate the mansion. However, her letter was much reprinted and cheered in the Assembly. The Rolands were once again private citizens.

  FORTY-NINE

  Claire

  (June 20, 1792)

  CLAIRE spent the whole week arguing with Hélène. “I’d be much happier if you’d stay home. You’re no street fighter.”

  “And you are? There’s a difference between playing Marianne waving a banner and being shot at by the National Guard.”

  “Hélène, I’m a big strong peasant. I know how to use a pistol. I want to be in the action, and I don’t want to be worrying about you.”

  “Who asked you to worry about me? I’ve been taking care of myself since my folks threw me out.”

  Claire felt like shaking Hélène until her teeth popped out, but she would never lay a rough hand on her friend. “Hélène … please! For me. Just let me know you’re safe. …”

  Hélène tossed her head, looking petulant. “I’ll think about it.”

  Claire kissed her on the mouth, quickly. Hélène let herself be kissed but said, “Don’t try to get around me. You just want to go off with Pauline.”

  “Pauline’s one of the best in demonstrations. All the women follow her lead. But you know she could never be my special friend, the way you are.”

  Everyone was talking about the demonstration called for the twentieth of June, the anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath. They were furious at the King and sick of waiting for the Legislative Assembly to do something about the war and the King’s vetoes. The clubs and sections had been meeting in almost continuous sessions. The official reason was to present petitions to the Assembly and the King and plant a liberty tree at the former Feuillants monastery right by the Assembly—and very close to the Tuileries.

  Pauline always knew what was going on. “The Girondins—the right-wing Jacobins—want their ministers recalled to power. They want to take over the government. Robespierre says we should wait till the fédérés arrive from Marseille, because they’re radical soldiers. They’d protect us. But Marat says we should march now and so do Santerre and Danton. We’ll put the fear of the people into Louis and show him he can’t keep trying to break us. And we’ll remind the Assembly we put them in and we can take them out.”

  So it was to be mostly pageant. Everybody would go armed who had arms to bear, but mostly they would carry flowers and ears of corn and the boughs of trees and banners—all the things they were used to carrying in religious processions. They even had busts of martyrs to carry.

  The
night of the nineteenth, the section met and met. Messengers went running through the dark streets bearing contradictory messages. The remnants of the old regime kept issuing decrees to the sections not to march. Claire was too excited to leave the Cordeliers, until Hélène fell asleep on her shoulder. Finally at two A.M., Claire shuffled off with sleepy Hélène to get a few hours in bed. It was a hot night. Claire sat up again and again from a fitful sleep with her heart pounding and her breath catching in her throat. She remembered the slaughter at the Champ de Mars. She remembered it too well.

  At five A.M. Faubourg Saint Antoine and Faubourg Saint Marcel were gathering, but her section wasn’t supposed to start until eight A.M., to give the faubourgs time to arrive. At seven she rose quietly, not to wake Hélène, who was sprawled like a child on her stomach. Claire threw on her skirt and apron and chemise, strapped on her pistol, picked up her sign THE CONSTITUTION NOW OR DEATH and tiptoed down the steps. She ran across the bridge toward the Cordeliers.

  Legendre the butcher had a calf’s heart on a pike bearing the sign THIS IS THE HEART OF AN ARISTOCRAT. They formed up into squadrons with drummers and piccolo players, with banners and placards and great sheafs of red and pink roses and mock orange. Some were waving boughs of linden trees. A local priest carried the Virgin before them. Babette’s father brought his fiddle. One old veteran pounded a big bass drum. They looked at each other and they were proud.

  Claire had never before belonged. In her own town, she was a fatherless child, a suspected Protestant. She was poor and neglected and had no dowry. Here she had dozens of friends. Pauline had taken her into the bosom of the neighborhood, and the women did not hold it against her that she was an actress. They marched beside her and joked with her the same as anybody else. They were to rendezvous with the two faubourgs at the site of the demolished Bastille. Off they went, in good order, singing the “Ça Ira,” It Will Go On, a popular song this year. Pauline was everywhere, at the head, at the rear, urging her women on. She wore a tricolor sash across her bosom and she carried the pike that had gone to Versailles. “We went all that way to fetch the King, and we got no good of him. We might as well have left him there and burned the place down.”

  Both Pauline and Claire were wearing the red bonnets that were all the rage for patriots. Even among the poor people, everybody must have a red bonnet or cap. The cockade was fine, but even ladies getting out of carriages pinned it on nowadays. The cap said, we mean it, we mean blood. It was modeled after the red wool cap that galley slaves had been forced to wear.

  The Pont Neuf was closed by soldiers, so they simply marched down to the next bridges and crossed through the Ile Saint Louis. Far downstream, they could see another group crossing. She could hear singing and drums from every side. The square where the Bastille had stood was already jammed. There were grenadiers, fusiliers, Guardsmen, old invalids in uniform on canes and crutches and being pushed along in wheelbarrows. There were charcoal burners, market women, fishwives. There were bakers and Savoyard chimney sweeps, women of the flower market, horse dealers mounted. Cannons had been dragged from the various sections. It was a mammoth orchestra out of synch, every drummer and musician setting a different rhythm. Sunlight glinted off the muskets and the bayonets and the pikes, lit the banners and flags. Some were carrying hatchets, axes, kitchen knives, butchers’ cleavers and blacksmiths’ tools. A tavern keeper had taken the spit of his barbecue. Others had old swords, pitchforks, scythes bound to short poles.

  Thousands and thousands of them set off to march on the Assembly and to the King, to present their petition—and to scare them with the threat of popular violence. Still it felt like a holiday as they marched along, singing full throat almost in step with the drums, the sun brightening their banners, fallen flowers underfoot, everyone beaming at each other as if they were indeed one large family. There were so many of them, they felt invincible, Claire imagined, safe because they were such a great crowd. At the head of the procession were the sappers and cannoneers, Santerre—the Faubourg Saint Antoine brewer—on a horse, men bearing the tables of the Rights of Man, imitated after stained glass windows of the Ten Commandments. Behind them came a wagon with a liberty tree and buckets of water. Claire sang until she was hoarse. A vendor was giving away lemonade and she got one of the last drinks before he ran out.

  Hope was the most intoxicating brandy. Despair and grief and trouble were the lot of most of the people most of the time. Hope they had almost never known. Now they swept through the streets like a summer wind, blowing all before them hoping they too could have dignity and a future. That each of them was someone who counted. People who had spent their whole lives limping from crisis to crisis, just trying to get through another day, to save a sick child or a starving mother, now saw a way forward. For the first time they were experiencing imagination in their own lives, that all need not continue as it had been. The future had been something only the religious contemplated, death and reward beyond that opaque barrier. The idea of a future that could be shaped was a new intoxication. If the demonstration was dangerous, so was daily life. They would make the King and the Assembly pay attention: they would command the regard of those with power and position, to whom they had never been more than ants running across the pavement. Many insisted on carrying their weapons, not because they wanted to use them, but because gentlemen with swords had always represented the right to command. Now they had their own makeshift swords to flourish. As they marched toward the Assembly and the Tuileries, passersby joined them. Shopkeepers put up their shutters and marched along. Women waved from windows, then came running down. Their pace slowed as the crowd clogged the narrow streets.

  As they reached the Rue Saint Honoré, Pauline pushed to her side. “Robespierre lives on this street,” she announced breathlessly. The area between the gardens of the Tuileries palace and the street where they stood was occupied by the old Feuillants monastery. In between the Tuileries and the Feuillants stood the Assembly building. At one-thirty a delegation went inside to ask the Assembly to receive them.

  At last the great doors opened and the crowd began to march through the Assembly. They went in with weapons at attention, muskets, pikes, hatchets, sheafs of flowers, banners, placards, as they sang the “Ça Ira” and filed through with great pride. They all felt ten feet tall, Claire thought, waiting her turn. Some sections had petitions. The women pushed Claire forward to present theirs. They thought she was the best person when it was a matter of standing up and being seen, because she was tall and considered beautiful. It took the people an hour and a half to pass through.

  As people exited, they were caught against the closed gates to the palace gardens. The press grew worse and worse. She was having trouble catching her breath as she was jammed against the man next to her and he was pushed into the metal fence. Pauline shouted, “There are cannons in the Tuileries pointed right at us.”

  Suddenly she found herself carried forward. The gates to the garden were forced and the procession began to move along the terrace above the river. They trotted the length of the palace where guards were standing in a double row with bayonets fixed. The crowd was good-natured, although taunts were shouted as they passed under the King’s windows. They were still singing and shouting slogans, waving their wilted flowers and banners. The line of march entered the Place du Carrousel, where people turned and began to try to enter the closed gates to the palace. No one gave orders. It was as if the crowd had one brain that had decided they were not leaving without presenting their petitions to the King.

  For an hour, the crowd pushed and the soldiers pushed back. The guards fixed bayonets to charge and then stood down. The cannoneers from Saint Marcel said they had come to get something done. They dragged their cannon up to the gates. Suddenly the gates opened and Claire was swept forward. She heard some officer yelling “Fire!” but nobody obeyed. The soldiers just got out of the way. Some waved happily, no longer pretending they were guarding what they did not want to guard.

  Inside th
e crowd kept going, across the courtyards, through the inner gates. In the palace one of the cannons got stuck in a doorway. People climbed over it and went around it through other passageways. She hoped somebody knew where they were going. The rooms were huge with high ceilings and paneled walls painted with pastoral scenes. It was too jammed to see much. “It’s not as fancy as Versailles,” Pauline said.

  Claire laughed. “You’re turning into a connoisseur of palaces.”

  The guards were yelling at them, “Don’t touch anything! Don’t take anything!” Almost everyone obeyed. They were here for a purpose. If someone did try to help themselves to a gold clock or a fancy dish, the people around them took it and put it back. “None of that,” she heard an old woman say. “We’re the people. This here is our palace. It belongs to the nation.”

  “Here’s Louis,” someone was shouting down. Pauline dashed up the steps, waving her pike. The gendarmes, the soldiers, the guards stood to the side or walked away. Many shouted encouragement. Claire, borne upward in the press, heard the sound of a great door crashing down. It was the Oeil de Boeuf room. A man in gold damask and maroon velvet stood in an alcove flanked by a few National Guardsmen, looking very nervous. With him was a woman in court attire whose paniers stood out two feet on either side of her pinched-in waist. Claire wriggled through to Pauline. “Is that Marie?”

  “No, that’s Madame Elisabeth, the King’s sister.” Pauline was staring at the King. Claire and Pauline were pressed against the wall just inside the big room. “He looks like he could do an honest day’s work if he wanted to. But he has guts anyhow. He must be afraid we’ll tear him limb from limb.”