City of Darkness, City of Light

by Marge Piercy

  Max let himself be dragged off to an apartment with Charlotte and Augustin in the Rue Saint Florentine. At once he began to miss the Duplays. He liked having the Duplay women around him. They saw to his every need quietly, unlike Charlotte who trumpeted everything she did. He missed Eléanore’s sleek, dark presence, her eyes upon him, her surprisingly strong hands kneading his shoulders when he was tense, rubbing his temples when his head ached. He could not bear to be touched—except by her. Her touch soothed him. Her touch drew the tension from him. He could not say that to Charlotte, who was always shocked when she discovered Eléanore in his room.

  Now he never saw Eléanore except from a distance at the Jacobin Club. At least there he escaped his sister. Eléanore would be in the gallery and when a speaker bored him, not as infrequent an event as he could have wished, he tilted his chair slightly so that he could see her. He loved Augustin, his tall handsome brother who could charm as he never could, who was loyal and goodhearted and thoroughly dependable and honest. Augustin got on easily with other men. He had that rough common touch, a gift for friendship. Max trusted his back to Augustin. But Charlotte was another matter. She was his sister, his responsibility (which he had shirked). Of course he loved her; but he did not much like her, and he did not wholly trust her. She had too little insight, too little politics, too much of an injured sense of her own martyrdom. He wished she had married in Arras. He was half-convinced that any man who showed interest in her now would be attempting to get close to him. He had allowed her to force him into moving, but he did not have to like the new arrangements. Blount missed the Duplays too and spent too much time sleeping by the hearth, head on his paws.

  The Convention was not the ineffectual Legislative Assembly that had crept round in timid circles. This was a different cast of characters, far readier to act, but the Girondins, in control, seemed to have inherited the old support of the King and status quo defense of the previous right, whom they used to oppose. The Revolution created its own opposition as it went, those for whom it had “gone too far”; those who had traveled a way on its road and now wanted to settle down and build a fine mansion on newly acquired land. The Girondins had gained power from the August tenth uprising, but they would not keep it. He, for one, would see to that. They had taken only Danton from the left into their government. He was doing the jobs of Minister of Justice and also Minister of War. He alone seemed to have energy and vision. Now that they were hip deep in this foreign war, desperate measures were needed to save the country. Only Danton seemed willing to take those measures. Max did not understand the man. He hated the sexual jokes and innuendoes that Danton was given to, but it was more important to save the Revolution than his own ears. Augustin teased him about his prudery, but Max liked a certain dignity of discourse. Camille was close to Danton, which did recommend the man. Max had begun writing down observations, overheard stories and comments, analysis in a notebook devoted specifically to Danton. Thus did he hope eventually to figure out the man.

  Max had allies. The radical Jacobin group in the Convention was called the Mountain, because they sat up on the high benches on the left, almost to the ceiling. If they were the Mountain, and delegates committed to neither faction were called the Plain, then, Camille said, the Girondins must be the Pit: the Pit down which revolutionary ideas had disappeared and into which the Revolution itself would fall if it was not prevented.

  Max had many new comrades around him who gave him their loyalty. He could count on them in the Convention, in the Jacobin Club, sent out on missions. A certain power was beginning to accrue to him from persisting. If he was in the minority in the Convention, it was a vocal, organized minority that sometimes won support of the Plain: a minority prepared to take power when the chance came.

  Valmy, the first victory of the war, came right after the Convention opened, declared the Republic and instituted a new calendar. This was to be Year I of the French Republic. He felt energized. He could remember how depressed he had been after the Champ de Mars massacre, when the forces of reaction had triumphed and driven most of the true leaders underground. Now all things seemed possible. Marat was out of hiding and in the Convention, the focus of Girondin hatred. Marat had a private war going with the Rolands. Max maintained an uneasy alliance with Marat. They often found themselves holding the same position but would never communicate easily.

  Camille was in the Convention and at the Jacobins too, as close as ever, the only person who could always make Max laugh. Camille could be annoying and precious and endearing—like a puppy. He could not remain angry at Camille. Their son looked like Lucile, all curls and pouts and emotions bigger than he was. Max liked to get down on the floor and play with him. He had long ago dismissed ever having a child of his own, but he adored Horace and, when Danton’s boys were there, he romped with all of them, letting them ride his back and tickling them till they wept with laughter.

  A charming and politically dependable young man had become friends with Augustin and himself, Philippe Lebas. Max liked him. But the most important of his new colleagues was Saint-Just, who had written a scurrilous anti-government poem that had been suppressed. He had also written intelligent and admiring letters to Max over the last two years. Although he was the youngest deputy in the Convention, he was already important. From the moment Saint-Just walked in, everyone noticed him. He was tall and cold, sculpturally handsome. His manner, Max would admit, was touched with arrogance. He would bow to no one. He would court no one—except Max. In his first letter, Saint-Just had written, “You sustain the fatherland, staggering under the flood of despotism and intrigue. You are not merely the representative of a province, but of all humanity and of the republic.” Max still remembered those words. Max always answered letters he received from ordinary people, unless they were hostile. He felt a responsibility to people everywhere who turned to him.

  Max was taken with Saint-Just from the first time they sat down to talk. He was like a perfect gleaming sword. He did not hesitate. He did not waver. There was no corruption in him. His mind glinted. His words were lapidary.

  “I have something inside me that triumphs with this age. Because I am young, not in spite of it, I am closer to the spirit of the times. I have despised my own weakness and abandoned it. I pursue the truth with absolute zeal and I proclaim it without regard for the consequences.” Saint-Just offered Max perfect loyalty, but also a constant critical regard. He was not a humble follower. He did not hesitate to criticize, to exhort, to insist. He made his judgement known with authority. When my will fails, Max thought, as it sometimes does, this youth will force me to pursue our difficult and dangerous path. He will keep me from hesitations and weakness.

  Always now, in the Jacobin Club, in the Convention, at the Commune, there was Augustin on his left side and Saint-Just on his right. He was never unattended. Couthon, crippled in body but robust in will, rugged in politics, was dependable as ever, a warrior in a wheelchair. Lebas had given Max unconditional support. His popularity with the sans-culottes was high again. Max had been accustomed to loneliness, to isolation, to believing himself correct when everyone about him considered him foolish. He had always believed he was destined for a difficult and lonely fate. He and Saint-Just alone shared an awareness of themselves as actors in history. “The future will know of us,” Saint-Just said, and Max added, “We will have a nation of descendants as Abraham was promised.”

  The most important nongovernmental political institution in the country was his. He was in full control of the Jacobin Club after years of patient work and painstaking committee building. He no longer had to hide in his room brooding, trying to figure a way to be effective in his isolation. He had only to suggest something for someone to rush to do it. He was never free of the sense of time running out, but now he had allies, colleagues. He had a base. If he did not succeed in toppling the Girondins from power and establishing a true revolutionary republic, he had only himself to blame. He had a mission and nothing else finally mattered. Friends
hips warmed him, who was always chilled to the bone, but finally he must do what he was destined to, no matter how difficult or dangerous.

  One afternoon when the Convention was briefly in recess, Saint-Just and he walked by the river where the laundresses were scrubbing on their barges. Blount trotted ahead of them. Max said, “The Girondins are the primary problem now. Louis is dangerous so long as he’s alive, but he’s safely stowed in the Temple. Roland and company mean to keep the Revolution from proceeding. Again you have a faction saying, Halt. This is as far as we go. We have what we need. Go back to your slums and be hungry quietly now that we don’t need you in the streets.”

  Saint-Just did not demur. He saw clearly, icily, without sentiment or shading. “How shall we topple them?”

  “We attack when we can. We slowly win over the deputies of the Plain. We keep our base among the people. We never forget where the Revolution must go and we keep saying it to the people again and again.”

  “And what do the Girondins do?” Saint-Just paused to toss a stick.

  “They attack. They try to isolate us. They try to put us in prison. They may try to execute me. But they’re cozy now. They’ve gone from revolutionaries to being an eating club. They fear the people instead of listening to them. They dream of moving the government out of Paris and away from possible insurrection. That will bring them down.”

  Saint-Just folded his arms. He had a habit of raising his chin and gazing as if he could see valleys and valleys from his mountain. “Halfhearted revolutionaries are more dangerous than counter-revolutionaries, because they sound plausible, but they destroy.”

  Brissot and the others had been Max’s colleagues in the Jacobin Club. They had fought on the same side for years. He had a debilitating tendency to remember those battles; Saint-Just had no such qualms. Those who were their enemies now had never been his friends. Mme Roland had once courted Max with a regard as flattering as Saint-Just’s, but power had corrupted her. She was a woman who played at compliance but always had her own agenda. A more intelligent version of Charlotte. He shuddered.

  Max knew the Girondins feared and hated him as they did Marat, and that they were preparing an attack. He was ready. They would provide him an opportunity to explicate to the Plain exactly how he differed from the Girondins. Yes, his enemies would think they had built a scaffold, but they would give him the best pulpit of all: the theater of the unjustly accused.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Georges

  (Fall 1792)

  GEORGES liked being a minister, although he knew he had only been brought in as a sop to the Commune and the radicals. He tried to unite the two factions, the Girondins and the Mountain, the right and the left. He found he could sway most of his ministerial colleagues, except for Roland. Roland looked down his thin nose at Georges, and his distaste was like an odor of vinegar and sanctity.

  He knew how to reach Roland: through the brains of the family, Madame. But Manon would not let him charm her. She began to irritate him. She was judgemental beyond endurance. She operated in a blur of self-righteousness. He found himself enjoying his ability to shock her, so she would blush and clench her fists as if to strike him. All through August he went to her dreadful dinners of watery stew or one stringy lamb chop and a mound of dry rice, a heap of beans and a thin pat of butter, watered wine and the conversation of the sages of the Gironde. He made Fabre go with him. Afterward, when they stopped at a cafe for a real supper, Fabre would do imitations of each in turn.

  The war was going disastrously. The Prussians were advancing on Paris. They took the forts of Longwy and Verdun, which should have held them for months. The generals were not winning, the officers were waffling, and the men were ill-equipped, hungry and badly trained. If he and his colleagues were not to be strung up or shot by firing squads, somebody must stop the enemy advance. It did not seem to be in the repertoire of the Girondin ministers to rouse themselves to the desperate measures required to pursue the war they had passionately craved. Fools. He would have to take over the war.

  He sent Fabre and Billaud-Varenne, trusted Cordeliers, off to keep an eye on General Dumouriez’s negotiations with the Prussians. Georges intended to bribe the Prussians out of their uneasy alliance with Austria. Austria was determined to fight for Hapsburg right, but Prussia could be moved. He found out where the crown jewels were stored and arranged with some deft Cordeliers to burgle a few of the best. He was acting as foreign minister in the secret negotiations, offering Frederick William not only a separate peace, some sapphires and rubies, but a French alliance in place of the Austrian. He sent a colleague to England to see what was needed to keep the British out of the war. He sent emissaries to the royalists who were thinking of starting a revolt in Brittany. He would rather negotiate than fight. But if he had to fight, then he would fight to win.

  At the Rolands’ frugal table that night, Roland said in his dry voice, “The Prussian advance endangers the government. We should take the King and remove to Blois during this emergency. A disruption in the government could prove fatal to the survival of the Revolution.”

  Servan, the peaceful Minister of War, seconded him. “Blois’s a good choice. We can use the palace. It’s central. Good roads.”

  Georges looked at Fabre, who looked back at him. A setup. Roland and Servan had discussed this earlier, obviously. He was expected to agree. Georges let his eyelid droop slightly, a wink no one else could catch.

  Clavière, the finance minister, chimed in. “It should teach the population of Paris a good lesson. That the government is able to function out of Paris. Let’s see how well Paris functions without the government they keep criticizing and complaining about.”

  “Gentlemen,” Georges said, putting his elbows on the table. “I just brought my mother and my two living sons to Paris, so that we can share the jeopardy of the people. Personally I will torch this city rather than surrender it to the Prussians.”

  “We weren’t talking surrender,” Servan said hastily. “A strategic retreat is necessary to avoid capture.”

  “How many citizens of Paris will you take on this strategic retreat?” Georges grinned at them, an intentionally mirthless grin he was sure looked tigerish. “I wouldn’t, my dear Roland, talk too loudly about flight to Blois with the government. If the sans-culottes and the sections catch wind of this, I can see how your plan might be misinterpreted as offering up Paris to the enemy. If I were leaving, I would leave quickly, and I would take no baggage—certainly not anything that belongs to the people, such as the government. Otherwise they might be tempted to come and take it back.”

  A long and deadly silence fell on the dinner table, set with the finest linen and silver of the Ministry of the Interior, every plate cleaned down to the painting of nymphs. “I really must be going,” Servan said. “I’m sorry to rush off, but we’re burning the midnight oil at the Ministry these days.”

  Manon glared at Georges. She had been quietly advocating removal of the government to get away from the Commune, the sections, the active and tempestuous population who wanted direct democracy. It was no doubt her idea to take advantage of the military emergency to effect a move to the provinces, where most Girondin support was located. He had just stuck a large spoke in those wheels. His threat had been immediately understood. This government was going nowhere.

  Rumors leaked out that the Girondins wanted to flee. He did not know if Fabre was responsible, or if Girondins had talked too freely. He heard from the Commune that delegates were applying for passports under assumed names. The Commune responded by locking the gates of the city and posting guards. The city was close to panic. He could feel it. If the panic could be turned into zeal, maybe he could save Paris and France. It would be tricky. It was necessary to be open about the danger, without increasing panic. “Citizens,” he wrote in a proclamation the other ministers signed without a whimper, “your only choice is between victory and death. Citizens, no nation on earth has ever won its freedom without a fight. There are traitors
among you; without them the struggle would soon be won. Keep up your unity and stay calm. If we defend ourselves with vigor, victory will be ours.”

  He proposed raising troops to reinforce the army at the front. He also urged house-to-house searches to confiscate weapons for the soldiers. He recommended rounding up those suspected of counter-revolutionary activity. That would give the panic a focus, turning it into anger on one hand and patriotic fervor on the other. All his proposals passed at once and began to be carried out within the hour.

  But panic increased. Men were joining up by the thousands, but they said, “Who will defend Paris once we are gone? Who will watch over our families?” They feared the counter-revolutionaries, the refractory priests, the aristocrats would make common cause with the criminals to break out of prison. The makeshift jails were targets of popular anger. People were calling them powder kegs. The crowded prisons were scapegoats, but the fear was real. People circulated in and out of the prisons all day. Hardly anyone was locked in a cell except at night. Those who had money lived far better in prison than the people without money outside the walls. People in the neighborhoods watched wagonloads of hams and barrels of wine trucked in and repeated stories of orgies and balls. People suspected the prisoners had weapons hidden. If the prisoners revolted, they could take over their prisons easily, overcome their few guards and sally forth, an informal army of chaos.

  The city was going to blow, he could feel it. He tried to talk to Servan and Roland, but they thought he was coming around to their way of viewing what they called the rabble of the sections. He could not get them to understand what was happening, so they were irrelevant. If he had to let Paris explode, he must control the explosion. If it cost the lives of a few hundred prisoners, then so be it. If Paris fell, tens of thousands would die. If the Girondins would not act to save Paris, he would.