A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “Only strictly in private, Camille. Remember, it was just a personal view, it was not a recommendation to the nation.”

  “My public views and my private views are the same. They will go on trial, if I have my way.”

  “And if Dr. Marat has his.” Robespierre turned a few papers over. “Danton’s peace initiatives don’t seem to be conspicuously successful, do they?”

  “No. He’s wasted four million, I should say, in Russia and Spain. Soon it will be peace at any price. That’s one whole aspect of him. People don’t know. Peace and quiet.”

  “Does he still see this Englishman, Mr. Miles?”

  “Why?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “Did you now! I think they have dinner together from time to time.”

  Robespierre picked up his little volume of Rousseau. He began to work through it absentmindedly, just flicking the pages with his thumb. “Tell me, Camille—be entirely honest with me—do you think Georges-Jacques has behaved quite scrupulously with regard to army contracts?”

  “How am I to answer that? You know how he finances himself.”

  “Cut-ins, kickbacks—yes, we have to take him with all his faults and failings, don’t we, though I can hardly imagine what Saint-Just would say if he heard me voice that sentiment. I suppose he’d say I was conniving at corruption, which is really just another way of being corrupt oneself … . Tell me, do you think we could save Danton from himself? Scoop up some of the small fry?”

  “No.” Camille turned onto his side and looked at Robespierre, propping his head on his hand. “Small fry lead to bigger fry, whatever they are. Danton’s too valuable to be put into difficult positions.”

  “I should hate to see him lose his value. About this marriage settlement—this worries me. Of course, it means only one thing—that at some point in the future he fears he might find himself on trial.”

  “You said almost the same thing yourself. That at some point you might, despite yourself, become an obstacle to the Revolution. That you were prepared.”

  “Oh, mentally prepared—1 mean, a little humility is a good thing for us all, but I wouldn’t settle my affairs in anticipation. What we must do—we must do our best to steer Danton away from dangerous involvements.”

  “I don’t see any prospect of an immediate divorce.”

  Robespierre smiled. “Where are they today?”

  “At Sèvres with Gabrielle’s parents. All the best of friends, terribly cozy. And they are to get a cottage, where they can be absolutely alone together, and none of us are to know where it is.”

  “Why did he mention it then?”

  “He didn’t. It was Louise who made a point of telling me.” Camille sat up. “I must go. I have a dinner engagement. Not with Mr. Miles.”

  “But with?”

  “No one you know. I mean to have a very good time. You’ll be able to read all about it in Hébert’s scandal sheet. No doubt he’s inventing the menu this very minute.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Hébert? No, I like to see him pulled down by the accumulated weight of his pettiness.”

  “No, I mean—when you spoke in the Convention last, some fool shouted, ‘You dine with aristocrats.’ In itself it means nothing, but—”

  “They call everyone an aristo who’s intelligent. Anyone with good taste.”

  “You know that these people, these ci-devants, they’re only interested in you for the power you hold.”

  “Oh yes. Well, not Arthur Dillon—he likes me. But after all, since ‘89 people have been interested in me only for the power I hold. Before ’89, no one was interested in me at all.”

  “All the people who counted were.” An intense moment; Robespierre’s eyes, with their fugitive blue-green light, rest on him. “You were always in my heart.”

  Camille smiles. Sentimentality; after all, it is the fashion of the era. It occurs to him that it is, anyway, more soothing than being yelled at by Georges-Jacques. Robespierre breaks the moment, gives him a good-tempered dismissive wave. But after Camille has gone, he sits and thinks. Virtue is the word that springs to his mind—or rather vertu, meaning strength, honesty, purity of intent. Does Camille understand these words? Sometimes he seems to comprehend them very well; no one has more vertu. The trouble is, he thinks he’s an exception to every rule. He’s been saying things, today, that he’ll wish he hadn’t said. That doesn’t mean I’m not obliged to take notice of them. If he hadn’t told me, I’d never have known about Georges-Jacques’s marriage settlement. Danton must be feeling very anxious about something. A man like that doesn’t worry over trifles. A man like that doesn’t give away that he’s worried. A man like that feels in danger only when there’s some huge guilt pressing on his mind, or a great accumulation of threats and fears … .

  Guilt, of course: there must be. He abused the good young woman’s trust; and she was the mother of his little sons. When she died I imagined him so hurt that he would never recover, and I wrote to console him, I opened my mind and heart, laying aside all reservations, suspicions, doubts—“you and I are one.” I grant you, the sentiment was overblown. I should have guarded my pen, but I felt so raw … . No doubt he smiled at it. No doubt he thought (no doubt he said, aloud, to smirking people), what is it with this little man? How dare he claim to be one with me? How could Robespierre—the bachelor, who has only the most skulking attachments, and those he denies—how could Robespierre presume to know what I feel?

  And now he says to himself, hands resting on his desk: Danton is a patriot. Nothing more is necessary; it doesn’t matter if his manners displease me. Danton is a patriot.

  He rises from his desk, eases open a drawer, takes out a notebook. One of those little notebooks he uses: a fresh one. He opens the first page. He seats himself, dips his pen, writes DANTON. He would like to add something: don’t read this, it’s my private book. Yet, though he doesn’t claim to know much about people, he knows this: such a plea would drive them on, sniffing and ferreting, reading in excited gulps. He frowned. So, let them read … . or he could perhaps carry this book with him, all the time? Not liking himself very much, he began to record what he could remember of his conversation with Camille.

  Maximilien Robespierre:

  In our country we want to substitute morality for egotism, probity for the code of personal honor, principles for conventions, public duties for social obligations, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune, love of glory for love of money, good people for good society, merit for intrigue, the greatness of Man for the pettiness of the Great, a magnanimous, powerful and happy people for a frivolous and miserable one: in other words, all the virtues and miracles of the republic for all the ridiculous vices of the monarchy.

  Camille Desmoulins:

  Till our day it has been thought, with the lawgivers of old, that Virtues were the necessary basis of a republic; the eternal glory of the Jacobin Club will be to have founded one on vices.

  All June, disasters in the Vendee. At different times the rebels have Angers, Saumur, Chinon; are narrowly defeated in the battle for Nantes, where off the coast the British navy waits to support them. The Danton Committee is not winning the war, nor can it promise a peace. If by autumn there is no relief from the news of disaster and defeat, the sansculottes will take the law into their own hands, turning on the government and their elected leaders. That at least is the feeling (Danton present or absent) in the chamber of the Committee of Public Safety, whose proceedings are secret. Beneath the black tricorn hat which is the badge of his office, Citizen Fouquier becomes more haggard each day, peering over the files of papers stacked on his desk, planning diversions for the days ahead: acquiring a lean and hungry look which he shares with the Republic herself.

  And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Val
my and in a half-dozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn’t it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?

  They had made a conspiracy that Claude’s health required walks, long walks, every day. His physician had joined it, on the grounds that no amount of gentle exercise does any harm, and if one of the nastiest members of the Convention wanted to have an affair with his mother-in-law, it did not behoove him to stand in his way.

  Annette, in fact, found her life less exciting than was generally believed. Each morning she occupied herself with the provincial press; she scanned the papers, took cuttings, made extracts. She would sit beside her son-in-law, they would open his letters, she would scribble on them what was to be done, or sent, or said, whether she could reply, whether he should do it, whether the letter could be consigned straight to the drawing-room fire. Who’d have thought, she’d say, that I’d end up your secretary? It’s almost ten years now since we haven’t been sleeping together and cruelly deceiving the rest of the family. They tried to remember the exact date—it would be sometime in ’84—when Fréron had bowed himself into Annette’s drawing room with Camille in tow. She wasn’t, in those days, diligent about writing things down.

  If they could remember it, they thought, they could give a party. Any excuse for a party! Annette said. They fell silent for a moment, thinking of the last ten years. Then they went back to discussing the Commune.

  And here’s Lucile, walking in unexpected and unannounced: “Really!” her mother said. “To walk in like this, when we are having an intimate discussion of Hébert—”

  Lucile didn’t laugh. She started talking. At first he thought she was saying Dillon was dead, killed in action; a miserable blankness descended on his mind, and he went to sit quietly at the desk by the fireplace, looking at the grain of the wood. It was a minute or two before he took in the message: Dillon’s here, he’s in prison, what are we going to do?

  The morning’s joie de vivre seemed to drain out of Annette. “This is a complication,” she said. Immediately she thought, I can’t see the end of this. Who’s behind it? Is it one of the damned committees? The Committee of General Security, which everybody calls the Police Committee ? Is it really directed against Arthur Dillon, or is it directed at Camille?

  Lucile said, “You have to get him out, you know. If he’s convicted”—her face showed she knew what conviction meant—“they’ll look at you and say, see how hard he pushed Dillon’s career. And you did—you have.”

  “Convicted?” Camille was on his feet now. “There will be no conviction because there won’t be a trial. I’ll break my cousin’s fucking neck.”

  “No, you won’t,” Annette said. “Moderate your language, sit down again, have a nice soothing think.”

  No hope of that. Camille was outraged—and it’s not the cold simulated outrage of the politician, it’s the real thing, the kind of outrage that says Do you know who I am? “There’s your name through the mud again,” Annette murmured to her daughter. Outrage will go to the Convention; but first it will go to Marat’s house.

  The cook let him in. Why does Marat employ a cook? It’s not as if he gives dinner parties. Probably this title, “cook,” conceals some more energetic, revolutionary pastime. “Don’t trip over the newspapers,” the woman said. They lay in great bales, in a dingy half-lit passage. Having issued her warning, she rejoined her employers, who were sitting in a semi-circle like people preparing for a seance. Why don’t they clean the place up, he wondered irritably. But Marat’s women are unacquainted with the domestic arts. Simone Evrard was there, and her sister Catherine; Marat’s sister Albertine had gone on a trip to Switzerland, they said, to visit the family. Marat has a family? I mean a mother and a father and the usual things? The ordinary arrangement, the cook said. Odd really, I never thought of Marat having a beginning, I thought he was thousands and thousands of years old, like Cagliostro. Can I see him?

  “He’s not well,” Catherine said. “He’s taking one of his special baths.”

  “I really need to see him urgently.”

  Doe-eyed Simone: “Dillon?” She got up. “Yes, come with me. He was laughing about it.”

  Marat was encased in a slipper bath in a hot little room, a towel around his shoulders and a cloth wrapped around his head. There was a heavy, medicinal smell. His face had bloated; beneath its ordinary yellow tinge there was something worse, something blue. There was a board balanced across the bath to act as a desk.

  Simone indicated a straw-bottomed chair, giving it a gracious kick.

  Marat looked up from the proofs he was correcting. “The chair is for sitting on, Camille. Do not stand on it and make a speech.”

  Camille sat. He tried to avoid looking at Marat. “Yes, aesthetic, aren’t I?” Marat said. “A work of art. I ought to be in an exhibition. The number of people who come tramping through, I feel like an exhibit anyway.”

  “I’m glad you’ve found something to make you laugh. In your condition I should not be cheerful.”

  “Oh, Dillon. I can spare you five minutes on that topic. Inasmuch as Dillon is an aristocrat by birth, he should be guillotined—”

  “He can’t help his birth.”

  “There are certain defects in you that you can’t help, but we can’t go on making allowances forever. Inasmuch as Dillon is your wife’s lover, you only demonstrate your perverse temperament if you try to do anything for him. Inasmuch as committees have done this—go for them, and bless you my child.” Marat bounced his clenched fist on his writing board. “Do some damage,” he said.

  “I am afraid that if Dillon goes before the Tribunal on these ludicrous charges—if he goes before the Tribunal, totally innocent, as he is—he may still be condemned. Is it possible, do you think?”

  “Yes. He has enemies, very powerful ones. So what do you expect? The Tribunal is a political instrument.”

  “The Tribunal was set up to replace mob law.”

  “So Danton claimed. But it will go beyond that. There are some rare fights coming up, you know.” Marat looked up. “As for you, if you make the welfare of these ci-devants your concern, something nasty will happen to you.”

  “And you?” Camille said dispassionately. “Are you worse? Are you going to die?”

  Marat tapped the side of the bath. “No … like this … drag on, and on.”

  Scenes in the National Convention. Danton’s friend Desmoulins and Danton’s friend Lacroix shouted at each other across the benches, as if it were a street meeting. Danton’s friend Desmoulins attacked the Danton Committee. Standing at the tribune, he was bawled out from both sides of the House. From the Mountain, Deputy Billaud-Varennes screamed, “It is a scandal, he must be stopped, he is disgracing his own name.”

  Another walkout. It was becoming familiar. Fabre followed him. “Write it down,” he said.

  “I will.” Already the letter that Dillon had sent to him from prison was made public, he had read it out to the deputies. I have done nothing, Dillon said, that is not for my country’s good. “A pamphlet,” Camille said. “What shall I call it?”

  “Just call it ‘A Letter to Arthur Dillon.’ People like reading other people’s letters.” Fabre nodded in the direction of the Convention’s hall. “Settle a few scores, while you’re about it. Launch a few campaigns.”

  Fabre thought, what am I doing, what am I doing? The last thing he needed was to get dragged into the Dillon business.

  “What did Billaud mean, I am disgracing my own name? Am I some sort of institution?”

  He knew the answer: yes. He is the Revolution. Now, apparently, they thought the Revolution had to be protected from itself.

  An elderly, grave deputy approached him, defied his murderous expression, drew him aside and suggested they have a cup of coffee somewhere. Do you know Dillon well? the man asked him. Yes, very well. And do you know, the man said—look, I don’t want to upset you, but you ought
to know—about Dillon and your wife? Camille nodded. He was writing a paragraph in his head. You don’t deserve this, the deputy said. You deserve better, Camille. It is the old story, I suppose—you are occupied with public affairs, the girl is bored, she is fickle, and you don’t have Dillon’s looks.

  So there is kindness in the world—this strained, patient man, stumbling into a situation he didn’t understand, catching the tail-end of the lurid gossip, wanting to put a young man’s life right; betrayed himself twenty years ago, who knows? Camille was touched. Thank you, he said politely. As he left the café and headed home to his desk, he felt that singular fluid running in his veins; it was like the old days on the Révolutions, the power of words moving through his bloodstream like a drug. For the next couple of weeks he would be slightly out of his mind. When he was not writing, or engaged in a shouting match, the life seemed to drain out of him; he felt passive, a husk, a ghost. Strange fantasies possessed him; the language of public debate took a violent, unexpected turn.

  “After Legendre,” he wrote, “the member of the National Convention who has the highest opinion of himself is Saint-Just. One can see by his bearing that he feels his head to be the cornerstone of the Revolution; he carries it as if it were the Holy Sacrament.”

  Saint-Just looked down at the passage, which some helpful person had underscored in green ink. There was very little expression in his face; he did not sneer, as people do in novelettes. “Like the Holy Sacrament,” he says. “I will make him carry his like Saint Denis.”

  “Oh that’s quite good,” Camille said, when it was relayed. ‘For Antoine, that’s quite witty. I wonder if he is going to be clever when he grows up?”

  Soon he was rummaging through the bookshelves: “Lucile, where is Saint-Just’s disgusting poem, the epic poem in twenty books? There was a verse beginning, ‘If I were God.’ Let us see how it continued, I’m sure it will provide the occasion for mockery.”